THE MOST POWERFUL HUSBAND IN THE WORLD
Martha Ward Carey translation
AN ARABIAN STORY
IT is said that a monk, whose prayers were always answered, was one day seated on the seashore, when he saw a kite fly holding in one of its claws a little mouse, which escaped and fell on the monk. Touched with compassion for the mouse, he took it, wrapped it up in a leaf, and carried it home with him.
Fearing that his people would not be very eager to care for it, he prayed his Lord to change it into a young girl; and immediately it became a young girl gifted with great beauty. The monk led her to his wife, and said to the latter,—
“Here is a girl who belongs to me, and I desire that you shall treat her as my own child.”
When she had come to the age of womanhood, the monk said to her,—
“My dear daughter, you are quite grown up, and you absolutely must have a husband; choose then, one to suit yourself, so that I may unite you to him.”
“Since you leave me free to choose,” she replied, “I wish for my husband, he who is the most powerful in the world.”
“Perhaps you would like the sun?” said he; and he went to find the sun, and said to it,—
“O! thou who art so essentially great, I have a daughter who desires to have for a husband he who is the most powerful in the world; would you be willing to marry her?”
“I will show you some one who is more powerful than I,” said the sun; “it is the cloud which obscures me, and makes my rays pale and tarnishes the splendor of my fires.”
The monk went to the cloud and repeated to him the sun’s words.
“And I,” said the cloud, “I will show you some one more powerful than I; go find the wind which makes me come and go, which drives me from east to west.”
The monk went to find the wind, and said to him the same things which he had said to the cloud; but the wind said to him also,—
“I will show you some one more powerful than I; it is the mountain that I cannot move.”
Then the monk went to speak to the mountain, which made him this reply,—
“I will show you some one more powerful than I; it is the rat, against which I cannot defend myself, when he bores into me and makes his home in me.”
At last the monk went and said to the rat,—
“Do you wish to marry my young daughter?”
“And how could I do so?” cried the rat. “My hole is narrow, and a rat only marries a mouse.”
The monk then prayed his Lord to change the young girl into a mouse, as she was before, and this to the entire contentment of the young girl. Immediately she resumed her original shape, and she ran away with the rat.