Though he had no fear in the ordinary sense of the word, he was afraid that if any attack were made on him _apropos_ of this it might militate against his getting the pension for which he was then looking and on which he largely depended. We spoke of the matter quite freely that evening. At that time he was not well off. For years he had lived on his earnings and had not been able to put by much. The _Arabian Nights_ brought out the year before, 1885, produced ten thousand pounds. There were only a thousand copies issued at a cost of ten guineas each. The entire edition was subscribed, the amounts being paid in full and direct to Coutts and Co., so that there were no fees or discounts. The only charge against the receipts was that of manufacturing the book. This could not have amounted to any considerable sum, for the paper was poor, the ink inferior, and the binding cheap. Burton had then in hand another set of five volumes of _Persian Tales_ to be subscribed in the same way. Neither of the sets of books were “published” in the literal way. The issue was absolutely a private one. All Burton’s friends, myself included, thought it necessary to subscribe. Irving had two sets. The net profits of these fifteen volumes could hardly have exceeded thirteen thousand pounds. V Our next meeting was on September 18, 1886, when we were all Irving’s guests at the Continental once again—another _partie carrée_. On this occasion the conversation was chiefly of plays. Both Sir Richard and Lady Burton impressed on Irving how much might be done with a play taken from some story, or group of stories, in the _Arabian Nights_. Burton had a most vivid way of putting things—especially of the East. He had both a fine imaginative power and a memory richly stored not only from study but from personal experience. As he talked, fancy seemed to run riot in its alluring power; and the whole world of thought seemed to flame with gorgeous colour. Burton _knew_ the East. Its brilliant dawns and sunsets; its rich tropic vegetation, and its arid fiery deserts; its cool, dark mosques and temples; its crowded bazaars; its narrow streets; its windows guarded for out-looking and from in-looking eyes; the pride and swagger of its passionate men, and the mysteries of its veiled women; its romances; its beauty; its horrors. Irving grew fired as the night wore on and it became evident that he had it in his mind from that time to produce some such play as the Burtons suggested, should occasion serve. It was probably the recollection of that night that brought back to him, so closely as to be an incentive to possibility, his own glimpse of the East as seen in Morocco and the Levant seven years before. When De Bornier published his _Mahomet_ in Paris some few years later he was in the receptive mood to consider it as a production.