inced of the truth of the soldier's story, so he goes to the house
of the goldsmith, and privately causes two of his own attendants to be
locked up in a large chest that was in one of the rooms. He then
confines the goldsmith and his wife in the same room. During the night
the concealed men hear the goldsmith inform his wife where he had hidden
the soldier's money; and next morning, when the kazi comes again and is
told by his men what they had heard the goldsmith say to his wife about
the money, he causes search to be made, and, finding it, hangs the
goldsmith on the spot.

* * * * *

Kazis are often represented in Persian stories as being very shrewd and
ingenious in convicting the most expert rogues, but this device for
discovering the goldsmith's criminality is certainly one of the
cleverest examples.

* * * * *

On the 36th Night of MS. (26th of Kadiri) the loquacious bird relates
the story of

_The King who died of Love for a Merchant's beautiful Daughter._

A merchant had a daughter, the fame of whose beauty drew many suitors
for her hand, but he rejected them all; and when she was of proper age
he wrote a letter to the king, describing her charms and
accomplishments, and respectfully offering her to him in marriage. The
king, already in love with the damsel from this account of her beauty,
sends his four vazirs to the merchant's house to ascertain whether she
was really as charming as her father had represented her to be. They
find that she far surpassed the power of words to describe; but,
considering amongst themselves that should the king take this bewitching
girl to wife, he would become so entangled in the meshes of love as
totally to neglect the affairs of the state, they underrate her beauty
to the king, who then gives up all thought of her. But it chanced one
day that the king himself beheld the damsel on the terrace of her house,
and, perceiving that his vazirs had deceived him, he sternly reprimanded
them, at the same time expressing his fixed resolution of marrying the
girl. The vazirs frankly confessed that their reason for misrepresenting
the merchant's daughter to him was their fear lest, possessing such a
charming bride, he should forget his duty to the state; upon which the
king, struck with their anxiety for his true interests, resolved to deny
himself the happiness of marrying the girl. But he could not suppress
his affectio