into a contact with the Arabic which became more and more
intimate. The Arabs had a habit of sacrificing their lives in
chivalrous efforts to save the life or honor of maidens whom the enemy
endeavored to kidnap. The Arabs, on their part, were in close contact
with the European minds, and as they helped to originate the
chivalrous spirit in Europe, so they must have been in turn influenced
by the developments of the troubadour spirit which culminated in such
maxims as Montagnogout's declaration that "a true lover desires a
thousand times more the happiness of his beloved than his own." As
Saadi lived in the time of the troubadours--the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries--it was easy for him to get a knowledge of the European
"ways and forms of courtship." In Persia itself there was no courtship
or legitimate lovemaking, for the "lover" hardly ever had met his
bride before the wedding-day. Nevertheless, if we may believe William
Franklin,[35] a Persian woman might command a suitor to spend all day
in front of her house reciting verses in praise of her beauty; and
H.C. Trumbull naively cites, as evidence that Orientals love just as
we do, the following story:

"Morier tells ... of a large painting in a
pleasure-house in Shiraz, illustrative of the treatment
of a loyal lover by a heartless coquette, which is one
of the popular legends of Persia. Sheik Chenan, a
Persian of the true faith, and a man of learning and
consequence, fell in love with an Armenian lady of
great beauty who would not marry him unless he changed
his religion. To this he agreed. Still she would not
marry him unless he would drink wine. This scruple also
he yielded. She resisted still, unless he consented to
eat pork. With this also he complied. Still she was
coy, and refused to fulfil her engagement, unless he
would be contented to drive swine before her. Even this
condition he accepted. She then told him that she would
not have him at all, and laughed at him for his pains.
The picture represents the coquette at her window,
laughing at Sheik Chenan as he is driving his pigs
before her."

This story suggests and may have been invented in imitation of the
foolish and capricious tests to which mediaeval dames in Europe put
their quixotic knights. Few of these knights, as I have said elsewhere
_(R.L.P.B._, 100), "were so manly as the one in Schiller's ballad,
who,