When he had done speaking, the king said, Let us return thanks to God for having preserved Codadad; but it is requisite that the traitors, who would have destroyed him, should perish this day. Sir, answered the generous son of Pirouze, though they are wicked and ungrateful, consider they are your own flesh and blood: they are my brothers; I forgive them the offence, and beg pardon of you for them. This generosity drew tears from the king, who caused the people to be assembled, and declared Codadad his heir. Then he ordered the princes, who were prisoners, to be brought, loaded with irons. Pirouze’s son knocked off their chains, and embraced them all successively, with as much sincerity as he had done in the court of the black’s castle. The people were charmed with Codadad’s good nature, and highly applauded him. Next he nobly rewarded the surgeon, to requite the service he had done the princess of Deryabar. The sultaness Scheherazade, having told the story of Ganem with so much address, and in so agreeable a manner, that the sultan of the Indies could not forbear showing the pleasure that relation gave him, said to that monarch, I doubt not but your majesty is very well satisfied to find the caliph Haroun Alraschid change his sentiments in favour of Ganem, his mother, and sister; and I believe you may be sensibly affected with their misfortunes, and the ill treatment they received; but am persuaded, if your majesty would hear the story of the Sleeper Awakened, it would, instead of exciting all those emotions of indignation and compassion in your breast, on the contrary, afford you all the mirth and diversion imaginable. The sultan, who promised himself some new adventures from the title of that story, would have heard it that morning; but perceiving day approached, deferred it till next, when Dinarzade called upon her sister, who began her story as follows. THE STORY OF THE SLEEPER AWAKENED. In the reign of caliph Haroun Alraschid, there lived at Bagdad a very rich merchant, who, having married a woman pretty well in years, had but one son, whom he named Abon Hassan, and educated with great restraint. When this son was thirty years old, the merchant died, and left him his sole heir, and master of great riches, which his father had amassed together by his industry, frugality, and great application to business.