Page:Princess Badoura, a tale from the Arabian nights.djvu/15

3 in importance to hers. Scheherazade, 'to do a great right, does a little wrong': by her entrancing powers of narrative, always interrupted when the interest of each story is at its height, she breeds in her tyrant lord infirmity of will, and destroys the only principle of conduct wherewith he set out to teach woman her place. For the thousand and one nights which have given their name to the world's most famous collection of stories, he lives blissfully forsworn, postponing the execution of his wife to another day; and at the end, repenting him of his vows, does what we still make our kings do in England when justice has gone astray, and bestows his 'free pardon' upon innocence.

The story which is here retold, with many of its life-saving prolixities omitted, has the distinction of being, according to some versions, the last of all: it witnesses the accomplishment of the task which Scheherazade set out to per-