ections, and quitted the house.

CHAPTER XVI

He makes plans for the future, and is involved in a quarrel.

I determined to wait the arrival of the poet, and through his
interference to endeavour to get into some situation, where I might gain
my bread honestly, and acquire a chance of advancing myself in life,
without having recourse to the tricks and frauds which I had hitherto
practised: for I was tired of herding with the low and the vulgar; and
I saw so many instances before me of men rising in the world, and
acquiring both riches and honour, who had sprung from an origin quite
as obscure as my own, that I already anticipated my elevation, and even
settled in my own mind how I should act when I was a prime vizier.

'Who,' said I to myself, 'was the Shah's chief favourite, Ismael Beg
_tellai_, or the golden, but a _ferash_, or a tent pitcher? He is
neither handsomer nor better spoken than I; and if ever there should be
an opportunity of comparing our horsemanship, I think one who has been
brought up amongst the Turcomans would show him what riding is, in spite
of his reputation. Well; and the famous lord high treasurer, who fills
the king's coffers with gold, and who does not forget his own--who and
what was he? A barber's son is quite as good as a greengrocer's, and, in
our respective cases, a great deal better too; for I can read and write,
whereas his excellency, as report says, can do neither. He eats and
drinks what he likes; he puts on a new coat every day; and after the
Shah, has the choice of all the beauties of Persia; and all this without
half my sense, or half my abilities: for to hear the world talk, one
must believe him to be little better than a _khur be teshdeed_, i.e. a
doubly accented ass.'

I continued wrapt up in these sort of meditations, seated with my back
against the wall of one of the crowded avenues which lead to the gate of
the royal palace, and had so worked up my imagination by the prospect of
my future greatness, that on rising to walk away, I instinctively pushed
the crowd from before me, as if such respect from them was due to one of
my lofty pretensions. Some stared at me, some abused me, and others
took me for a madman; and indeed when I came to myself, and looked at my
tattered clothes and my beggarly appearance, I could not help smiling
at their surprise, and at my folly; and straightway went into the cloth
bazaar in the determination of fitting myself out in decent appare