This man survived the plague, and took pleasure in relating the above story. The thief had overheard his conversation with his neighbours, and, coming to his house in the dusk, had put his shoulder to the wooden lock, and so raised the door and displaced the latch within.--There is nothing wonderful in the dream, nor in its accomplishment; the plague of 1835 entirely desolated many houses, and was mostly fatal to the young; and all the inhabitants of the house in question were young excepting the master. NOTE 77. "'Ajeeb" signifies "a wonder," or "anything strange or admirable." NOTE 78. Blue is the colour of mourning, as before mentioned, in No. 52 of the notes to the second chapter. NOTE 79. Smearing the face and slapping the cheeks are common practices of Arab women, especially of the lower orders, on following to the grave the corpse of a near relation or a husband. NOTE 80.--_On the_ Rukh'. This fabulous bird is described by many Arab writers, some of whom assert that it can carry a rhinoceros, while others ascribe to it powers still more extraordinary. I shall have occasion to speak of it again in my notes to this work. NOTE 81. This is explained by No. 30 of the notes to the Introduction. NOTE 82. I here return to the Cairo edition. NOTE 83. Some of the incidents described in this story, as the shipwrecks caused by the image, and the opening of the forbidden closet, &c., appear to be taken from the romance of Seyf Zu-l-Yezen, of which I possess a copy, purchased during my second visit to Egypt. This romance, which has become extremely scarce, is filled with stories of genii and enchantments of the most extravagant kind. Some of the public story-tellers in Cairo used, a few years since, to amuse their audiences by recitations from it. I was not able to discover the period at which it was composed; but it is said to have been written long before the Tales of a Thousand and One Nights. I saw once a portion of a copy of which it appeared, from the hand-writing and the paper, to be three or four centuries old. NOTE 84. So in the Calcutta edition of the first two hundred nights, and in the edition of Breslau. NOTE 85. Those decrees which are written with "the Pen" on the "Preserved Tablet" are believed to be unchangeable. "The Pen" is also the title of one of the chapters of the Ḳur-án, the 68th. NOTE 86. In all the copies of the original which I have by me, El-Baṣrah is said to have been the place to which the lady designed to voyage; but this is inconsistent with the sequel of the story. NOTE 87. In the old version, two strange errors occur in the passage corresponding with this: two words in the original, "nár" and "doon," having been mistaken for a proper name; and the word "jebbár," which, applied to God, signifies "almighty," or rather the "Compeller of his creatures to do whatsoever He willeth," being taken in the sense of "giant," which it bears in many other cases.