damsels
you see, the more jocund a thing is life--and that is what the men of
the Duchy love--and not least, Duke Deodonato, whom, with his bride
Dulcissima, may Heaven long preserve!

VIII.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

There was once--the date is of no moment--a Sultan, and he had a Vizier
named Ashimullah. This minister was a wise man, much trusted by his
master; but he was held in some suspicion and dislike at the court
because he had been born--or, if that be doubtful, had at least been
bred--a Christian, and had been originally a prisoner of the Sultan's
armies.

But Ashimullah, for reasons which intimately concerned his own head,
but need not concern anybody else's, promptly found the true path; and,
having professed a ready conversion to the tenets of Islam, rose
rapidly to a high place in the service of the Sultan, so that his
promotion never ceased until he was installed in the office of Grand
Vizier. Yet, remembering his discreditable past, the Sultan was
accustomed to exact from him the fullest and most minute observance of
his religious duties. To such observance Ashimullah submitted,
comforting himself with the example of Naaman the Syrian; for
Ashimullah was still, in secret, a Christian, and his adherence to
Islam was only a polite concession to public feeling. But there was
one point on which his conscience struck him sorely, and this was no
other than the question of wives. Ashimullah had one wife, a lady of
great beauty and remarkable accomplishments, and for the life of him he
could not see how, consistently with the religion which he held in his
heart and with the honor that he owed to the lady, he could take any
other wife. Such an act appeared to him to be a deadly sin, for it was
most plainly held and laid down by the rules of his religion, and had
moreover been amply proved by experience, that one wife was enough for
any man. Therefore when the Sultan, hearing that Ashimullah had but
one wife, and considering the thing very suspicious and unnatural, sent
for him, and required him to order his establishment on a scale more
befitting his present exalted position, Ashimullah was in sad
perplexity. To obey was to sin, to refuse was likely to cost him his
life; for if his master suspected the sincerity of his conversion, his
shrift would be short. In this quandary Ashimullah sought about for
excuses.

"O Commander of the Faithful, I am a poor man, and wives are sources of
expense,