ready to depart the city, saying, “O Allah, suffer none to see me!” Then, after giving his wife charge of the house and bidding her take care of his effects and farewelling her, he went forth secretly from her and journeyed that day and a second and a third until the seventh, when he entered Damascus of Syria where none knew him.  But he had no spending money for he could not persuade himself to take even a single dinar from his hoard and he had provided himself with naught save the meagrest provision.  So his condition was straitened and he was compelled to sell somewhat of his clothes and lay out the price upon his urgent needs; and when the coin was finished he was forced to part with other portions of his dress till little or nothing of it remained to him.  Then, in his sorest strait, he went to the Shaykh of the Masons and said to him, “O master, my wish is to serve in this industry;’’[FN#217] and said he, “Welcome to thee.”  So the Kazi worked through every day for a wage of five Faddahs.  Such was his case; but as regards his wife,—­And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and fell silent and ceased saying her permitted say.  Then quoth her sister Dunyazad, “How sweet and tasteful is thy tale, O sister mine, and enjoyable and delectable!” Quoth she, “And where is this compared with that I would relate to you on this coming night an the Sovran suffer me to survive?” Now when it was the next night and that was

The Three Hundred and Ninetieth Night,

Dunyazad said to her, “Allah upon thee, O my sister, an thou be other than sleepy, finish for us thy tale that we may cut short the watching of this our latter night!” She replied, “With love and good will!” It hath reached me, O auspicious King, the director, the right-guiding, lord of the rede which is benefiting and of deeds fair-seeming and worthy celebrating, that when the Kazi went forth from his wife she threw a sherd[FN#218] behind him and muttered, “Allah never bring thee back from thy journey.”  Then she arose and threw open the rooms and noted all that was in them of moneys and moveables and vaiselle and rarities, and she fell to feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and doling alms to Fakirs saying, “This be the reward of him who mortifieth the daughters of folk and devoureth their substance and shreddeth off their nostrils.”  She also sent to the women he had married and divorced, and gave them of his good the equivalent of their dowers and a solatium for losing their noses.  And every day she assembled the goodwives of the quarter and cooked for them manifold kinds of food because her spouse the Kazi was possessed of property approaching two Khaznahs[FN#219] of money, he being ever loath to expend what his hand could hend and unprepared to part with aught on any wise, for the excess of his niggardness and his greed of gain.  Nor did she cease from so doing for a length of time until suddenly she overheard folk saying, “Our Kazi hath borne a babe.”  And such bruit spread abroad and