is one of the wise! Now the King came upon him, as he went a-
hunting, and found with him a most beautiful woman and a horse of
the blackest ebony, never saw I a handsomer. As for the damsel,
she is with the King, who is enamoured of her and would fain
marry her; but she is mad, and were this man a leach as he
claimeth to be, he would have healed her, for the King doth his
utmost to discover a cure for her case and a remedy for her
disease, and this whole year past hath he spent treasure upon
physicians and astrologers, on her account; but none can avail to
cure her. As for the horse, it is in the royal hoard-house, and
the ugly man is here with us in prison; and as soon as night
falleth, he weepeth and bemoaneth himself and will not let us
sleep."--And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to
say her permitted say.

When it was the Three Hundred and Sixty-ninth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the
warders had recounted the case of the Persian egromancer they
held in prison and his weeping and wailing, the Prince at once
devised a device whereby he might compass his desire; and
presently the guards of the gate, being minded to sleep, led him
into the jail and locked the door. So he overheard the Persian
weeping and bemoaning himself, in his own tongue, and saying,
"Alack, and alas for my sin, that I sinned against myself and
against the King's son, in that which I did with the damsel; for
I neither left her nor won my will of her! All this cometh of my
lack of sense, in that I sought for myself that which I deserved
not and which befitted not the like of me; for whoso seeketh what
suiteth him not at all, falleth with the like of my fall." Now