t a
corner of his heart took for the handsome person of one of his scholars,
he taught him three hundred and fifty-nine of those feats, but he was
putting off the instruction of one, and under some pretence deferring
it.

In short the youth became such a proficient in the art and talent of
wrestling that none of his contemporaries had ability to cope with him,
till he at length had one day boasted before the reigning sovereign,
saying, "To any superiority my master possesses over me, he is beholden
to my reverence of his seniority, and in virtue of his tutorage;
otherwise I am not inferior in power, and am his equal in skill." This
want of respect displeased the king. He ordered a wrestling match to be
held, and a spacious field to be fenced in for the occasion. The
ministers of state, nobles of the court, and gallant men of the realm
were assembled, and the ceremonials of the combat marshalled. Like a
huge and lusty elephant, the youth rushed into the ring with such a
crash that had a brazen mountain opposed him he would have moved it from
its base. The master being aware that the youth was his superior in
strength, engaged him in that strange feat of which he had kept him
ignorant. The youth was unacquainted with its guard. Advancing,
nevertheless, the master seized him with both hands, and, lifting him
bodily from the ground, raised him above his head and flung him on the
earth. The crowd set up a shout. The king ordered them to give the
master an honorary dress and handsome largess, and the youth he
addressed with reproach and asperity, saying, "You played the traitor
with your own patron, and failed in your presumption of opposing him."
He replied, "O sire! my master did not overcome me by strength and
ability, but one cunning trick in the art of wrestling was left which he
was reserved in teaching me, and by that little feat had to-day the
upper hand of me." The master said, "I reserved myself for such a day as
this. As the wise have told us, 'Put it not so much into a friend's
power that, if hostilely disposed, he can do you an injury.' Have you
not heard what that man said who was treacherously dealt with by his own
pupil:--'Either in fact there was no good faith in this world, or nobody
has perhaps practised it in our days. No person learned the art of
archery from me who did not in the end make me his butt.'"

XXVIII

A solitary dervish had taken up his station at the corner of a desert. A
king was passi