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Tale from
The Arabian Nights
Retold by Laurence Housman
THE Sultan Shahriar stands out to fame as the greatest monogamist in all history. Having been deceived by his first wife, he caused her to be put to death, and then proceeded to avenge himself upon a thousand others. Faithful to his monogamic instincts, he married a fresh wife every day, and on the morning of the next became a widower. Having thus achieved faith to a thousand dead maidens—all equally beloved in turn—he may, in his heart of hearts, have found that change, so doggedly insisted on, did but mean boredom, and so may readily have welcomed any excuse to relax a performance to which he had bound himself by many religious oaths.
