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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Shaving of Shagpat by Meredith, v1
+#7 in our series by George Meredith
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+Title: The Shaving of Shagpat, v1
+
+Author: George Meredith
+
+Release Date: September, 2003 [Etext #4401]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 21, 2001]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Shaving of Shagpat by Meredith, v1
+*********This file should be named 4401.txt or 4401.zip********
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+
+
+
+
+THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+
+AN ARABIAN ENTERTAINMENT
+
+1898/1909
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+THE THWACKINGS
+THE STORY OF BHANAVAR THE BEAUTIFUL
+THE BETROTHAL
+PUNISHMENT OF SHAHPESH, THE PERSIAN, ON KHIPIL, THE BUILDER
+THE GENIE KARAZ
+THE WELL OF PARAVID
+THE HORSE GARRAVEEN
+THE TALKING HAWK
+GOORELKA OF OOLB
+THE LILY OF THE ENCHANTED SEA
+STORY OF NOORNA BIN NOORKA, THE GENIE KARAZ, AND THE PRINCESS OF OOLB
+THE WILES OF RABESQURAT
+THE PALACE OF AKLIS
+THE SONS OF AKLIS
+THE SWORD OF AKLIS
+KOOROOKH
+THE VEILED FIGURE
+THE BOSOM OF NOORNA
+THE REVIVAL
+THE PLOT
+THE DISH OF POMEGRANATE GRAIN
+THE BURNING OF THE IDENTICAL
+THE FLASHES OF THE BLADE
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+THE THWACKINGS
+THE STORY OF BHANAVAR THE BEAUTIFUL
+
+
+THE THWACKINGS
+
+It was ordained that Shibli Bagarag, nephew to the renowned Baba
+Mustapha, chief barber to the Court of Persia, should shave Shagpat, the
+son of Shimpoor, the son of Shoolpi, the son of Shullum; and they had
+been clothiers for generations, even to the time of Shagpat, the
+illustrious.
+
+Now, the story of Shibli Bagarag, and of the ball he followed, and of the
+subterranean kingdom he came to, and of the enchanted palace he entered,
+and of the sleeping king he shaved, and of the two princesses he
+released, and of the Afrite held in subjection by the arts of one and
+bottled by her, is it not known as 'twere written on the finger-nails of
+men and traced in their corner-robes?  As the poet says:
+
+          Ripe with oft telling and old is the tale,
+          But 'tis of the sort that can never grow stale.
+
+Now, things were in that condition with Shibli Bagarag, that on a certain
+day he was hungry and abject, and the city of Shagpat the clothier was
+before him; so he made toward it, deliberating as to how he should
+procure a meal, for he had not a dirhem in his girdle, and the
+remembrance of great dishes and savoury ingredients were to him as the
+illusion of rivers sheening on the sands to travellers gasping with
+thirst.
+
+And he considered his case, crying, 'Surely this comes of wandering, and
+'tis the curse of the inquiring spirit! for in Shiraz, where my craft is
+in favour, I should be sitting now with my uncle, Baba Mustapha, the
+loquacious one, cross-legged, partaking of seasoned sweet dishes, dipping
+my fingers in them, rejoicing my soul with scandal of the Court!'
+
+Now, he came to a knoll of sand under a palm, from which the yellow domes
+and mosques of the city of Shagpat, and its black cypresses, and marble
+palace fronts, and shining pillars, and lofty carven arches that spanned
+half-circles of the hot grey sky, were plainly visible.  Then gazed he
+awhile despondingly on the city of Shagpat, and groaned in contemplation
+of his evil plight, as is said by the poet:
+
+          The curse of sorrow is comparison!
+               As the sun casteth shade, night showeth star,
+          We, measuring what we were by what we are,
+               Behold the depth to which we are undone.
+
+Wherefore he counselleth:
+
+          Look neither too much up, nor down at all,
+          But, forward stepping, strive no more to fall.
+
+And the advice is excellent; but, as is again said:
+
+          The preacher preacheth, and the hearer heareth,
+          But comfort first each function requireth.
+
+And 'wisdom to a hungry stomach is thin pottage,' saith the shrewd reader
+of men.  Little comfort was there with Shibli Bagarag, as he looked on
+the city of Shagpat the clothier!  He cried aloud that his evil chance
+had got the better of him, and rolled his body in the sand, beating his
+breast, and conjuring up images of the profusion of dainties and the
+abundance of provision in Shiraz, exclaiming, 'Well-a-way and woe's me!
+this it is to be selected for the diversion of him that plotteth against
+man.'  Truly is it written:
+
+          On different heads misfortunes come:
+               One bears them firm, another faints,
+          While this one hangs them like a drum
+               Whereon to batter loud complaints.
+
+And of the three kinds, they who bang the drum outnumber the silent ones
+as do the billows of the sea the ships that swim, or the grains of sand
+the trees that grow; a noisy multitude.
