The vazīr then relates the story of

There was a woman married to an old man. As to her, she was young, fair of person and face. The husband would not allow her to walk in the street, and she submitted to this only with impatience. One day she said to her maid: “Go outside; perhaps thou wilt meet some one who will be able to amuse us.” The maid went out, and met a hunchback, who had a tambourine and flute in his hand. He was dancing and beating the tambourine, so that the people might give him some reward. The maid brought this man to her mistress, who gave him to eat and to drink, which caused him great pleasure. He then rose to dance and leap about, at which the young woman was much pleased. She dressed him in beautiful clothes, and gave him a present, and then sent him away. The friends and comrades of the hunchback saw him, and asked him where he had met with such good luck, and he told them of the beautiful wife of the old man. The hunchback's companions said to him: “If thou dost not take us with thee, we will make the whole affair public.” Now the young woman sent again for the hunchback, that he might come to her. He said to her: “My companions also wish to come to amuse thee.” The lady replied: “Let them come.” She offered them all sorts of things; they set to eating and drinking, and they got drunk, and fell from their seats. Presently, the master of the house came back, and the woman immediately rose with her maid, and carried the men into another part of the house. There they quarrelled and fought, and strangled each other, and died.* Meantime the husband, having taken some food, went out again. Then the woman ordered her maid to bring the hunchbacks out, but they were dead. Then said the woman: “Go out quickly, and find some foolish porter,” and she put the dead bodies into sacks. The maid-servant chanced to meet a black man, and brought him to her mistress, who said to him: “Stay with me.” After he had passed some time with her, she said to him: “Take this first sack, and throw it into the river; then come back to me, and I will take care to give thee all that thou mayest require.” The black did so; then he returned and took the second sack, and in that way he took them all, one after the other, and threw them into the river.

It is generally supposed that this story of the Hunchbacks in the Mishlé Sandabar suggested that of the Lady and her Three Lovers in the Septem Sapientum, which is to this effect: A lady promises her favours to three knights, unknown to one another, for a hundred florins each, then she acquaints her husband, and persuades him to consent to slay them for the sake of the money they will bring with them. When the first knight arrives, and she is assured that he has brought the money, she admits him into the house, and he is instantly murdered; the two other knights, as they arrive in succession, meet with the same fate; and the three bodies are dragged into a private part of the house. The lady then sends for her brother, who is one of the city night guards, and showing him the body of one of the knights, tells him that her husband had slain the knight in a quarrel, and she wishes him to dispose of it at once. He takes up the body, goes out and throws it into the sea, and returns, to learn that the body has come back again, and is now shown the body of the second knight, which he also carries away and casts into the water; and on his return to the house is shown the body of the third knight as the same that he had already twice disposed of. Convinced now that he has a sorcerer to deal with, he resolves to try whether another element will not destroy him, and accordingly carries the third body into a wood, where he makes a great fire, in the midst of which he instantly tosses it. Presently a knight on horseback, on his way to a tourney, rides up and dismounts to warm his hands, upon which the man, sup­posing this to be the sorcerer come to life once more, seizes him and his horse and throws them into the fire, which consumes them to ashes. In the sequel the lady, in a passion with her husband, accuses him before neighbours of the triple murder, and they are both put to death.

This story, however, has been taken into the Septem Sapientum almost word for word from the Anglican Gesta Romanorum* (see Madden's old English versions of the Gesta, [xxv] p. 80), which was compiled, according to Herr Oesterley, towards the end of the 13th century, while the Septem Sapientum does not date earlier than the beginning of the 15th century. And if the author of the Anglican Gesta had for his model the Hebrew story of the Hunchbacks, it must have been a version very different in the details of the catastrophe from that which has reached us, since in the latter no mention is made of the woman's device of persuading the man that the body had come back again. Wright, indeed, conjectured that the Hebrew story originally concluded in the same manner as the Three Knights and the Lady. This may have been so; but why suppose the original of the Latin story to be one so different in its dénouement as we now know it—whatever it may or may not have been—when we have another, and probably an earlier, version which it much more closely resembles, namely, the Trouveur Durant's fabliau of Les Trois Bossus? The following is the outline of this tale:

An old, ugly, and hunchbacked chatelain had a beautiful young wife, of whom he was so very jealous, that he kept a constant watch on her. One day three minstrels, hunchbacked too, came to the castle, and, for once, were entertained by the surly chatelain, who then dismissed them with a present, and he shortly afterwards went out to walk in the fields. His young wife, sitting at her window, perceives the three hunchbacks dancing and capering along the road in great glee, and sends for them to come and amuse her. They have hardly entered her chamber, when she hears her husband coming, so she pushes them into three coffers that stood in the apartment. The husband, however, having only looked in to see whether all was right, immediately goes away to resume his walk, when the lady hastens to release her prisoners, but, to her horror, finds all three dead—suffocated! What was to be done? But woman is ever fertile in expedients. She went to the gate, and, seeing a simple rustic pass, called him in, and, showing him the body in one of the coffers, promised him ample recompense if he disposed of it. The rustic stuffed the body in a sack, carried it off to the river, threw it in, and then returned for his reward. By this time the lady, with the help of her maid, had changed the posi­tion of the coffers; so she showed him the body of the second minstrel, saying it was the same that he had thrown into the water. The rustic was amazed, but disposed of it as he had done the first, and in like manner rids the lady of the third body, believing he has had to deal with a magician; after which, on his way back to the lady, he meets the chatelain, returning home from his evening walk. Enraged now beyond measure, “Dog of a hunchback!” he cries, “are you come back again?” So saying, he seized and stuffed him into the sack, tied a large stone round his neck, and presently the unlucky husband joined his brother hunchbacks at the bottom of the river. “I warrant me,” quoth the rustic to the lady, “you haven't seen him this time.” She confessed that she had not. “Yet you were not far from it,” said he, and then related what had happened. The lady instantly comprehended the whole affair, smiled, and dismissed him with a handsome reward.

It thus appears that the fabliau corresponds with the Hebrew version in all essential points excepting the dénouement, and it is highly probable that both were derived from a common source. That the story came from Asia admits of no question, though I am very far from believing, with Douce and Madden, that the Arabian tale of the Little Hunchback is the original of all such stories of adventures with dead bodies. Had Douce known of the comparatively recent date of the Thousand and One Nights— at least, as it exists at present—he would hardly have credited that work with being the original source of tales which were current in Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries.