On returning home, our merchant, in a fit of indignation, flung his slippers into the Tigris, that ran beneath his window.  Some days after they were dragged out in a fisherman’s net that came up more heavy than usual.  The nails with which the soles were thickly studded had torn the meshes of the net, and the fisherman, exasperated against the miserly Abu Kasim and his slippers—­for they were known to everyone—­determined to throw them into his house through the window he had left open.  The slippers, thrown with great force, reached the jars of rose-water, and smashed them in pieces, to the intense consternation of the owner.  “Cursed slippers!” cried he, tearing his beard, “you shall cause me no farther mischief!” So saying, he took a spade and began to dig a hole in his garden to bury them.  One of his neighbours, who had long borne him ill-will, perceiving him busied in digging the ground, ran at once to inform the governor that Abu Kasim had discovered some hidden treasure in his garden.  Nothing more was needful to rouse the cupidity of the commandant.  In vain did our miser protest that he had found no treasure; and that he only meant to bury his old slippers.  The governor had counted on the money, so the afflicted man could only preserve his liberty at the expense of a large sum of money.  Again heartily cursing the slippers, in order to effectually rid himself of them, he threw them into an aqueduct at some distance from the city, persuaded that he should now hear no more of them.  But his evil genius had not yet sufficiently plagued him:  the slippers got into the mouth of the pipe and stopped the flow of the water.  The keepers of the aqueduct made haste to repair the damage, and, finding the obstruction was caused by Abu Kasim’s slippers, complained of this to the governor, and once more was Abu Kasim heavily fined, but the governor considerately returned him the slippers.  He now resolved to burn them, but, finding them thoroughly soaked with water, he exposed them to the sun upon the terrace of his house.  A neighbour’s dog, perceiving the slippers, leaped from the terrace of his master’s house upon that of Abu Kasim, and, seizing one of them in his mouth, he let it drop into the street:  the fatal slipper fell directly on the head of a woman who was passing at the time, and the fright as well as the violence of the blow caused her to miscarry.  Her husband brought his complaint before the kazi, and Abu Kasim was again sentenced to pay a fine proportioned to the calamity he was supposed to have occasioned.  He then took the slippers in his hand, and, with a vehemence that made the judge laugh, said:  “Behold, my lord, the fatal instruments of my misfortune!  These cursed slippers have at length reduced me to poverty.  Vouchsafe, therefore, to publish an order that no one may any more impute to me the disasters they may yet occasion.”  The kazi could not refuse his request, and thus Abu Kasim learned, to his bitter cost, the danger of wearing his slippers too long.