“Neighbour,” said I, “your wife can tell you that I valued my diamond at a hundred thousand pieces, and I will take nothing less.”  He haggled a long time with me, in hopes that I would make some abatement:  but finding at last that I was positive, and for fear that I should shew it to other jewellers, as I certainly should have done, he would not leave me till the bargain was concluded on my own terms.  He told me that he had not so much money at home, but would pay it all to me on the morrow, that very instant fetched two bags of a thousand pieces each, as an earnest; and the next day, though I do not know how he raised the money, whether he borrowed it of his friends, or let some other jewellers into partnership with him, he brought me the sum we had agreed for at the time appointed, and I delivered to him the diamond.

Having thus sold my diamond, and being rich, infinitely beyond my hopes, I thanked God for his bounty; and would have gone and thrown myself at Saad’s feet to express my gratitude, if I had known where he lived; as also at Saadi’s, to whom I was first obliged, though his good intention had not the same success.

Afterwards I thought of the use I ought to make of so considerable a sum.  My wife, with the vanity natural to her sex, proposed immediately to buy rich clothes for herself and children; to purchase a house, and furnish it handsomely.  I told her we ought not to begin with such expenses; “for,” said I, “money should only be spent, so that it may produce a fund from which we may draw without its failing.  This I intend, and shall begin to-morrow.”

I spent all that day and the next in going to the people of my own trade, who worked as hard every day for their bread as I had done; and giving them money beforehand, engaged them to work for me in different sorts of rope-making, according to their skill and ability, with a promise not to make them wait for their money, but to pay them as soon as their work was done.

By this means I engrossed almost all the business of Bagdad, and everybody was pleased with my exactness and punctual payment.

As so great a number of workmen produced, as your majesty may judge, a large quantity of work, I hired warehouses in several parts of the town to hold my goods, and appointed over each a clerk, to sell both wholesale and retail; and by this economy received considerable profit and income.  Afterwards, to unite my concerns in one spot, I bought a large house, which stood on a great deal of ground, but was ruinous, pulled it down, and built that your majesty saw yesterday, which, though it makes so great an appearance, consists, for the most part, of warehouses for my business, with apartments absolutely necessary for myself and family.

Some time after I had left my old mean habitation, and removed to this, Saad and Saadi, who had scarcely thought of me from the last time they had been with me, as they were one day walking together, and passing by our street, resolved to call upon me:  but great was their surprise when they did not see me at work.  They asked what was become of me, and if I was alive or dead.  Their amazement was redoubled, when they were told I was become a great manufacturer, and was no longer called plain Hassan, but Khaujeh Hassan al Hubbaul, and that I had built in a street, which was named to them, a house like a palace.