y of your
highness, consulted the book that serves us instead of all the wisdom of
the Giaour, and therein have we found that Haroun al Raschid was
afflicted with a like evil, which he unquestionably brought on himself
through too great attention to the duties of his government."

"Hold there, mollah!" interrupted the Caliph in a voice of thunder, "and
weigh thy words before thou speakest. Duties of government, sayest thou?
Duties! Who has duties? A worm like myself, that we have been pleased to
exalt out of the dust; but we have nought to do either with such
reptiles or with duty; we, the vicar of the Prophet. Our pleasure is
your duty, and our will your law."

"Doubtless, doubtless, Light of the World," cried the mollah, hastening
to correct his error. "Thy unworthy servant meant to say, pleasures.
When Haroun al Raschid found himself in similar moments of suffering and
despondency, which he unquestionably brought on by too great attention
to his pleasures"--

"Slave!" again interrupted the Caliph, "dost thou mock us, saying that
our glorious ancestor exhausted himself with pleasures, thus striving to
make it appear that we do the same? Do we not each day perform nine
times nine prostrations, our face towards Mecca? Did we not, no longer
back than yesterday, sign our name full twenty times to the
death-warrants of those scurvy and unbelieving hounds who dared to
blaspheme us, the Prophet's vicegerent, and to say in the
Bezestein--What said the dogs? Have we not given orders to hang, impale,
and exterminate like noisome vermin, all those who dare in any way to
think or have an opinion? Have we not made this order public, to the
great glorification of the Prophet and of our own name?"

The Caliph paused for a moment. Then turning suddenly to the
mollah--"You may inform us," said he, "what our ancestor Haroun al
Raschid was wont to do when afflicted like ourselves with heaviness of
spirit."

"Bismillah!" again began the mollah. "When Haroun al Raschid was thus
afflicted, he applied to the book which we have brought with us, and
which your highness, if he so pleases, can see and even read"--

"Miserable wretch!" thundered the Caliph, with a glance of scorn at the
speaker and his book. "Wherefore do we maintain you, and those like you,
if it is not to do for us what we hold it beneath our dignity to do for
ourselves? And is not the reading of books beneath our dignity? Do not
all books contain the ideas and notions