do you know he is dumb?" said the
owner of the mare. "At the time I wished to fasten my mare near his
horse he said, 'Don't!' yet now he feigns himself dumb." The kazi
observed that if he was duly warned against the accident he had himself
to blame, and so dismissed the case.

II

THE EMPEROR'S DREAM--THE GOLDEN APPARITION--THE FOUR TREASURE-SEEKERS.

We are not without instances in European popular fictions of two young
persons dreaming of each other and falling in love, although they had
never met or known of each other's existence. A notable example is the
story of the Two Dreams in the famous _History of the Seven Wise
Masters_. Incidents of this kind are very common in Oriental stories:
the romance of _Kamarupa_ (of Indian origin, but now chiefly known
through the Persian version) is based upon a dream which the hero has of
a certain beautiful princess, with whom he falls in love, and he sets
forth with his companions to find her, should it be at the uttermost
ends of the earth. It so happens that the damsel also dreams of him,
and, when they do meet, they need no introduction to each other. The
Indian romance of _Vasayadatta_ has a similar plot. But the royal
dreamer and lover in the following story, told by the Parrot on the 39th
Night, according to the India Office MS. No. 2573, adopted a plan for
the discovery of the beauteous object of his vision more conformable to
his own ease:

_The Emperor's Dream._

An emperor of China dreamt of a very beautiful damsel whom he had never
seen or heard of, and, being sorely pierced with the darts of love for
the creature of his dreaming fancy, he could find no peace of mind. One
of his vazirs, who was an excellent portrait painter, receiving from the
emperor a minute description of the lady's features, drew the face, and
the imperial lover acknowledged the likeness to be very exact. The vazir
then went abroad with the portrait, to see whether any one could
identify it with the fair original. After many disappointments he met
with an old hermit, who at once recognised it as the portrait of the
princess of Rum,[46] who, he informed the vazir, had an unconquerable
aversion against men ever since she beheld, in her garden, a peacock
basely desert his mate and their young ones, when the tree on which
their nest was built had been struck by lightning. She believed that all
men were quite as selfish as that peacock, and was resolved never to
marry. Returning to hi