+
+Now, he was in the pits of despondency, even as one that yieldeth without
+further struggle to the waves of tempest at midnight, when he was ware of
+one standing over him,--a woman, old, wrinkled, a very crone, with but
+room for the drawing of a thread between her nose and her chin; she was,
+as is cited of them who betray the doings of Time,
+
+          Wrinkled at the rind, and overripe at the core,
+
+and every part of her nodded and shook like a tree sapped by the waters,
+and her joints were sharp as the hind-legs of a grasshopper; she was
+indeed one close-wrecked upon the rocks of Time.
+
+Now, when the old woman had scanned Shibli Bagarag, she called to him,
+'O thou! what is it with thee, that thou rollest as one reft of his wits?'
+
+He answered her, 'I bewail my condition, which is beggary, and the lack
+of that which filleth with pleasantness.'
+
+So the old woman said, 'Tell me thy case.'
+
+He answered her, 'O old woman, surely it was written at my birth that I
+should take ruin from the readers of planets.  Now, they proclaimed that
+I was one day destined for great things, if I stood by my tackle, I, a
+barber.  Know then, that I have had many offers and bribes, seductive
+ones, from the rich and the exalted in rank; and I heeded them not,
+mindful of what was foretold of me.  I stood by my tackle as a warrior
+standeth by his arms, flourishing them.  Now, when I found great things
+came not to me, and 'twas the continuance of sameness and satiety with
+Baba Mustapha, my uncle, in Shiraz,--the tongue-wagger, the endless
+tattler,--surely I was advised by the words of the poet to go forth in
+search of what was wanting, and he says:
+
+               "Thou that dreamest an Event,
+          While Circumstance is but a waste of sand,
+          Arise, take up thy fortunes in thy hand,
+               And daily forward pitch thy tent."
+
+Now, I passed from city to city, proclaiming my science, holding aloft my
+tackle.  Wullahy! many adventures were mine, and if there's some day
+propitiousness in fortune, O old woman, I'll tell thee of what befell me
+in the kingdom of Shah Shamshureen: 'tis wondrous, a matter to draw down
+the lower jaw with amazement!  Now, so it was, that in the eyes of one
+city I was honoured and in request, by reason of my calling, and I fared
+sumptuously, even as a great officer of state surrounded by slaves,
+lounging upon clouds of silk stuffs, circled by attentive ears: in
+another city there was no beast so base as I.  Wah! I was one hunted of
+men and an abomination; no housing for me, nought to operate upon.  I was
+the lean dog that lieth in wait for offal.  It seemeth certain, O old
+woman, that a curse hath fallen on barbercraft in these days, because of
+the Identical, whose might I know not.  Everywhere it is growing in
+disrepute; 'tis languishing!  Nevertheless till now I have preserved my
+tackle, and I would descend on yonder city to exercise it, even for a
+livelihood, forgetting awhile great things, but that I dread men may have
+changed there also,--and there's no stability in them, I call Allah
+(whose name be praised!) to witness; so should I be a thing unsightly,
+subject to hateful castigation; wherefore is it that I am in that state
+described by the poet, when,
+
+          "Dreading retreat, dreading advance to make,
+          Round we revolve, like to the wounded snake."
+
+Is not my case now a piteous one, one that toucheth the tender corner in
+man and woman?'
+
+When she that listened had heard him to an end, she shook her garments,
+crying, 'O youth, son of my uncle, be comforted! for, if it is as I
+think, the readers of planets were right, and thou art thus early within
+reach of great things--nigh grasping them.'
+
+Then she fell to mumbling and reciting jigs of verse, quaint measures;
+and she pored along the sand to where a line had been drawn, and saw that
+the footprints of the youth were traced along it.  Lo, at that sight she
+clapped her hands joyfully, and ran up to the youth, and peered in his
+face, exclaiming, 'Great things indeed! and praise thou the readers of
+planets, O nephew of the barber, they that sent thee searching the Event
+thou art to master.  Wullahy! have I not half a mind to call thee already
+Master of the Event?'
+
+Then she abated somewhat in her liveliness, and said to him, 'Know that
+the city thou seest is the city of Shagpat, the clothier, and there's no
+one living on the face of earth, nor a soul that requireth thy craft more
+than he.  Go therefore thou, bold of heart, brisk, full of the
+sprightliness of the barber, and enter to him.  Lo, thou'lt see him
+lolling in his shop-front to be admired of this people--marvelled at.
+Oh! no mistaking of Shagpat, and the mole might discern Shagpat among
+myriads of our kind; and enter thou to him gaily, as to perform a
+friendly office, one meriting thanks and gratulations, saying, ''I will
+preserve thee the Identical!''  Now he'll at first feign not to understand
+thee, dense of wit that he is! but mince not matters with him, perform
+well thy operation, and thou wilt come to great things.  What say I? 'tis
+certain that when thou hast shaved Shagpat thou wilt have achieved the
+greatest of things, and be most noteworthy of thy race, thou, Shibli
+Bagarag, even thou! and thou wilt be Master of the Event, so named in
+anecdotes and histories and records, to all succeeding generations.'
