To return to the quotation at the beginning of this long note; that the wine in which our young hero Bakhtyār indulged to such an extent as to deprive him of his senses was _not_ a mild beverage,ārNā admits of no question: again, in chapter viii, page 93, we find a King and his favourite companion carousing together, until the former falls into a drunken sleep.
_Page 18._ “How could a person bred up in a desert, and by profession a robber, be fit for the society of a king?”—Sa`dī, the celebrated Persian poet, in his _Gulistān_, or Rose-Garden, says: “No one whose origin is bad ever catches the reflection of the good” (ch. i, tale 4); and again: “How can we make a good sword out of bad iron? A worthless person cannot by education become a person of worth;” and yet again: “Evil habits, which have taken root in one’s nature, will only be got rid of at the hour of death.” Firdausī, the Homer of Persia, in his scathing satire on the Sultan Mahmūd of Ghazni, has the following remarks on the same subject:
To exalt the head of the unworthy, To look for anything of good from them, Is to lose the thread which guideth your purpose, And to nourish a serpent in your bosom. The tree which is by nature bitter, Though thou shouldst plant it in the Garden of Paradise, And spread honey about its roots—yea the purest honey-comb, And water it in its season from the Fountain of Eternity, Would in the end betray its nature, And would still produce bitter fruit. If thou shouldst pass through the shop of the seller of amber Thy garments will retain its odour; If thou shouldst enter the forge of the blacksmith, Thou wilt there see nothing but blackness. That evil should come of an evil disposition is no wonder, For thou canst not sponge out the darkness from the night. Of the son of the impure man entertain no hope, For the Ethiopian by washing will never become white.[42]
_Page 19._ “You have entered the recesses of my harem.”—Only husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles, fathers-in-law, and very young boys are _mahram_, or privileged to enter the apartments of women in Muslim countries. The fact of the chief Vizier visiting the Queen in the harem (page 19) should lead us to conclude, either that the story is of Indian origin, or that the worthy minister was “a neutral personage”—not to put too fine a point on it.