Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Esdras, and all the other prophets of his law.  Unhappy man that I am! said he, what induced me to come down without a light?  I have e’en made an end of the fellow who was brought to me to be cured?  I am undoubtedly the cause of his death, and unless, Esras’s ass[Footnote:  Here the Arabian author ridicules the Jews:  this ass is that which, as the Mahometans believe, Esdras rode upon when he came from the Babylonian captivity to Jerusalem.] comes to assist me, I nm ruined:  mercy on me, they will be here instantly, and drag me from my house as a murderer!  But, notwithstanding the perplexity and jeopardy he was in, he had the precaution to shut his door, lest any one passing by in the street should observe the mischance, of which he reckoned himself the author.  He then took the corpse into his wife’s chamber, upon which she swooned away.  Alas! cried she, we are utterly ruined! undone! undone! unless we fall upon some expedient or other to turn the corpse out of our house this night!  Beyond all question, if we harbour it till morning, our lives must pay for it.  What a sad mischance is this!  Why, how did you kill this man?  That is not the question, replied the Jew; our business now is to find out a remedy for such a shocking accident.  They then consulted together how to get rid of the corpse that night.  The doctor racked his brain in vain; he could not think of any stratagem to get clear:  but his wife, who was more fertile in invention, said, there is a thought come into my head; let us carry.the corpse to the leads of our house, and tumble it down the chimney into the house of the Mussulman, our next neighbour.  This Mussulman, or Turk, was one of the sultan’s purveyors for furnishing oil, butter, and all sorts of fat, tallow, &c. and had a magazine in his house, in which the rats and mice made prodigious havoe.

The Jewish doctor approving the proposed expedient, his wife and he took the little hunch-back up to the roof of the house; and, clapping ropes under his arm-pits, let him down the chimney into the purveyor’s chamber so softly and dexterously, that he stood upright against the wall as if he had been alive.  When they found he stood firm, they pulled up the ropes, and left the gentleman in that posture.  They were scarcely got into their chamber, when the purveyor went into his, being just come from a wedding feast, with a lantern in his hand.  He was mightily surprised, when, by the light of his lantern, he descried a man standing upright in his chimney; but being a stout man, and apprehending it was a thief or a robber, he took up a large cane; and, making straight up to the hunch-back, Ah, said he, I thought it was the rats and the mice that ate my butter and tallow! and it is you that come down the chimney to rob me, is it?  I question if ever you come back again on the same errand?  This said, he fell foul of the man, and gave him a good many swinging thwacks with his cane:  upon which the corpse fell down, running its nose against