+
+At her words the breast of Shibli Bagarag took in a great wind, and he
+hung his head a moment to ponder them; and he thought, 'There's
+provokingness in the speech of this old woman, and she's one that
+instigateth keenly.  She called me by my name!  Heard I that?  'Tis a
+mystery!' And he thought, 'Peradventure she is a Genie, one of an ill
+tribe, and she's luring me to my perdition in this city!  How if that be
+so?'  And again he thought, 'It cannot be!  She's probably the Genie that
+presided over my birth, and promised me dower of great things through the
+mouths of the readers of planets.'
+
+Now, when Shibli Bagarag had so deliberated, he lifted his sight, and lo,
+the old woman was no longer before him!  He stared, and rubbed his eyes,
+but she was clean gone.  Then ran he to the knolls and eminences that
+were scattered about, to command a view, but she was nowhere visible.  So
+he thought, ''Twas a dream!' and he was composing himself to despair upon
+the scant herbage of one of those knolls, when as he chanced to gaze down
+the city below, he saw there a commotion and a crowd of people flocking
+one way; he thought, ''Twas surely no dream? come not Genii, and go they
+not, in the fashion of that old woman?  I'll even descend on yonder city,
+and try my tackle on Shagpat, inquiring for him, and if he is there, I
+shall know I have had to do with a potent spirit.  Allah protect me!'
+
+So, having shut together the clasps of resolve, he arose and made for the
+gates of the city, and entered it by the principal entrance.  It was a
+fair city, the fairest and chief of that country; prosperous, powerful; a
+mart for numerous commodities, handicrafts, wares; round it a wild
+country and a waste of sand, ruled by the lion in his wrath, and in it
+the tiger, the camelopard, the antelope, and other animals.  Hither, in
+caravans, came the people of Oolb and the people of Damascus, and the
+people of Vatz, and they of Bagdad, and the Ringheez, great traders, and
+others, trading; and there was constant flow of intercourse between them
+and the city of Shagpat.  Now as Shibli Bagarag paced up one of the
+streets of the city, he beheld a multitude in procession following one
+that was crowned after the manner of kings, with a glittering crown, clad
+in the yellow girdled robes, and he sporting a fine profusion of hair,
+unequalled by all around him, save by one that was a little behind,
+shadowed by his presence.  So Shibli Bagarag thought, 'Is one of this
+twain Shagpat? for never till now have I seen such rare growths, and
+'twere indeed a bliss to slip the blade between them and those masses of
+darkness that hang from them.'  Then he stepped before the King, and made
+himself prominent in his path, humbling himself; and it was as he
+anticipated, the King prevented his removal by the slaves that would have
+dragged him away, and desired a hearing as to his business, and what
+brought him to the city, a stranger.
+
+Thereupon Shibli Bagarag prostrated himself and cried, 'O great King,
+Sovereign of the Time! surely I am one to be looked on with the eye of
+grace; and I am nephew to Baba Mustapha, renowned in Shiraz, a barber;--I
+a barber, and it is my prayer, O King of the Age, that thou take me under
+thy protection and the shield of thy fair will, while I perform good work
+in this city by operating on the unshorn.'
+
+When he had spoken, the King made a point of his eyebrows, and exclaimed,
+'Shiraz?  So they hold out against Shagpat yet, aha?  Shiraz! that nest
+of them! that reptile's nest!'  Then he turned to his Vizier beside him,
+and said, 'What shall be done with this fellow?'
+
+So the Vizier replied, ''Twere well, O King, he be summoned to a sense of
+the loathsomeness of his craft by the agency of fifty stripes.'
+
+The King said, ''Tis commanded!'
+
+Then he passed forward in his majesty, and Shibli Bagarag was ware of the
+power of five slaves upon him, and he was hurried at a quick pace through
+the streets and before the eyes of the people, even to the common
+receptacle of felons, and there received from each slave severally ten
+thwacks with a thong: 'tis certain that at every thwack the thong took an
+airing before it descended upon him.  Then loosed they him, to wander
+whither he listed; and disgust was strong in him by reason of the
+disgrace and the severity of the administration of the blows.  He strayed
+along the streets in wretchedness, and hunger increased on him, assailing
+him first as a wolf in his vitals, then as it had been a chasm yawning
+betwixt his trunk and his lower members.  And he thought, 'I have been
+long in chase of great things, and the hope of attaining them is great;
+yet, wullahy! would I barter all for one refreshing meal, and the sense
+of fulness.  'Tis so, and sad is it!'  And he was mindful of the poet's
+words,--
+
+          Who seeks the shadow to the substance sinneth,
+          And daily craving what is not, he thinneth:
+               His lean ambition how shall he attain?
