The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Vol. 6

...died for this all-sufficient reason: "It is not enough to be a good son, a good husband, a good father; one must also prove oneself a good citizen." He spent his last hours with his confessor, wrote to his wife and children, praying his family not to weep for him, not to forget him, and never to offend their God. This letter original: missive, along with a lock of his hair for his beloved daughter, he finally entrusted to the spiritual father original: ghostly father; a priest or confessor. Upon the scaffold, he turned to the crowd and cried, "I die as I have lived, truthful and faithful to my God and my King." His venerable head, crowned with the white honors of old age, fell on September 25, 1792.

Cazotte printed many works, some of great length, such as the Moral Works original: Œuvres Morales, which filled seven volumes octavo term: octavo; a book size created by folding a sheet of paper into eight leaves in the complete edition of 1817. Biographers give a long list of his publications besides those mentioned above—romantic, ethical, and spiritual works in both verse and prose. But he wrote mainly for his own pleasure; he never sought fame, and consequently, his reputation never equaled his merit. His name, however, still smells sweet—exceptionally sweet original: passing sweet—amid the corruption and the frantic fury of his day, and the memory of this witty, genial, and virtuous literary man original: littérateur still "blossoms in the dust" note: This is an allusion to James Shirley’s 1653 poem: "Only the actions of the just / Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.".

During my visit to Paris in early 1887, Monsieur Hermann Zotenberg was kind enough to show me the manuscript original: MS., No. 1723, containing the original tales of the "New Arabian Nights." As my health did not allow me a long enough stay to complete my translation, Professor Houdas (for whom, see Appendix, p. 10, Supplemental volume iii.) kindly consented to copy the required excerpts. He also agreed to explain the words and phrases that a lack of dictionaries and vocabularies at a remote original: outlandish port-town note: Burton is likely referring to Trieste, where he served as British Consul and found resources for his scholarship limited. rendered unintelligible to me.

In translating a manuscript which has never been compared original: collated or corrected, and which is full of errors of omission and commission, I have been guided by one consideration only: that my first and chief duty to the reader is to make my book readable at the...