During the reign of the Caliph Haroun Alraschid,
there was in Bagdad a caravansary that contained, as might he supposed,
many apartments as well as separate buildings. Among the latter
especially, there was one adorned with everything that Asiatic luxury
could invent, and Asiatic opulence procure. It lay in the midst of a
lovely garden, sheltered by fragrant and fruitful trees, and watered by
a silver brook that, with melodious music, bubbled round the Eden it
enclosed, From the flat roof of the edifice might be discerned the
far-extending and fertile plains of Babylon; farther off, the majestic
Euphrates rolled its waters proudly between picturesque elevations,
beautified by the ruins of that ancient city, whose gardens embodied in
real existence the dreams of the poet, and the wildest legends of
romance ; while, on simply turning round, there lay, as it were at your
very feet, the whole of mighty Bagdad, and you could perceive the stalls
of the innumerable bazaars heaped with jewels, pearls, precious
ornaments, matchless silk-stuffs, and, in short, all that the Orient has
taught our imitative Europe to admire and purchase at a cost so great.
This building, that was divided into four apartments,
each furnished and decorated according to a separate season of the year,
was not, as usual, assigned to the guest who should first arrive, nor to
him who should pay most liberally: every land has its fashions, and
every man his faith;— so the host had laid it down as an invariable
rule, that it was only to be allotted to the greatest and most
distinguished of the strangers, whom business, necessity, or curiosity
might bring to Bagdad.
A German baron, a Chinese mandarin, a Turk, and a
Roman,—a modern Roman, be it understood,—happened to reach the
city at one and the selfsame time; for in those days people travelled to
Bagdad exactly as we now travel to Paris,—just that we may say we have
been there ! The German, who was proud of his title, and still more of
his two-and-thirty ancestors, never had the slightest doubt that the
owner of the caravansary would forthwith assign to a man of his rank and
birth the foremost place. "Softly, my friend!" exclaimed the mandarin;
"if you demand this on the ground of your ancestry, I will allow those
two strangers to decide whether / am not better entitled to it. I have
just as many ancestors as you, only with the difference that in Europe
the merits of the father, or yet more frequently the elevation he has
gained by money, flattery, or base actions, descend hereditarily to his
successors —it matters not if they resemble him or no ; and, —what is
drollest of all,—continually increase, so that he who has in reality
performed a heroic deed, and has been ennobled for the same, is, for
example, a far inferior nobleman to him who can prove that he
descends in the two-and-thirtieth generation from an individual who once
actually merited nobility. In China, on the contrary, when a man has
rendered any service to the State, his ancestors receive a patent of
nobility on account of his own deserts. I am a military mandarin; and as
I saved the Emperor's life in battle, the nation has ennobled my
ancestors, without granting permission to my children to partake of
honours which they have not earned."
''By Allah! " now began the Turk—for in those days
all nations, like the beasts in the fable, must have spoken a common
language, so that the one immediately understood the other, and could
address him without an interpreter—"By Allah! I would give the
preference to this mandarin, if it were not due to myself; because
neither my ancestors nor my children have given me my nobility,
for which I have to thank the Sultan's favour alone,—since I, as his
grand-vizier, am, next to him, the greatest in the kingdom. True enough,
as a breath of his mouth has exalted me, another breath might hurl me to
the dust; and, even were i dismissed to-morrow without being
simultaneously decapitated by a mute of the harem, I would be no more
than the most miserable menial that labours in the garden, or than the
lowest slave of the seraglio. So long as I am vizier, notwithstanding, I
hold the highest position in the State; no one, except my gracious
sovereign, is above me,—and I do not believe that any of yourselves can
compete with me in rank."
"I only excepted," eagerly broke in the fourth
traveller—"I, who am a Roman, and descended from that race of
kings before whom the world trembled, and who gave laws from east to
west." (At such braggart language the mandarin smiled contemptuously,
and glanced to the many-quartered baron ; but the latter was too proud
of his lineage to have ever found it necessary to learn anything except
the history of his forefathers,—and the smile of the mandarin was
therefore beyond his comprehension.) "You boast of your
ancestors; my progenitors numbered far more statues in their hall
than all the ancestors you count. Perhaps you do not know the meaning of
my words: learn then, that every Roman citizen who has been elevated to
a post in government by the suffrages of his fellows,
obtains the privilege of erecting his own statue in his dwelling;
and more than two-and-thirty of such statues did I bury, on leaving
home, in my garden,—that they might not become the booty of the
barbarians who ravage my native land."
"They are really," now spoke the host, who from a
corner had overheard the discussion, ''very admirable claims that you
advance; and I cannot venture to decide between such various and
well-grounded demands. Fortunately there are present three merchants
from Balsora, who have recently arrived at the caravansary, and who have
listened with peculiar attention to your dispute."
These three so-called merchants, whom the host
himself did not know, were no less personages than the Caliph Haroun
Alraschid, his grand-vizier Giafar, and his kislar - aga Mesroun, who
were going about the city disguised, as usual, to ascertain what the
great and mighty otherwise so seldom learn—namely, truth.
One of these three—it was Haroun Alraschid
himself—stepped forward, and spoke as follows :—
''Sons of the dust! the nobility about which ye
contend is dust like yourselves. Thou, O German! askest honour for
something that the first of thy two-and-thirty ancestors has
meritoriously performed ; let him come forth, and we may adjudge
his claim—but thou, at least, hast none. Thou, O mandarin! if
thou didst demand that we should pay thee reverence for the rescue of
thy sovereign's life, we might be justified in rendering it; yet, as it
is not thy action, but Ms reward, on which thou hast based
thy claim, permit us to entertain a doubt as to that action's worth—for
it often happens that a man receives recompense for a deed he has not
done, or which, if he has performed it, is rather Fortune's work than
his. Thou, O vizier! vauntest thyself of thy master's favour; but, to
appreciate its value, we must know his worth—we must learn how
wise and righteous is his character. Like the boy's soap-bubble is the
favourite of a fool; it is blown into the air, rises on high for a
single instant, glances with variegated hues, and then bursts and
disappears. And finally, thou, 0 Roman! that gloriest in thy descent
from a people who styled themselves the lords of earth, while they were
often slaves to the most despicable of mortals—if thou art really born
of those better and nobler Romans, by whom it was as yet an honour to be
raised to the highest office—those who never sold their suffrages nor
rejected men like Cato,— how darest thou uplift thine eye or thy
voice? Thy land is, thou sayest, in the grasp of barbarian strangers.
Oh, haste thee home again!—exhume the statues of thy ancestors, take
sword in hand, annihilate the invader,—and then come back, and
call thyself a Roman! But fortunately the thing about which you quarrel,
is of no greater moment than the claims you severally advance.
Mussulman!" he cried, in conclusion, turning to the host, ''allot to
each of them his apartment, and abandon for ever the ridiculous idea
that external baubles can be the prize or recompense of merit. When the
matter at stake is only where I shall sit, lie, stand, or walk, a
pedigree or a statue will always constitute a more than sufficient
claim."
J. J.