+          For with this constant foolishness he doeth,
+          He, waxing liker to what he pursueth,
+               Himself becometh what he chased in vain!
+
+And again:
+
+          Of honour half my fellows boast,--
+               A thing that scorns and kills us:
+          Methinks that honours us the most
+               Which nourishes and fills us.
+
+So he thought he would of a surety fling far away his tackle, discard
+barbercraft, and be as other men, a mortal, forgotten with his
+generation.  And he cried aloud, 'O thou old woman! thou deceiver! what
+halt thou obtained for me by thy deceits? and why put I faith in thee to
+the purchase of a thwacking?  Woe's me!  I would thou hadst been but a
+dream, thou crone! thou guileful parcel of belabouring bones!'
+
+Now, while he lounged and strolled, and was abusing the old woman, he
+looked before him, and lo, one lolling in his shop-front, and people
+standing outside the shop, marking him with admiration and reverence, and
+pointing him out to each other with approving gestures.  He who lolled
+there was indeed a miracle of hairiness, black with hair as he had been
+muzzled with it, and his head as it were a berry in a bush by reason of
+it.  Then thought Shibli Bagarag, ''Tis Shagpat!  If the mole could swear
+to him, surely can I.'  So he regarded the clothier, and there was naught
+seen on earth like the gravity of Shagpat as he lolled before those
+people, that failed not to assemble in groups and gaze at him.  He was as
+a sleepy lion cased in his mane; as an owl drowsy in the daylight.  Now
+would he close an eye, or move two fingers, but of other motion made he
+none, yet the people gazed at him with eagerness.  Shibli Bagarag was
+astonished at them, thinking, 'Hair! hair!  There is might in hair; but
+there is greater might in the barber!  Nevertheless here the barber is
+scorned, the grower of crops held in amazing reverence.'  Then thought
+he, ''Tis truly wondrous the crop he groweth; not even King Shamshureen,
+after a thousand years, sported such mighty profusion!  Him I sheared: it
+was a high task!--why not this Shagpat?'
+
+Now, long gazing on Shagpat awoke in Shibli Bagarag fierce desire to
+shear him, and it was scarce in his power to restrain himself from flying
+at the clothier, he saying, 'What obstacle now? what protecteth him?
+Nay, why not trust to the old woman?  Said she not I should first essay
+on Shagpat? and 'twas my folly in appealing to the King that brought on
+me that thwacking.  'Tis well!  I'll trust to her words.  Wullahy! will
+it not lead me to great things?'
+
+So it was, that as he thought this he continued to keep eye on Shagpat,
+and the hunger that was in him passed, and became a ravenous vulture that
+flew from him and singled forth Shagpat as prey; and there was no help
+for it but in he must go and state his case to Shagpat, and essay
+shearing him.
+
+Now, when he was in the presence, he exclaimed, 'Peace, O vendor of
+apparel, unto thee and unto thine!'
+
+Shagpat answered, 'That with thee!'
+
+Said Shibli Bagarag, 'I have heard of thee, O thou wonder!  Wullahy!  I
+am here to render homage to that I behold.'
+
+Shagpat answered, ''Tis well!'
+
+Then said Shibli Bagarag, 'Praise my discretion!  I have even this day
+entered the city, and it is to thee I offer the first shave, O tangle of
+glory!'
+
+At these words Shagpat darkened, saying gruffly, 'Thy jest is offensive,
+and it is unseasonable for staleness and lack of holiness.'
+
+But Shibli Bagarag cried, 'No jest, O purveyor to the outward of us! but
+a very excellent earnest.'
+
+Thereat the face of Shagpat was as an exceeding red berry in a bush, and
+he said angrily, 'Have done! no more of it!  or haply my spleen will be
+awakened, and that of them who see with more eyes than two.'
+
+Nevertheless Shibli Bagarag urged him, and he winked, and gesticulated,
+and pointed to his head, crying, 'Fall not, O man of the nicety of
+measure, into the trap of error; for 'tis I that am a barber, and a
+rarity in this city, even Shibli Bagarag of Shiraz!  Know me nephew of
+the renowned Baba Mustapha, chief barber to the Court of Persia.
+Languishest thou not for my art?  Lo! with three sweeps I'll give thee a
+clean poll, all save the Identical! and I can discern and save it; fear
+me not, nor distrust my skill and the cunning that is mine.'
+
+When he had heard Shibli Bagarag to a close, the countenance of Shagpat
+waxed fiery, as it had been flame kindled by travellers at night in a
+thorny bramble-bush, and he ruffled, and heaved, and was as when dense
+jungle-growths are stirred violently by the near approach of a wild
+animal in his fury, shouting in short breaths, 'A barber! a barber!  Is't
+so?  can it be?  To me?  A barber!  O thou, thou reptile! filthy thing!
