a good price in the
bazaar next day. This goes on for upwards of a year, when the first
separation is brought about by the crafty old Wazir of her father, the
King of France, who had sent him especially to look for his daughter.
In the course of the adventures that follow, Miriam shows her capacity
in sailing ships and in killing various men, among others her three
brothers, who pursued her in her last flight from her father's city.
Eventually she and Ali get to Baghdad, where the Khalif makes things
smooth for them, and they are married, and finally return to Cairo to
rejoin Ali's parents, from whom he had run away in his youth.

Kamar Al-Zaman and the Jeweller's Wife is one of the modern tales of
the 'Nights,' and a very good one, containing a good plot and plenty
of interesting incidents. The jeweller's wife, Halimah by name, is one
of the wickedest and craftiest of women in Busra, and her plots and
intrigues are well described; some of them are to be found in Persian
story-books. After playing all sorts of tricks, she leaves her
husband, and elopes with the youth Kamar to Cairo, where his parents
reside. There his father will not let him marry her, but confines her
and her slave-girl in a room, and arranges a marriage for his son with
another woman. After a time Halimah's husband, Obayd, the jeweller,
turns up in Cairo in the most beggarly plight, having been plundered
by Bedouins _en route_. After explanations, Obayd ends by killing
his wife and her slave-girl, who had assisted her in all her
devilries, and Kanar's father marries him to his daughter, who turns
out the most virtuous of women. The moral of the tale is pointed out
at the end, that there are both bad women and good women in the world,
and is closed with the remark: 'So he who deemeth all women to be
alike, there is no remedy for the disease of his insanity.'

Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his wife Fatimah commences with a domestic
scene between the two, from which it appears that the poor husband had
been shamefully sat upon from the day of his marriage, and that his
wife was a dreadful woman. Affairs, however, at last reach a climax,
and Ma'aruf seeks peace and safety in flight. Balzac, in his clever
novel of 'Le Contrat de Mariage,' makes his hero Manerville fly from
the machinations of his wife and mother-in-law, but Henri de Marsay,
writing to his friend pages on the subject, contends that he is wrong,
and points out to him the course that he should ha