III

THE YOUNG MERCHANT OF BAGHDAD; OR, THE WILES OF WOMAN.

Too many Eastern stories turn upon the artful devices of women to screen their own profligacy, but there is one, told by Arab Shah, the celebrated historian, who died A.D. 1450, in a collection entitled Fakihat al-Khalifa, or Pastimes of the Khalifs, in which a lady exhibits great ingenuity, without any very objectionable motive.  It is to the following effect: 

A young merchant in Baghdad had placed over the front of his shop, instead of a sentence from the Kuran, as is customary, these arrogant words:  “VERILY THERE IS NO CUNNING LIKE UNTO THAT OF MAN, SEEING IT SURPASSES THE CUNNING OF WOMEN.”  It happened one day that a very beautiful young lady, who had been sent by her aunt to purchase some rich stuffs for dresses, noticed this inscription, and at once resolved to compel the despiser of her sex to alter it.  Entering the shop, she said to him, after the usual salutations:  “You see my person; can anyone presume to say that I am humpbacked?” He had hardly recovered from the astonishment caused by such a question, when the lady drew her veil a little to one side and continued:  “Surely my neck is not as that of a raven, or as the ebony idols of Ethiopia?” The young merchant, between surprise and delight, signified his assent.  “Nor is my chin double,” said she, still farther unveiling her face; “nor my lips thick, like those of a Tartar?” Here the young merchant smiled.  “Nor are they to be believed who say that my nose is flat and my cheeks are sunken?” The merchant was about to express his horror at the bare idea of such blasphemy, when the lady wholly removed her veil and allowed her beauty to flash upon the bewildered youth, who instantly became madly in love with her.  “Fairest of creatures!” he cried, “to what accident do I owe the view of those charms, which are hidden from the eyes of the less fortunate of my sex?” She replied:  “You see in me an unfortunate damsel, and I shall explain the cause of my present conduct.  My mother, who was sister to a rich amir of Mecca, died some years ago, leaving my father in possession of an immense fortune and myself as sole heiress.  I am now seventeen, my personal endowments are such as you behold, and a very small portion of my mother’s fortune would quite suffice to obtain for me a good establishment in marriage.  Yet such is the unfeeling avarice of my father, that he absolutely refuses me the least trifle to settle me in life.  The only counsellor to whom I could apply for help in this extremity was my kind nurse, and it is by her advice, as well as from the high opinion I have ever heard expressed of your merits, that I have been induced to throw myself upon your goodness in this extraordinary manner.”  The emotions of the young merchant on hearing this story, may be readily imagined.  “Cruel parent!” he exclaimed.  “He must be a rock of the desert, not a man, who can condemn so charming a person to perpetual solitude, when the slightest possible sacrifice on his part might prevent it.  May I inquire his name?” “He is the chief kazi,” replied the lady, and disappeared like a vision.