Dinarzade was punctual this night, as she had been the former, to awake her sister, and begged of her, as usual, to tell her a story. I am going to do it, sister, says Scheherazade; but the sultan interrupted her, for fear she should begin a new story, and bid her finish the discourse between the Grecian king and his vizier about his physician Douban. Sir, says Scheherazade, I will obey you, and went on with the story as follows. When the Grecian king, says the fisherman to the genie, had finished the story of the parrot; and you, vizier, adds he, because of the hatred you bear to the physician Douban, who never did you any hurt, you would have me cut him off; but I will take care of that, for fear I should repent it, as the husband did the killing of his parrot. The mischievous vizier was too much concerned to effect the ruin of the physician Douban to stop here. Sir, says he, the death of the parrot was but a trifle, and I believe his master did not mourn for him long. But why should your fear of wronging an innocent man hinder your putting this physician to death? Is it not enough that he is accused of a design against your life to authorize you to take away his? When the business in question is to secure the life of a king, bare suspicion ought to pass for certainty; and it is better to sacrifice the innocent than to spare the guilty. But, sir, this is not an uncertain thing; the physician Douban has certainly a mind to assassinate you. It is not envy which makes me his enemy; it is only the zeal and concern I have for preserving your majesty's life, that make me give you my advice in a matter of this importance. If it be false, I deserve to be punished in the same manner as a vizier was formerly punished. What had that vizier done, says the Grecian king, to deserve punishment? I will inform your majesty of that, says the vizier, if you will be pleased to hear me. THE STORY OF THE VIZIER THAT WAS PUNISHED. There was a king, says the vizier, who had a son that loved hunting mightily. He allowed him to divert himself that way very often, but gave orders to his grand vizier to attend him constantly, and never to lose sight of him. One hunting day, the huntsman having roused a deer, the prince who thought the vizier followed him, pursued the game so far, and with so much earnestness, that he was left quite alone. He stopped, and finding that he had lost his way, endeavoured to return the same way he came, to find out the vizier, who had not been careful enough to find him, and so wandered further.