THE SULTANA AND THE WOOD-CUTTER. 249 the law, they would become her property, if they had not been claimed in the mean time. Of course, no proclamation of the loss was made, and at the end of the moon, she considered that she had a just right to the treasure, which, upon computation, proved to be even greater than that of the Caliph Haroun Al-Raschid.

" She commanded the wood-cutter to send her at once the most renowned architect of Baghdad, whom she directed to build, exactly opposite to the Caliph's Palace, another palace which should surpass in splendor any thing that had ever been beheld. For the purchase of the materials and the hire of the workmen, she gave him a hundred thousand pieces of gold.

' If men ask,' said she, ' for whom you are building the palace, tell them it is for the son of a foreign king.' The architect employed all the workmen in Baghdad, and followed her instructions so well, that in two months the palace was finished.

The like of it had never been seen, and the Galiph's palace faded before its magnificence as the face of the moon fades when the sun has risen above the horizon. The walls were of marble, white as snow; the gates of ivory, inlaid with pearl ; the domes were gilded, so that when the sun shone, the eye could not look upon them ; and from a great fountain of silver, in the court-yard, a jet of rose-colored water, which diffused an agreeable odor, leaped into air. Of this palace it might be said, in the words of the poet : ' Truly it resembles Paradise ; or is it the lost House of Irem, built from the treasures of King Sheddad ? May kindness dwell upon the lips of the lord of this palace, and charity find refuge in his heart, that he be adjudged worthy to enjoy such splendor ! ' "Daring the building of the palace, Zubeydeh employed 11*