Accordingly, and although we do not find it to be leap-year (which
makes the sacrifice more meritorious), she deputes her father, the
grand vizier, to make an offer to the king of her hand. This hand
the king eagerly accepts- (he had intended to take it at all events,
and had put off the matter from day to day, only through fear of the
vizier),- but, in accepting it now, he gives all parties very
distinctly to understand, that, grand vizier or no grand vizier, he
has not the slightest design of giving up one iota of his vow or of
his privileges. When, therefore, the fair Scheherazade insisted upon
marrying the king, and did actually marry him despite her father's
excellent advice not to do any thing of the kind- when she would and
did marry him, I say, will I, nill I, it was with her beautiful
black eyes as thoroughly open as the nature of the case would allow.
It seems, however, that this politic damsel (who had been reading
Machiavelli, beyond doubt), had a very ingenious little plot in her
mind. On the night of the wedding, she contrived, upon I forget what
specious pretence, to have her sister occupy a couch sufficiently near
that of the royal pair to admit of easy conversation from bed to
bed; and, a little before cock-crowing, she took care to awaken the
good monarch, her husband (who bore her none the worse will because he
intended to wring her neck on the morrow),- she managed to awaken him,
I say, (although on account of a capital conscience and an easy
digestion, he slept well) by the profound interest of a story (about a
rat and a black cat, I think) which she was narrating (all in an
undertone, of course) to her sister.
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