his dominions with his brother Schahzeman. Indeed, after
ten years, during which this state of things had not ceased to trouble
him, Schahriar cut off the country of Great Tartary from the Persian
Empire and made his brother king.

Now the Sultan Schahriar had a wife whom he loved more than all the
world, and his greatest happiness was to surround her with splendour,
and to give her the finest dresses and the most beautiful jewels. It
was therefore with the deepest shame and sorrow that he accidentally
discovered, after several years, that she had deceived him completely,
and her whole conduct turned out to have been so bad, that he felt
himself obliged to carry out the law of the land, and order the
grand-vizir to put her to death. The blow was so heavy that his mind
almost gave way, and he declared that he was quite sure that at bottom
all women were as wicked as the sultana, if you could only find them
out, and that the fewer the world contained the better. So every
evening he married a fresh wife and had her strangled the following
morning before the grand-vizir, whose duty it was to provide these
unhappy brides for the Sultan. The poor man fulfilled his task with
reluctance, but there was no escape, and every day saw a girl married
and a wife dead.

This behaviour caused the greatest horror in the town, where nothing
was heard but cries and lamentations. In one house was a father
weeping for the loss of his daughter, in another perhaps a mother
trembling for the fate of her child; and instead of the blessings that
had formerly been heaped on the Sultan's head, the air was now full of
curses.

The grand-vizir himself was the father of two daughters, of whom the
elder was called Scheherazade, and the younger Dinarzade. Dinarzade
had no particular gifts to distinguish her from other girls, but her
sister was clever and courageous in the highest degree. Her father had
given her the best masters in philosophy, medicine, history and the
fine arts, and besides all this, her beauty excelled that of any girl
in the kingdom of Persia.

One day, when the grand-vizir was talking to his eldest daughter, who
was his delight and pride, Scheherazade said to him, "Father, I have a
favour to ask of you. Will you grant it to me?"

"I can refuse you nothing," replied he, "that is just and reasonable."

"Then listen," said Scheherazade. "I am determined to stop this
barbarous practice of the Sultan's, and to deliver t