What the Grecian king said about king Sinbad raised the vizier’s curiosity, who said, “I pray your majesty to pardon me, if I have the boldness to ask what the vizier of king Sinbad said to his master to divert him from putting the prince his son to death.”  The Grecian king had the condescension to satisfy him:  “That vizier,” said he, “after having represented to king Sinbad, that he ought to beware, lest on the accusation of a mother-in-law he should commit an action of which he might afterwards repent, told him this story.”

The Story of the Husband and the Parrot.

A certain man had a beautiful wife, whom he loved so dearly, that he could scarcely allow her to be out of his sight.  One day, some urgent affairs obliging him to go from home, he went to a place where all sorts of birds were sold, and bought a parrot, which not only spoke well, but could also give an account of every thing that was done in its presence.  He brought it in a cage to his house, desired his wife to put it in his chamber, and take care of it during his absence, and then departed.

On his return, he questioned the parrot concerning what had passed while he was from home, and the bird told him such things as gave him occasion to upbraid his wife.  She concluded some of her slaves had betrayed her, but all of them swore they had been faithful, and agreed that the parrot must have been the tell-tale.

Upon this, the wife began to devise how she might remove her husband’s jealousy, and at the same time revenge herself on the parrot.  Her husband being gone another journey, she commanded a slave in the night-time to turn a hand-mill under the parrot’s cage; she ordered another to sprinkle water, in resemblance of rain, over the cage; and a third to move a looking-glass, backward and forward against a candle, before the parrot.  The slaves spent a great part of the night in doing what their mistress desired them, and acquitted themselves with much skill.

Next night the husband returned, and examined the parrot again about what had passed during his absence.  The bird answered, “Good master, the lightning, thunder, and rain so much disturbed me all night, that I cannot tell how much I suffered.”  The husband, who knew that there had been neither thunder, lightning, nor rain in the night, fancied that the parrot, not having spoken truth in this, might also have lied in the other relation; upon which he took it out of the cage, and threw it with so much force to the ground that he killed it.  Yet afterwards he understood from his neigbours, that the poor parrot had not deceived him in what it had stated of his wife’s base conduct, made him repent that he had killed it.

When the Grecian king had finished the story of the parrot, he added, “And you, vizier, because of the hatred you bear to the physician Douban, who never did you any injury, you would have me cut him off; but I will beware lest I should repent as the husband did after killing his parrot.”