was treated with all those viands in reality which he ate of before in fancy.  At last they took them away, and brought wine; and at the same time a number of handsome slaves, richly apparelled, came in and sung some agreeable airs to their musical instruments.  In a word, Schacabac had all the reason in the world to be satisfied with the Bermecide’s civility and bounty; for he treated him as his familiar friend, and ordered him a suit out of his wardrobe.

The Bermecide found my brother to be a man of so much wit and understanding, that in a few days after he trusted him with his household, and all his affairs.  My brother acquitted himself very well in that employment for twenty years, at the end of which the generous Bermecide died, and, leaving no heirs, all his estate was confiscated to the use of the prince; upon which my brother was reduced to his first condition, and joined a caravan of pilgrims going to Mecca, designing to accomplish that pilgrimage upon their charity; but by misfortune the caravan was attacked and plundered by a number of Beduins [Footnote:  Vagabond Arabians, who wander in the deserts, and plunder the caravans when they are not strong enough to resist them.] superior to that of the pilgrims.  My brother was then taken as a slave by one of the Beduins, who put him under the bastinado for several days, to oblige him to ransom himself.  Schacabac protested to him that it was all in vain.  I am your slave, said he, you may dispose of me as you please:  but I declare unto you that I am extremely poor, and not able to redeem myself.  In a word, my brother discovered to him all his misfortunes, and endeavoured to soften him with tears; but the Beduin had no mercy; and, being vexed to find himself disappointed of a considerable sum, which he reckoned he was sure of, he took his knife, and slit my brother’s lips, to avenge himself, by this inhumanity, for the loss that he imagined he had sustained.

The Beduin had a handsome wife; and frequently, when he went on his courses, he left my brother alone with her, and then she used all her endeavours to comfort my brother under the rigour of his slavery:  she gave him tokens enough that she loved him; but he durst not yield to her passion, for fear he should repent it, and therefore he shunned to be alone with her, as much as she sought the opportunity to be alone with him.  She had so great a custom of toying and jesting with the miserable Schacabac, whenever she saw him, that one day she happened to do it in presence of her husband.  My brother, without taking notice that he observed them, (so his stars would have it) jested likewise with her.  The Beduin, immediately supposing that they lived together in a criminal manner, fell upon my brother in a rage, and after he had mangled him in a barbarous manner, he carried him on a camel to the top of a desert mountain, where he left him.  The mountain was on the way to Bagdad, so that the passengers who passed that road gave me an account of the place where he was.  I went thither speedily, where I found the unfortunate Schacabac in a deplorable condition:  I gave him what help he stood in need of, and brought him back to the city.