"I acknowledge that the histories of Saladin the Lucky and
Murad the Unlucky favour your opinion, that prudence has more influence
than chance in human affairs. The success and happiness of Saladin seem
to me to have arisen from his prudence: by that prudence Constantinople
has been saved from flames and from the plague. Had Murad possessed his
brother's discretion, he would not have been on the point of losing his
head, for selling rolls which he did not bake: he would not have been
kicked by a mule or bastinadoed for finding a ring: he would not have
been robbed by one party of soldiers, or shot by another: he would not
have been lost in a desert, or cheated by a Jew: he would not have set a
ship on fire; nor would he have caught the plague, and spread it through
Grand Cairo: he would not have run my sultana's looking-glass through the
body, instead of a robber: he would not have believed that the fate of
his life depended on certain verses on a china vase: nor would he, at
last, have broken this precious talisman, by washing it with hot water.
Henceforward, let Murad the Unlucky be named Murad the Imprudent: let
Saladin preserve the surname he merits, and be henceforth called Saladin
the Prudent."
So spake the sultan, who, unlike the generality of monarchs, could bear
to find himself in the wrong, and could discover his vizier to be in the
right without cutting off his head.
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