story of an importunate mendicant who had amassed much
riches. A certain king said: "It seems that you possess immense wealth,
and I have a business of some consequence in hand. If you will assist me
with a little of it, by way of a loan, when the public revenue is
realized I will repay it and thank you to the bargain." He replied: "O
sire, it would ill become the sublime majesty of the sovereign of the
universe to soil the hand of lofty enterprise with the property of such
a mendicant as I am, which I have scraped together grain by grain." He
said: "There is no occasion to vex yourself, for I mean it for the
Tartars, as impurities are suiting for the impure:--_They said, 'The
compost of a dunghill is unclean.' We replied, 'That with it we will
fill up the chinks of a necessary_.'--If the water of a Christian's well
is defiled, and we wash a Jew's corpse in it, there is no sin." I have
heard that he disobeyed the royal command, questioned its justice, and
resisted it with insolence. The king ordered that the exchequer
stipulations should be put in force with rigidness and violence. When a
business cannot be settled with fair words, we must of necessity make
use of foul. When a man will not contribute of his own free will, if
another enforces him he meets his desert.

XXII

I knew a merchant who had a hundred and fifty camels of burden and forty
bondsmen and servants in his train. One night he entertained me at his
lodgings in the island of Keish, in the Persian Gulf, and continued for
the whole night talking idly, and saying: "Such a store of goods I have
in Turkestan, and such an assortment of merchandise in Hindustan; this
is the mortgage-deed of a certain estate, and this the security-bond of
a certain individual's concern." Then he would say: "I have a mind to
visit Alexandria, the air of which is salubrious; but that cannot be,
for the Mediterranean Sea is boisterous. O Sa'di! I have one more
journey in view, and, that once accomplished, I will pass my remaining
life in retirement and leave off trade." I asked: "What journey is
that?" He replied: "I will carry the sulphur of Persia to Chin, where,
I have heard, it will fetch a high price; thence I will take China
porcelain to Greece; the brocade of Greece or Venice I will carry to
India; and Indian steel I will bring to Aleppo; the glassware of Aleppo
I will take to Yamin; and with the bardimani, or striped stuffs, of
Yamin I will return to Persia. After that I