My father’s quality might have entitled him to the highest posts in the city of Bagdad, but he always preferred a quiet life to any honours he might deserve.  I was his only child; and, when he died, I was already educated, and of age to dispose of the plentiful fortune he had left me, which I did not squander away foolishly, but applied to such uses, that every body respected me.  I had never been in love, and was so far from being sensible of that passion, that I acknowledge, perhaps to my shame, that I cautiously avoided the conversation of women.  One day, walking in the streets, I saw a great company of ladies before me, and, that I might not meet them, turned down a narrow lane just by, and sat down upon a bench by a door.  I sat over against a window, where stood a pot with pretty flowers; and I had my eyes fixed upon this, when, all on a sudden, the window opened, and a young lady appeared, whose beauty was dazzling.  Immediately she cast her eyes upon me; and, in watering the flower-pot with a hand whiter than alabaster, looked upon me with a smile that inspired me with as much love for her as I had formerly an aversion for all women.  After having watered all her flowers, and darting upon me a glance full of charms that quite pierced my heart, she shut up the window again, and so left me in inconceivable trouble and disorder.

I had dwelt upon these thoughts long enough, had not a noise in the streets brought me to myself:  alarmed thus, I turned my head in a rising posture, and saw it was the upper cadi of the city, mounted on a mule, and attended by five or six servants.  He alighted at the door of the house where the young lady had opened the window, and went in there; so I concluded he was the young lady’s father.

I went home in a different sort of humour from that in which I came, with a passion which was the mere violent as I had never felt before its assaults.  In fine, I went to bed in a violent fever, at which all the family was greatly concerned.  My relations, who had a great love for me, were so alarmed and moved at my sudden disorder, that they came about me, and importuned me to know the cause, which I took care not to reveal to them.  My silence created an uneasiness which the physicians could not dispel, because they knew nothing of my distemper, and rather inflamed than repaired it, by the medicines they exhibited.  My relations began to despair of my life, when a certain old lady of our acquaintance, learning my illness, came to see me.  She considered and examined every thing with great attention, and dived, I do not know how, into the real cause of my illness.  Then she took my relations aside, and desired they would retire from the room.  When the room was clear, she sat down on the side of my bed:  My child, said she, you are very obstinate in concealing hitherto the cause of your illness; but you have no occasion to reveal it to me, I have experience enough to penetrate into a secret; you will not surely disown that it is love that makes you sick.  I can find a way to cure you, if you but let me know who the happy lady is that could move a heart so insensible as yours; for you have the name of a woman-hater, and I was not the last that perceived you to be of that temper; but, in short, what I foresaw has just come to pass, and am now glad of the opportunity to employ my talents in bringing you out of pain.