charming Fatima! The charming Fatima I continue still to think her,
though she has now been my wife some years. She is the joy and pride of
my heart; and, from our mutual affection, I have experienced more
felicity than from all the other circumstances of my life, which are
called so fortunate. Her father gave me the house in which I now live,
and joined his possessions to ours; so that I have more wealth even than
I desire. My riches, however, give me continually the means of relieving
the wants of others; and therefore I cannot affect to despise them. I
must persuade my brother Murad to share them with me, and to forget his
misfortunes: I shall then think myself completely happy. As to the
sultana's looking-glass and your broken vase, my dear brother," continued
Saladin, "we must think of some means--"

"Think no more of the sultana's looking-glass or of the broken vase,"
exclaimed the sultan, throwing aside his merchant's habit, and showing
beneath it his own imperial vest. "Saladin, I rejoice to have heard,
from your own lips, the history of your life. I acknowledge, vizier, I
have been in the wrong in our argument," continued the sultan, turning to
his vizier. "I acknowledge that the histories of Saladin the Lucky and
Murad the Unlucky favour your opinion, that prudence has more influence
than chance in human affairs. The success and happiness of Saladin seem
to me to have arisen from his prudence: by that prudence Constantinople
has been saved from flames and from the plague. Had Murad possessed his
brother's discretion, he would not have been on the point of losing his
head, for selling rolls which he did not bake: he would not have been
kicked by a mule or bastinadoed for finding a ring: he would not have
been robbed by one party of soldiers, or shot by another: he would not
have been lost in a desert, or cheated by a Jew: he would not have set a
ship on fire; nor would he have caught the plague, and spread it through
Grand Cairo: he would not have run my sultana's looking-glass through the