"He conducted me forthwith to the palace, and introduced me to my daughter-in-law, the beautiful slave with whom he had eloped; and also to his father-in-law, the king of that country, who received me very graciously, and bestowed upon me, in recompense for the loss I had sustained, a fine house and a thousand purses of gold.
"The country in which we now were was a mountainous one, and very bleak and cold in the winter; and my son Diraz had not been there six months before he took so violent a chill that he died after a few days' illness.
"About a month later the princess, my daughter-in-law, gave birth to a female child. Nothing now was so dear to me as my little granddaughter, and when, five years afterwards, both my daughter-in-law and the king her father were carried off by a fever which was very prevalent and fatal in that country, I determined to return with my grandchild to my native city, there to spend my remaining years in peace.
"We journeyed very slowly, stopping for months together in many of the cities on our way. At length we arrived safely in Bagdad, and settled down in the little house and garden by the river, where I live in peace and contentment with my granddaughter as my only companion; she is my treasure and the brightness of my house."
"The young lady," said the Caliph, "must by this time be old enough to be married: if I find her a husband will you provide her a dower?"
"Sire," said Abdurrahman, "when I die, and I am now old, what little I have will be hers, but till then her only dower consists of two small jars of ointment."
"What jars are those?" asked the Caliph; "and where did you get them?"
"The jars," answered Abdurrahman, "were entrusted to me by my daughter-in-law just before her death.
"'Preserve them carefully,' she said, 'and unopened, for the ointment they contain is most precious, and of a rare and even magical efficacy. When my little girl is old enough for marriage offer them for sale, but take not less than a thousand pieces of gold for the one jar, and not less than ten thousand pieces for the other. If no one can be found willing to pay that price for them do not part with them, keep them rather, and direct that they be buried with you.'
"I have never yet," continued the old man, "offered the jars of ointment for sale, and truly it seems so improbable that any one will ever be inclined to pay so preposterous a price for them, that doubtless they will be interred with me as the princess, my daughter-in-law, requested."