'Ameena was, by the Arab's own account, his seventh wife. He had some
wonderful story to tell of each of his former marriages; but that
which he related of his sixth wife exceeded all the rest in the
marvellous and the romantic. He told this tale at Mr. Martyn's table
one evening, whilst we were at supper, during the week we lived in the
house. He spoke in Persian, and Mr. Martyn interpreted what he said,
and it was this he narrated: It was on some occasion, he said, in
which Fortune had played him one of her worst tricks, and reduced him
to a state of the most abject poverty, that he happened to arrive one
night at a certain city, which was the capital of some rajah, or petty
king--Sabat called this person a king. It seemed he arrived at a
crisis in which the king's only daughter had given her father some
terrible offence, and in order to be revenged upon her, the father
issued his commands that she should be compelled to take for her
husband the first stranger who arrived in the town after sunset. This
man happened to be our Arab; he was accordingly seized and subjected
to the processes of bathing and anointing with precious oil. He was
then magnificently dressed, introduced into the royal hall, and duly
married to the princess, who proved not only to be fair as the houris,
but to be quite prepared to love the husband whom Fortune had sent
her. He lived with her, he pretended, I know not how many years, and
they were perfectly happy until the princess died, and he lost the
favour of his majesty. I think that Sabat laid the scene of this
adventure in or near Agra. But this could hardly be. That such things
have been in the East--that is, that royal parents have taken such
means of avenging themselves on offending daughters--is quite certain;
but I cannot venture to assert that Sabat was telling the truth when
he made himself the hero of the tale.'
[34] Corrie and Brown.
[35] By letters written March 30 and April 19, 1810, from Cawnpore.
[36] By letter written August 14, 1810.
[37] On leaving the station Henry Martyn presented his French New
Testament to Dr. Govan, a little morocco-bound volume which his son
prizes as an heirloom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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