+A barber! O dog!  A barber?  What? when I bid fair for the highest
+honours known?  O sacrilegious wretch! monster!  How? are the Afrites
+jealous, that they send thee to jibe me?'
+
+Thereupon he set up a cry for his wife, and that woman rushed to him from
+an inner room, and fell upon Shibli Bagarag, belabouring him.
+
+So, when she was weary of this, she said, 'O light of my eyes! O golden
+crop and adorable man! what hath he done to thee?'
+
+Shagpat answered, ''Tis a barber! and he hath sworn to shave me, and leave
+me not save shorn!'
+
+Hardly had Shagpat spoken this, when she became limp with the hearing of
+it.  Then Shibli Bagarag slunk from the shop; but without the crowd had
+increased, seeing an altercation, and as he took to his heels they
+followed him, and there was uproar in the streets of the city and in the
+air above them, as of raging Genii, he like a started quarry doubling
+this way and that, and at the corners of streets and open places,
+speeding on till there was no breath in his body, the cry still after him
+that he had bearded Shagpat.  At last they came up with him, and
+belaboured him each and all; it was a storm of thwacks that fell on the
+back of Shibli Bagarag.  When they had wearied themselves in this
+fashion, they took him as had he been a stray bundle or a damaged bale,
+and hurled him from the gates of the city into the wilderness once more.
+
+Now, when he was alone, he staggered awhile and then flung himself to the
+earth, looking neither to the right nor to the left, nor above.  All he
+could think was, 'O accursed old woman!' and this he kept repeating to
+himself for solace; as the poet says:
+
+          'Tis sure the special privilege of hate,
+          To curse the authors of our evil state.
+
+As he was thus complaining, behold the very old woman before him!  And
+she wheezed, and croaked, and coughed, and shook herself, and screwed her
+face into a pleasing pucker, and assumed womanish airs, and swayed
+herself, like as do the full moons of the harem when the eye of the
+master is upon them.  Having made an end of these prettinesses, she said,
+in a tone of soft insinuation, 'O youth, nephew of the barber, look upon
+me.'
+
+Shibli Bagarag knew her voice, and he would not look, thinking, 'Oh, what
+a dreadful old woman is this! just calling on her name in detestation
+maketh her present to us.'  So the old woman, seeing him resolute to shun
+her, leaned to him, and put one hand to her dress, and squatted beside
+him, and said, 'O youth, thou hast been thwacked!'
+
+He groaned, lifting not his face, nor saying aught.  Then said she, 'Art
+thou truly in search of great things, O youth?'
+
+Still he groaned, answering no syllable.  And she continued, ''Tis surely
+in sweet friendliness I ask.  Art thou not a fair youth, one to entice a
+damsel to perfect friendliness?'
+
+Louder yet did he groan at her words, thinking, 'A damsel, verily!'  So
+the old woman said, 'I wot thou art angry with me; but now look up, O
+nephew of the barber! no time for vexation.  What says the poet?--
+
+         "Cares the warrior for his wounds
+          When the steed in battle bounds?"
+
+Moreover:
+
+         "Let him who grasps the crown strip not for shame,
+          Lest he expose what gain'd it blow and maim!"
+
+So be it with thee and thy thwacking, O foolish youth!  Hide it from
+thyself, thou silly one!  What! thou hast been thwacked, and refusest the
+fruit of it--which is resoluteness, strength of mind, sternness in
+pursuit of the object!'
+
+Then she softened her tone to persuasiveness, saying, ''Twas written I
+should be the head of thy fortune, O Shibli Bagarag!  and thou'lt be
+enviable among men by my aid, so look upon me, and (for I know thee
+famished) thou shah presently be supplied with viands and bright wines
+and sweetmeats, delicacies to cheer thee.'
+
+Now, the promise of food and provision was powerful with Shibli Bagarag,
+and he looked up gloomily.  And the old woman smiled archly at him, and
+wriggled in her seat like a dusty worm, and said, 'Dost thou find me
+charming, thou fair youth?'
+
+He was nigh laughing in her face, but restrained himself to reply, 'Thou
+art that thou art!'
+
+Said she, 'Not so, but that I shall be.'  Then she said, 'O youth, pay me
+now a compliment!'
+
+Shibli Bagarag was at a loss what further to say to the old woman, for
+his heart cursed her for her persecutions, and ridiculed her for her
+vanities.  At last he bethought himself of the saying of the poet, truly
+the offspring of fine wit, where he says:
+
+          Expect no flatteries from me,
+               While I am empty of good things;
+          I'll call thee fair, and I'll agree
+               Thou boldest Love in silken strings,
+     When thou bast primed me from thy plenteous store!
