Page:Sultan Stork, and other stories and sketches (IA sultanstorkother00thac).pdf/27

Rh eyes in all the empire were as keen as his remaining ball; he was, in a word, the very best and honestest of viziers, as fat and merry, too, as he was wise and faithful.

"One day as Shah Mushook was seated after dinner in his beautiful garden-pavilion at Tehran, sick of political affairs, which is no wonder,—sick even of the beautiful houris who had been dancing before him to the sound of lutes and mandolins—tired of the jokes and antics of his buffoons and story-tellers,—let me say at once dyspeptic, and in a shocking ill-humour; old Munsoor (who had already had the royal pipe and shippers flung half-a-dozen times at his head), willing by any means to dissipate his master's ill-will, lighted in the outer courts of the palace, as he was hieing disconsolately home, upon an old pedlar-woman, who was displaying her wares to a crowd of wondering persons and palace servants, and making them die with laughing at her jokes.

"The vizier drew near, heard her jokes, and examined her wares, which were extraordinarily beautiful, and determined to conduct her into the august presence of the king.

"Mushook was so pleased with her stock in trade, that, like a royal and generous prince, he determined to purchase her whole pack, box, trinkets, and all; giving her own price for them. So she yielded up her box, only taking out of one of the drawers a little bottle, surrounded by a paper, not much bigger than an ordinary bottle of Macassar oil."

"Macassar oil! Here's an anachronism!" thought the Sultan. But he suffered his wife to proceed with her tale.

"The old woman was putting this bottle away into her pocket, when the sultan's eye lighted upon it, and he asked her in a fury, why she was making off with his property?

"She said she had sold him the whole pack, with the exception of that bottle; and that it could be of no good to him, as it was only a common old crystal bottle, a family piece, of no sort of use to any but the owner.

"What is there in the bottle?' exclaimed the keen and astute vizier.