was restored to
him, he made no wry faces, but, like a good Mussulman, put into practice
that precept of the Koran which ordaineth man to show kindness to his
parents--but not to say unto them 'Fie upon you!' The old man added,
that he had found his wife alive, and that his daughter was old enough
to be married.

But having thus disburthened himself of this short history of his
adventures, he turned round upon me in a sharper manner than he had even
done before, and said, 'But Hajji, my friend, in the name of the blessed
Mohammed, what could have possessed you to join me to that female Satan
at Tehran, by way of making me pass my time agreeably? By the salt which
we have so often eat together, the few days that I passed in her company
were filled with more misery than was the whole time I spent among the
Turcomans! Was it right to treat an old friend thus?'

I assured him that I had no object in view but his happiness, taking
it for granted that she, who had been the favourite of the monarch of
Persia, must, even in her later days, have had charms more than enough
for one who had passed some of the best years of his life with camels.

'Camels!' exclaimed Osman, 'camels, indeed! they are angels compared to
this fury. Would to Heaven that you had married me to a camel instead,
for it, at least, poor animal, would have sat quiet, with calm and
thoughtful gravity, and let me have my own way; whereas your dragon,
she, the viper, she passed her whole time in telling me how vastly
honoured I was in having taken to wife one who had led the Shah by the
beard, and enforced each word with either a slap or a scratch. _Aman!
Aman!_' said the old man, rubbing his hand on his cheek, 'I think I feel
them now.'

He at length ceded to my assurances that I had no other object in view
than his happiness, and then very kindly asked me to take up my abode at
his house during my stay at Bagdad, to which, of course, I acceded with
all manner of pleasure.

This conversation had taken place in the back room of the Bokhara
merchant's shop, during which the old man had treated me to five paras'
worth of coffee, brought from a neighbouring coffee-house; and when
it was over, he proposed going to his son's shop, situated in the same
bazaar, some few doors farther on. His son's name was Suleiman. Having
set himself up in the cloth trade during his father's long absence, he
had acquired an easy livelihood, and passed the greatest part of the
day