[FN#43] He had done nothing of the kind; but the feminine mind is prone to exaggeration. Also Hasan had told them a fib, to prejudice them against the Persian.
[FN#44] These nervous movements have been reduced to a system in the Turk. "Ihtilájnámeh" = Book of palpitations, prognosticating from the subsultus tendinum and other involuntary movements of the body from head to foot; according to Ja'afar the Just, Daniel the Prophet, Alexander the Great; the Sages of Persia and the Wise Men of Greece. In England we attend chiefly to the eye and ear.
[FN#45] Revenge, amongst the Arabs, is a sacred duty; and, in their state of civilization, society could not be kept together without it. So the slaughter of a villain is held to be a sacrifice to Allah, who amongst Christians claims for Himself the monopoly of vengeance.
[FN#46] Arab. "Zindík." See vol. v. 230.
[FN#47] Lane translates this "put for him the remaining food and water;" but Al-Ákhar (Mac. Edit.) evidently refers to the Najíb (dromedary).
[FN#48] We can hardly see the heroism of the deed, but it must be remembered that Bahram was a wicked sorcerer, whom it was every good Moslem's bounden duty to slay. Compare the treatment of witches in England two centuries ago.
[FN#49] The mother in Arab tales is ma mčre, now becoming somewhat ridiculous in France on account of the over use of that venerable personage.
[FN#50] The forbidden closet occurs also in Sayf Zú al-Yazan, who enters it and finds the bird-girls. Trébutien ii, 208 says, "Il est assez remarquable qu'il existe en Allemagne une tradition ŕ peu prčs semblable, et qui a fourni le sujet d'un des contes de Musaeus, entitulé, le voile enlevé." Here Hasan is artfully left alone in a large palace without other companions but his thoughts and the reader is left to divine the train of ideas which drove him to open the door.
[FN#51] Arab. "Buhayrah" (Bresl. Edit. "Bahrah"), the tank or cistern in the Hosh (court-yard) of an Eastern house. Here, however, it is a rain-cistern on the flat roof of the palace (See Night dcccviii).
[FN#52] This description of the view is one of the most gorgeous in The Nights.