+          But, oh!  till then a clod am I:
+               No seed within to throw up flowers:
+          All's drouthy to the fountain dry:
+               To empty stomachs Nature lowers:
+     The lake was full where heaven look'd fair of yore!
+
+So, when he had spoken that, the old woman laughed and exclaimed, 'Thou
+art apt! it is well said!  Surely I excuse thee till that time!  Now
+listen!  'Tis written we work together, and I know it by divination.
+Have I not known thee wandering, and on thy way to this city of Shagpat,
+where thou'lt some day sit throned?  Now I propose to thee this--and 'tis
+an excellent proposal--that I lead thee to great things, and make thee
+glorious, a sitter in high seats, Master of an Event?'
+
+Cried he, 'A proposal honourable to thee, and pleasant in the ear.'
+
+She added, 'Provided thou marry me in sweet marriage.'
+
+Thereat he stared on vacancy with a serious eye, and he could scarce
+credit her earnestness, but she repeated the same.  So presently he
+thought, 'This old hag appeareth deep in the fountain of events, and she
+will be a right arm to me in the mastering of one, a torch in darkness,
+seeing there is wisdom in her as well as wickedness.  The thwackings?--
+sad was their taste, but they're in the road leading to greatness, and I
+cannot say she put me out of that road in putting me where they were.
+Her age?--shall I complain of that when it is a sign she goeth shortly
+altogether?'
+
+As he was thus debating he regarded the old woman stealthily, and she was
+in agitation, so that her joints creaked like forest branches in a wind,
+and the puckers of her visage moved as do billows of the sea to and fro,
+and the anticipations of a fair young bride are not more eager than what
+was visible in the old woman.  Wheedlingly she looked at him, and shaped
+her mouth like a bird's bill to soften it; and she drew together her
+dress, to give herself the look of slimness, using all fascinations.  He
+thought, ''Tis a wondrous old woman!  Marriage would seem a thing of
+moment to her, yet is the profit with me, and I'll agree to it.'  So he
+said, ''Tis a pact between us, O old woman!'
+
+Now, the eyes of the old woman brightened when she heard him, and were as
+the eyes of a falcon that eyeth game, hungry with red fire, and she
+looked brisk with impatience, laughing a low laugh and saying, 'O youth,
+I must claim of thee, as is usual in such cases, the kiss of contract.'
+
+So Shibli Bagarag was mindful of what is written,
+
+      If thou wouldst take the great leap, be ready for the little jump,
+
+and he stretched out his mouth to the forehead of the old woman.  When he
+had done so, it was as though she had been illuminated, as when light is
+put in the hollow of a pumpkin.  Then said she, 'This is well! this is a
+fair beginning!  Now look, for thy fortune will of a surety follow.  Call
+me now sweet bride, and knocker at the threshold of hearts!'
+
+So Shibli Bagarag sighed, and called her this, and he said, 'Forget not
+my condition, O old woman, and that I am nigh famished.'
+
+Upon that she nodded gravely, and arose and shook her garments together,
+and beckoned for Shibli Bagarag to follow her; and the two passed through
+the gates of the city, and held on together through divers streets and
+thoroughfares till they came before the doors of a palace with a pillared
+entrance; and the old woman passed through the doors of the palace as one
+familiar to them, and lo! they were in a lofty court, built all of
+marble, and in the middle of it a fountain playing, splashing silvery.
+Shibli Bagarag would have halted here to breathe the cool refreshingness
+of the air, but the old woman would not; and she hurried on even to the
+opening of a spacious Hall, and in it slaves in circle round a raised
+seat, where sat one that was their lord, and it was the Chief Vizier of
+the King.
+
+Then the old woman turned round sharply to Shibli Bagarag, and said, 'How
+of thy tackle, O my betrothed?'
+
+He answered, 'The edge is keen, the hand ready.'
+
+Then said she, ''Tis well.'
+
+So the old woman put her two hands on the shoulders of Shibli Bagarag,
+saying, 'Make thy reverence to him on the raised seat; have faith in thy
+tackle and in me.  Renounce not either, whatsoever ensueth.  Be not
+abashed, O my bridegroom to be!'
+
+Thereupon she thrust him in; and Shibli Bagarag was abashed, and played
+foolishly with his fingers, knowing not what to do.  So when the Chief
+Vizier saw him he cried out, 'Who art thou, and what wantest thou?'
+
+Now, the back of Shibli Bagarag tingled when he heard the Vizier's voice,
+and he said, 'I am, O man of exalted condition, he whom men know as
+Shibli Bagarag, nephew to Baba Mustapha, the renowned of Shiraz; myself
+barber likewise, proud of my art, prepared to exercise it.'
+
+Then said the Chief Vizier, 'This even to our faces!  Wonderful is the
+audacity of impudence!  Know, O nephew of the barber, thou art among them
+that honour not thy art.  Is it not written, For one thing thou shaft be
+crowned here, for that thing be thwacked there?  So also it is written,
+The tongue of the insolent one is a lash and a perpetual castigation to
+him.  And it is written, O Shibli Bagarag, that I reap honour from thee,
+and there is no help but that thou be made an example of.'
