and we each have acted, through life, in consequence of our different
beliefs. To this I attribute my success and his misfortunes.

"The first rise of my fortune, as you have probably heard from Murad, was
owing to the scarlet dye, which I brought to perfection with infinite
difficulty. The powder, it is true, was accidentally found by me in our
china vases; but there it might have remained to this instant, useless,
if I had not taken the pains to make it useful. I grant that we can only
partially foresee and command events; yet on the use we make of our own
powers, I think, depends our destiny. But, gentlemen, you would rather
hear my adventures, perhaps, than my reflections; and I am truly
concerned, for your sakes, that I have no wonderful events to relate. I
am sorry I cannot tell you of my having been lost in a sandy desert. I
have never had the plague, nor even been shipwrecked: I have been all my
life an inhabitant of Constantinople, and have passed my time in a very
quiet and uniform manner.

"The money I received from the sultan's favourite for my china vase, as
my brother may have told you, enabled me to trade on a more extensive
scale. I went on steadily with my business, and made it my whole study
to please my employers by all fair and honourable means. This industry
and civility succeeded beyond my expectations: in a few years I was rich
for a man in my way of business.

"I will not proceed to trouble you with the journal of a petty merchant's
life; I pass on to the incident which made a considerable change in my
affairs.

"A terrible fire broke out near the walls of the grand seignior's
seraglio. As you are strangers, gentlemen, you may not have heard of