Page:Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp.djvu/28

xviii III.

Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of M. Zotenberg’s long and interesting introduction is a series of extracts from the (as yet unpublished) MS. Diary regularly kept by Galland, the last four volumes (1708–15) of which are preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale. These extracts effectually settle the question of the origin of the interpolated tales, as will be seen from the following abstract.

On the 25th March, 1709, Galland records having that day made the acquaintance of a Maronite scholar, by name Youhenna Diab, who had been brought from Aleppo to Paris by Paul Lucas, the celebrated traveller, and with whom he evidently at once broached the question of the Nights, probably complaining to him