+
+So the Chief Vizier uttered command, and Shibli Bagarag was ware of the
+power of five slaves upon him; and they seized him familiarly, and placed
+him in position, and made ready his clothing for the reception of fifty
+other thwacks with a thong, each several thwack coming down on him with a
+hiss, as it were a serpent, and with a smack, as it were the mouth of
+satisfaction; and the people assembled extolled the Chief Vizier, saying,
+'Well and valiantly done, O stay of the State! and such-like to the
+accursed race of barbers.'
+
+Now, when they had passed before the Chief Vizier and departed, lo! he
+fell to laughing violently, so that his hair was agitated and was as a
+sand-cloud over him, and his countenance behind it was as the sun of the
+desert reflected ripplingly on the waters of a bubbling spring, for it
+had the aspect of merriness; and the Chief Vizier exclaimed, 'O Shibli
+Bagarag, have I not made fair show?'
+
+And Shibli Bagarag said, 'Excellent fair show, O mighty one!'  Yet knew
+he not in what, but he was abject by reason of the thwacks.
+
+So the Vizier said, 'Thou lookest lean, even as one to whom Fortune oweth
+a long debt.  Tell me now of thy barbercraft: perchance thy gain will be
+great thereby?'
+
+And Shibli Bagarag answered, 'My gain has been great, O eminent in rank,
+but of evil quality, and I am content not to increase it.'  And he broke
+forth into lamentations, crying in excellent verse:--
+
+          Why am I thus the sport of all--
+          A thing Fate knocketh like a ball
+          From point to point of evil chance,
+          Even as the sneer of Circumstance?
+          While thirsting for the highest fame,
+            I hunger like the lowest beast:
+          To be the first of men I aim
+            And find myself the least.
+
+Now, the Vizier delayed not when he heard this to have a fair supply set
+before Shibli Bagarag, and meats dressed in divers fashions, spiced, and
+coloured, and with herbs, and wines in golden goblets, and slaves in
+attendance.  So Shibli Bagarag ate and drank, and presently his soul
+arose from its prostration, and he cried, 'Wullahy! the head cook of King
+Shamshureen could have worked no better as regards the restorative
+process.'
+
+Then said the Chief Vizier, 'O Shibli Bagarag, where now is thy tackle?'
+
+And Shibli Bagarag winked and nodded and turned his head in the manner of
+the knowing ones, and he recited the verse:
+
+          'Tis well that we are sometimes circumspect,
+            And hold ourselves in witless ways deterred:
+          One thwacking made me seriously reflect;
+            A SECOND turned the cream of love to curd:
+          Most surely that profession I reject
+            Before the fear of a prospective THIRD.
+
+So the Vizier said, ''Tis well, thou turnest verse neatly'  And he
+exclaimed extemporaneously:
+
+     If thou wouldst have thy achievement as high
+
+          As the wings of Ambition can fly:
+     If thou the clear summit of hope wouldst attain,
+          And not have thy labour in vain;
+     Be steadfast in that which impell'd, for the peace
+          Of earth he who leaves must have trust:
+     He is safe while he soars, but when faith shall cease,
+          Desponding he drops to the dust.
+
+Then said he, 'Fear no further thwacking, but honour and prosperity in
+the place of it.  What says the poet?--
+
+         "We faint, when for the fire
+            There needs one spark;
+          We droop, when our desire
+            Is near its mark."
+
+How near to it art thou, O Shibli Bagarag!  Know, then, that among this
+people there is great reverence for the growing of hair, and he that is
+hairiest is honoured most, wherefore are barbers creatures of especial
+abhorrence, and of a surety flourish not.  And so it is that I owe my
+station to the esteem I profess for the cultivation of hair, and to my
+persecution of the clippers of it.  And in this kingdom is no one that
+beareth such a crop as I, saving one, a clothier, an accursed one!--and
+may a blight fall upon him for his vanity and his affectation of solemn
+priestliness, and his lolling in his shop-front to be admired and
+marvelled at by the people.  So this fellow I would disgrace and bring to
+scorn,--this Shagpat! for he is mine enemy, and the eye of the King my
+master is on him.  Now I conceive thy assistance in this matter,  Shibli
+Bagarag,--thou, a barber.'
+
+When Shibli Bagarag heard mention of Shagpat, and the desire for
+vengeance in the Vizier, he was as a new man, and he smelt the sweetness
+of his own revenge as a vulture smelleth the carrion from afar, and he
+said, 'I am thy servant, thy slave, O Vizier!' Then smiled he as to his
+own soul, and he exclaimed, 'On my head be it!'
