“I replied only by falling at the merchant’s feet, and embracing his knees. The feast of tulips came and on that day I was married to the charming Fatima! The charming Fatima I continue still to think her, though she has now been my wife some years. She is the joy and pride of my heart; and, from our mutual affection, I have experienced more felicity than from all the other circumstances of my life, which are called so fortunate. Her father gave me the house in which I now live, and joined his possessions to ours; so that I have more wealth even than I desire. My riches, however, give me continually the means of relieving the wants of others; and therefore I cannot affect to despise them. I must persuade my brother Murad to share them with me, and to forget his misfortunes: I shall then think myself completely happy. As to the sultana’s looking-glass and your broken vase, my dear brother,” continued Saladin, “we must think of some means—”
“Think no more of the sultana’s looking-glass or of the broken vase,” exclaimed the sultan, throwing aside his merchant’s habit, and showing beneath it his own imperial vest. “Saladin, I rejoice to have heard, from your own lips, the history of your life. I acknowledge, vizier, I have been in the wrong in our argument,” continued the sultan, turning to his vizier. “I acknowledge that the histories of Saladin the Lucky and Murad the Unlucky favour your opinion, that prudence has more influence than chance in human affairs. The success and happiness of Saladin seem to me to have arisen from his prudence: by that prudence Constantinople has been saved from flames and from the plague. Had Murad possessed his brother’s discretion, he would not have been on the point of losing his head, for selling rolls which he did not bake: he would not have been kicked by a mule or bastinadoed for finding a ring: he would not have been robbed by one party of soldiers, or shot by another: he would not have been lost in a desert, or cheated by a Jew: he would not have set a ship on fire; nor would he have caught the plague, and spread it through Grand Cairo: he would not have run my sultana’s looking-glass through the body, instead of a robber: he would not have believed that the fate of his life depended on certain verses on a china vase: nor would he, at last, have broken this precious talisman, by washing it with hot water. Henceforward, let Murad the Unlucky be named Murad the Imprudent: let Saladin preserve the surname he merits, and be henceforth called Saladin the Prudent.”
So spake the sultan, who, unlike the generality of monarchs, could bear to find himself in the wrong, and could discover his vizier to be in the right without cutting off his head. History farther informs us that the sultan offered to make Saladin a pacha, and to commit to him the government of a province; but, Saladin the Prudent declined this honour, saying he had no ambition, was perfectly happy in his present situation, and that, when this was the case, it would be folly to change, because no one can be more than happy. What farther adventures befell Murad the Imprudent are not recorded; it is known only that he became a daily visitor to the Teriaky, and that he died a martyr to the immoderate use of opium.
THE LIMERICK GLOVES
CHAPTER I
It was Sunday morning, and a fine day in autumn; the bells of Hereford Cathedral rang, and all the world, smartly dressed, were flocking to church.
“Mrs. Hill! Mrs. Hill!—Phœbe! Phœbe! There’s the cathedral bell, I say, and neither of you ready for church, and I a verger,” cried Mr. Hill, the tanner, as he stood at the bottom of his own staircase. “I’m ready, papa,” replied Phœbe; and down she came, looking so clean, so fresh, and so gay, that her stern father’s brows unbent, and he could only say to her, as she was drawing on a new pair of gloves, “Child, you ought to have had those gloves on before this time of day.”
“Before this time of day!” cried Mrs. Hill, who was now coming downstairs completely equipped—“before this time of day! She should know better, I say, than to put on those gloves at all: more especially when going to the cathedral.”
“The gloves are very good gloves, as far as I see,” replied Mr. Hill. “But no matter now. It is more fitting that we should be in proper time in our pew, to set an example, as becomes us, than to stand here talking of gloves and nonsense.”
He offered his wife and daughter each an arm, and set out for the cathedral; but Phœbe was too busy in drawing on her new gloves, and her mother was too angry at the sight of them, to accept of Mr. Hill’s courtesy. “What I say is always nonsense, I know, Mr. Hill,” resumed the matron: “but I can see as far into a millstone as other folks. Was it not I that first gave you a hint of what became of the great dog that we lost out of our tan-yard last winter? And was it not I who first took notice to you, Mr. Hill, verger as you are, of the hole under the foundation of the cathedral? Was it not, I ask you, Mr. Hill?”