At the close of this tale, when the parties come before the judge, the Jew puts forth his claim to the forfeited security of a pound of flesh. "How answerest thou?" said the judge, turning to the Mahomedan. "It is so," replied the latter; "the money is due by me, but I am unable to pay it." "Then," continued the judge, "since thou hast failed in payment, thou must give the pledge; go, bring a sharp knife." When that was brought, the judge turned to the Jew, and said, "Arise, and separate one pound of flesh from his body, so that there be not a grain more or less; for if there is, the governor shall be informed, and thou shalt be put to death." "I cannot," said the Jew, "cut off one pound exactly; there will be a little more or less." But the judge persisted that it should be the precise weight. On this the Jew said he would give up his claim and depart. This was not allowed, and the Jew being compelled to take his bond with all its hazards, or pay a fine for a vexatious prosecution, he preferred the latter, and returned home a disappointed usurer. Admitting that the inhabitants of Europe received these tales and apologues from the Saracens, the next question is, where did they get them? Mahomed and his immediate successors, while they proscribed all such false and wicked lies and inventions, accuse the Persians of being the possessors and propagators of those delusive tales, which were, according to them, preferred by many of their followers to the Koran. But in the course of time Caliphs became less rigid. The taste for poetry and fiction revived, and Persian stories and Arabian tales deluged the land. For some centuries the above countries were the supposed sources of this branch of literature, but, since the sacred language of the Hindus has become more generally known, the Persians are discovered to have been not only the plunderers of their real goods and chattels, but also of their works of imagination. These we, in our ignorance, long believed to belong to the nations from whom we obtained them; but now that Orientalists abound, who are deeply read in Sanscrit, Pràcrit, Marhatta, Guzerattee, Canarese, Syamese, Chinese, Talingana, Tamil, and a hundred other languages, unknown to our ignorant ancestors, the said Persians and Arabians have been tried and convicted, not only of robbing the poor Hindus of their tales and fables, but of an attempt to disguise their plagiarisms, by the alteration of names, and by introducing, in place of the gods and goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon, the magi, and all the spirits of the Heaven and the Earth, which peculiarly belong to the followers of Zoroaster.