“I am speaking frankly to you, my nephews (in spite of the difference in our ages and of the respect you owe me as the head of the family), when I confess so great a depth of degradation as this. I did not put this million which I had acquired aside. I used it fruitfully. But my mind was occupied (even after so many years I blush to recall it!) in seeking some secure and permanent form of revenue, so that I should be free henceforth from the labour and risk of buying cheap and selling dear, and from the duty of hunting the dupe and the incompetent.
“While I was revolving in my mind how best I might obtain this leisure there came to me my temptation. For a traveller arriving in the City of the Bridge let it be known to the merchants of the place that the King of an Island called Izmar, one day’s sail from the coast (a kingdom renowned throughout Asia for its fidelity to the Prophet, the antiquity of its customs, the solidity of its institutions), required a loan.
“‘For what purpose?’ I asked him.
“‘I know not,’ he answered, ‘but I think it is in order to pay back another loan which he contracted some years ago in the effort to pay another loan which his father had contracted when a few years previously he had been compelled to repay an earlier loan.’
“I admired the scrupulous anxiety of this monarch and was the more confirmed in the project that was forming in my mind. That very night I bade farewell, not without grief, to the City of the Bridge. I sold my slaves and my house at some loss (such was my infatuation!) and before it was light started out upon a good horse, carrying with me my million dinars reduced to one hundred thousand pieces of gold which, in this form, could easily be carried upon a few pack animals that followed me with their drivers.
“My passage of the sea was easy. I saw, at the rising of the sun, fine mountains against the South and very soon I discerned at their base on the shore, the walls, the piers, the minarets of a great city, its flanks upon the edges of the sea. So did I land under a good augury.
“Everything in the place, as I passed through it, smiled at my project. The wealth of the great houses, the busy commerce of the streets, the port quite filled with shipping from every place, the sounds of strange tongues (men not only from all Islam, but Nazarenes also, and Kafir, and merchants of China), the excellent order everywhere about, all these promised me the security which I desired.
“I put on my best raiment, finely fringed, and all my jewels and presented myself to the Port-Master as upon a matter of state business, handing him at the same time, in a lofty manner, a roll which I begged to have delivered to the Controllers of the Treasury. The Master of the Port treated me with the reverence my wealth deserved. I reposed for an hour in the court of his house, resting to the pleasant trickle of a fountain and waiting the pleasure of the authorities. At the end of that time a dozen horsemen magnificently mounted and bearing the insignia of the King formed before the porch of my host. Their commander set foot to the ground and begged me with a very low salaam to mount and ride. It would be his privilege, he said, to hold my bridle.
“It was my design to maintain my state, and thus, in great pomp, was I led through the busy streets till I came to a vast archway all emblazoned with holy texts. Passing through this, I came into a more magnificent court than I had thought men could have built in this world. Indeed, the folk had made stories of it that it was not of human handicraft, but that its delicate piers and alabaster columns and lovely arches, lighter and lighter as they rose to heaven, had sprung up in a moment at the command of spirits in the days of Soleiman, from whom the monarchs of this happy island claimed descent.
“My advent was greeted with a flourish of trumpets as though I were some sort of ambassador, such an effect had my robes and jewels and letter produced, and, without delay, I was conducted by servants of the palace into the presence of the Council.