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Mar. 8th, 2022 10:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
The sixth volume of the 1001 nights is wonderful. I expected the quality of stories to deteriorate from volume from volume but so far the opposite is the case.
...the Prince replied, “I have heard tell that a merchant at whose house certain guests once alighted sent his slave-girl to the market to buy a jar of clotted milk. So she bought it and set out on her return home; but on the way there passed over her a kite, holding and squeezing a serpent in its claws, and a drop of the serpent’s venom fell into the milk-jar, unknown of the girl. So, when she came back, the merchant took the milk from her and drank of it, he and his guests; but hardly had it settled in their stomachs when they all died. Now consider, O King, whose was the fault in this matter?”
-- the 603rd night.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/54525/54525-h/54525-h.htm#c172