h the same as in the above.--Many
others of Don Manuel's tales are traceable to Eastern
sources; he was evidently familiar with the Arabic
language, and from his long intercourse with the Moors
doubtless became acquainted with Asiatic story-books.
His manner of telling the stories is, however, wholly
his own, and some of them appear to be of his own
invention.--There is a variant of the same story in
_Pasquils Jests and Mother Bunches Merriments_, in which
a servant enters his master's name in a list of all the
fools of his acquaintance, because he had lately lent
his cousin twenty pounds.

Everybody knows the story of the silly old woman who went to market with
a cow and a hen for sale, and asked only five shillings for the cow, but
ten pounds for the hen. But no such fool was the Arab who lost his
camel, and, after a long and fruitless search, anathematised the errant
quadruped and her father and her mother, and swore by the Prophet that,
should he find her, he would sell her for a dirham (sixpence). At length
his search was successful, and he at once regretted his oath; but such
an oath must not be violated, so he tied a cat round the camel's neck,
and went about proclaiming: "I will sell this camel for a dirham, and
this cat for a hundred dinars (fifty pounds); but I will not sell one
without the other." A man who passed by and heard this exclaimed: "What
a very desirable bargain that camel would be if she had not such a
_collar_ round her neck!"[31]

[31] A variant of this occurs in the _Heptameron_, an
uncompleted work in imitation of the _Decameron_,
ascribed to Marguerite, queen of Navarre (16th century),
but her _valet de chambre_ Bonaventure des Periers is
supposed to have had a hand in its composition. In Novel
55 it is related that a merchant in Saragossa on his
death-bed desired his wife to sell a fine Spanish horse
for as much as it would fetch and give the money to the
mendicant friars. After his death his widow did not
approve of such a legacy, but, in order to obey her late
husband's will, she instructed a servant to go to the
market and offer the horse for a ducat and her cat for
ninety-nine ducats, both, however, to be sold together.
A gentleman purchased the horse and the cat, well
knowing that th