and said to him,"By Allah, thy luck hath re-appeared and thy good star is in the ascendant!” Then the pearl-fishers gave him the ten pearls and said to him, “Sell two of them and make them thy stock-in-trade:  and hide the rest against the time of thy straitness.”  So he took them, joyful and contented, and applied himself to sewing eight of them in his gown, keeping the two others in his mouth; but a thief saw him and went and advertised his fellows of him; whereupon they gathered together upon him, and took his gown and departed from him.  When they were gone away, he arose, saying, “The two unions I have will suffice me,” and made for the nearest city, where he brought out the pearls for sale.  Now as Destiny would have it, a certain jeweller of the town had been robbed of ten unions, like those which were with the merchant; so, when he saw the two pearls in the broker’s hand, he asked him, “To whom do these belong?” and the broker answered, “To yonder man.”  The jeweller, seeing the merchant in pauper case and clad in tattered clothes, suspected him and said to him, “Where be the other eight pearls?” The merchant thought he asked him of those which were in the gown, whenas the man had purposed only to surprise him into confession, and replied, “The thieves stole them from me.”  When the jeweller heard his reply, he was certified that it was the wight who had taken his good; so he laid hold of him and haling him before the Chief of Police, said to him, “This is the man who stole my unions:  I have found two of them upon him and he confesseth to the other eight.”  Now the Wali knew of the theft of the pearls; so he bade throw the merchant into jail.  Accordingly they imprisoned him and whipped him, and he lay in trunk a whole year, till, by the ordinance of Allah Almighty, the Chief of Police arrested one of the divers aforesaid, and imprisoned him in the prison where the merchant was jailed.  The ducker saw him and knowing him, questioned him of his case; whereupon he told them his tale, and that which had befallen him; and the diver marvelled at the lack of his luck.  So, when he came forth of the prison, he acquainted the Sultan with the merchant’s case and told him that it was he who had given him the pearls.  The Sultan bade bring him forth of the jail, and asked him of his story, whereupon he told him all that had befallen him, and the Sovran pitied him and assigned him a lodging in his own palace, together with pay and allowances for his support.  Now the lodging in question adjoined the king’s house, and whilst the merchant was rejoicing in this and saying, “Verily, my luck hath returned, and I shall live in the shadow of this king the rest of my life,” he espied an opening walled up with clay and stones.  So he cleared the opening the better to see what was behind it, and behold, it was a window giving upon the lodging of the king’s women.  When he saw this, he was startled and affrighted and rising in haste, fetched clay and stopped it up again.  But one of the eunuchs[FN#155] saw