Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 1.djvu/255

233 that night or next day, the Sultan asked the courtiers about him and they replied, ‘O our lord, the chief of the police has come upon him dead and ordered his murderer to be hanged: but, as the hangman was about to hoist him up, there came a second and a third and a fourth, each declaring himself to be the sole murderer and giving the prefect an account of the manner in which the crime had been committed.’ When the King heard this, he cried out to one of his chamberlains, saying, ‘Go down to the chief of the police and bring me all four of them.’ So the chamberlain went down at once to the place of execution, where he found the hangman on the point of hanging the tailor and cried out to him to stop. Then he gave the King’s order to the prefect, who took the tailor, the physician, the controller and the broker, and brought them all, together with the dead hunchback, before the King. When he came into the presence, he kissed the earth and told the King all that had passed; whereat he was moved to wonder and mirth and commended the story to be written in letters of gold, saying to the courtiers, ‘Did you ever hear a more wonderful story than that of this hunchback?’ With this came forward the Christian broker and said, ‘O King of the age, with thy leave, I will tell thee a thing that happened to myself and which is still stranger and more wonderful and pleasant than the story of the hunchback.’ Quoth the King, ‘Let us hear it.’ Then said the broker, ‘O King of the age, I came to this city with merchandise, and Fate made me settle here with you, but THE CHRISTIAN BROKER’S STORY.

I am by birth a Copt, and a native of Cairo, where I was brought up. My father was a broker, and when I came to man’s estate, he died and I became a broker in his stead. One day, as I was sitting in my shop, there came up to