d
stepped into the fish's mouth "--the bold-hearted warriors sprang from
their ambush and secured the robbers by pinioning them one after
another.

In the morning they presented them at the royal tribunal, and the king
gave an order to put the whole to death. There happened to be among them
a stripling, the fruit of whose early spring was ripening in its bloom,
and the flower-garden of his cheek shooting into blossom. One of the
vizirs kissed the foot of the imperial throne, and laid the face of
intercession on the ground, and said, "This boy has not yet tasted the
fruit of the garden of life, nor enjoyed the fragrance of the flowers of
youth: such is my confidence in the generous disposition of his Majesty
that it will favor a devoted servant by sparing his blood." The king
turned his face away from this speech; as it did not accord with his
lofty way of thinking, he replied:--"The rays of the virtuous cannot
illuminate such as are radically vicious; to give education to the
worthless is like throwing walnuts upon a dome:--it were wiser to
eradicate the tree of their wickedness, and annihilate their tribe; for
to put out a fire and leave the embers, and to kill a viper and foster
its young, would not be the acts of rational beings. Though the clouds
pour down the water of vegetation, thou canst never gather fruit from a
willow twig. Exalt not the fortune of the abject, for thou canst never
extract sugar from a mat or common cane."

The vizir listened to this speech; willingly or not he approved of it,
and applauded the good sense of the king, and said:--"What his majesty,
whose dominion is eternal, is pleased to remark is the mirror of probity
and essence of good policy, for had he been brought up in the society of
those vagabonds, and confined to their service, he would have followed
their vicious courses. Your servant, however, trusts that he may be
instructed to associate with the virtuous, and take to the habits of the
prudent; for he is still a child, and the lawless and refractory
principles of that gang cannot have yet tainted his mind; and it is in
tradition that--_Whatever child is born, and he is verily born after the
right way of orthodoxy, namely Islamism, afterwards his father and his
mother bring him up as a Jew, Christian, or Guebre_.--The wife of Lot
associated with the wicked, and her posterity failed in the gift of
prophecy; the dog of the seven sleepers (at Ephesus) for some time took
the path of t