When the king returned to his palace, he pretended to have a headache, and summoned all the physicians in the city by proclamation with beat of drum.  And he took aside every one of them singly and questioned them privately, saying, “What patients have you, and what medicines have you prescribed for each?” And they thereupon, one by one, answered the king’s questions.  At length a physician said, “The merchant Matridatta has been out of sorts, O king, and this is the second day I have prescribed for him nagabala (the plant Uraria Lagopodioides).”  Then the king sent for the merchant, and said to him, “Tell me, who fetched you the nagabala?” The merchant replied, “My servant, your highness.”  On hearing this, the king at once summoned the servant and said to him, “Give up that treasure belonging to a Brahman, consisting of a store of dinars, which you found when you were digging at the foot of the tree for nagabala.”  When the king said this to him the servant was frightened, and confessed immediately, and bringing the money left it there.  Then the king summoned the Brahman and gave him, who had been fasting meanwhile, the dinars, lost and found again, like a second soul external to his body.  Thus did the king by his wisdom recover to the Brahman his wealth which had been taken away from the root of the tree, knowing that that simple grew in such spots.

Tale of the devout woman accused of lewdness.—­Vol.  XI. p. 184.

This is one of three Arabian variants of Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale (the Story of Constance), of which there are numerous versions—­see my paper entitled “The Innocent Persecuted Wife,” pp. 365-414 of “Originals and Analogues of some of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.”

THE WEAVER WHO BECAME A LEACH BY ORDER OF HIS WIFE.—­Vol.  XI. p. 194

Somewhat resembling his, but much more elaborate, is the amusing story of Ahmed the Cobbler, in Sir John Malcolm’s “Sketches of Persia,” ch. xx., the original of which is probably found in the tale of Harisarman, book vi. ch. 30, of the “Katha Sarit Sagara,” and it has many European variants, such as the German story of Doctor Allwissend, in Grimm’s collection, and that of the Charcoal Burner in Sir George Dasent’s “Tales from the Fjeld.—­ According to the Persian story, Ahmed the Cobbler had a young and pretty wife, of whom he was very fond.  She was ever forming grand schemes of riches and splendour, and was firmly persuaded that she was destined to great fortune.  It happened one evening, while in this frame of mind, that she went to the public baths, where she saw a lady retiring dressed in a magnificent robe, covered with jewels, and surrounded by slaves.  This was the very condition she had always longed for, and she eagerly inquired the name of the happy person who had so many attendants and such fine jewels.  She learned it was the wife of the chief astrologer to the king.  With