+
+And it was to him as when sudden gusts of perfume from garden roses of
+the valley meet the traveller's nostril on the hill that overlooketh the
+valley, filling him with ecstasy and newness of life, delicate visions.
+And he cried, 'Wullahy! this is fair; this is well!  I am he that was
+appointed to do thy work, O man in office!  What says the poet?--
+
+         "The destined hand doth strike the fated blow:
+          Surely the arrow's fitted to the bow!"
+
+And he says:
+
+         "The feathered seed for the wind delayeth,
+          The wind above the garden swayeth,
+          The garden of its burden knoweth,
+          The burden falleth, sinketh, soweth."'
+
+So the Vizier chuckled and nodded, saying, 'Right, right! aptly spoken, O
+youth of favour!  'Tis even so, and there is wisdom in what is written:
+
+              "Chance is a poor knave;
+               Its own sad slave;
+               Two meet that were to meet:
+               Life 's no cheat."'
+
+Upon that he cried, 'First let us have with us the Eclipser of Reason,
+and take counsel with her, as is my custom.'
+
+Now, the Vizier made signal to a slave in attendance, and the slave
+departed from the Hall, and the Vizier led Shibli Bagarag into a closer
+chamber, which had a smooth floor of inlaid silver and silken hangings,
+the windows looking forth on the gardens of the palace and its fountains
+and cool recesses of shade and temperate sweetness.  While they sat there
+conversing in this metre and that, measuring quotations, lo! the old
+woman, the affianced of Shibli Bagarag--and she sumptuously arrayed, in
+perfect queenliness, her head bound in a circlet of gems and gold, her
+figure lustrous with a full robe of flowing crimson silk; and she wore
+slippers embroidered with golden traceries, and round her waist a girdle
+flashing with jewels, so that to look on she was as a long falling water
+in the last bright slant of the sun.  Her hair hung disarranged, and
+spread in a scattered fashion off her shoulders; and she was younger by
+many moons, her brow smooth where Shibli Bagarag had given the kiss of
+contract, her hand soft and white where he had taken it.  Shibli Bagarag
+was smitten with astonishment at sight of her, and he thought, 'Surely
+the aspect of this old woman would realise the story of Bhanavar the
+Beautiful; and it is a story marvellous to think of; yet how great is the
+likeness between Bhanavar and this old woman that groweth younger!'
+
+And he thought again, 'What if the story of Bhanavar be a true one; this
+old woman such as she--no other?'
+
+So, while he considered her, the Vizier exclaimed, 'Is she not fair--my
+daughter?'
+
+And the youth answered, 'She is, O Vizier, that she is!'
+
+But the Vizier cried, 'Nay, by Allah! she is that she will be.' And the
+Vizier said, ''Tis she that is my daughter; tell me thy thought of her, as
+thou thinkest it.'
+
+And Shibli Bagarag replied, 'O Vizier, my thought of her is, she seemeth
+indeed as Bhanavar the Beautiful--no other.'
+
+Then the Vizier and the Eclipser of Reason exclaimed together, 'How of
+Bhanavar and her story, O youth? We listen!'
+
+So Shibli Bagarag leaned slightly on a cushion of a couch, and narrated
+as followeth.
+
+
+
+
+AND THIS IS THE STORY OF BHANAVAR THE BEAUTIFUL
+
+Know that at the foot of a lofty mountain of the Caucasus there lieth a
+deep blue lake; near to this lake a nest of serpents, wise and ancient.
+Now, it was the habit of a damsel to pass by the lake early at morn, on
+her way from the tents of her tribe to the pastures of the flocks.  As
+she pressed the white arch of her feet on the soft green-mossed grasses
+by the shore of the lake she would let loose her hair, looking over into
+the water, and bind the braid again round her temples and behind her
+ears, as it had been in a lucent mirror: so doing she would laugh.  Her
+laughter was like the falls of water at moonrise; her loveliness like the
+very moonrise; and she was stately as a palm-tree standing before the
+moon.
+
+This was Bhanavar the Beautiful.
+
+Now, the damsel was betrothed to the son of a neighbouring Emir, a youth
+comely, well-fashioned, skilled with the bow, apt in all exercises; one
+that sat his mare firm as the trained falcon that fixeth on the plunging
+bull of the plains; fair and terrible in combat as the lightning that
+strideth the rolling storm; and it is sung by the poet:
+
+          When on his desert mare I see
+               My prince of men,
+               I think him then
+          As high above humanity
+          As he shines radiant over me.
+
+          Lo! like a torrent he doth bound,
+               Breasting the shock
+               From rock to rock:
+          A pillar of storm, he shakes the ground,
+
+          His turban on his temples wound.
+
+          Match me for worth to be adored
+               A youth like him
+               In heart and limb!
+          Swift as his anger is his sword;
+          Softer than woman his true word.
+
+Now, the love of this youth for the damsel Bhanavar was a consuming
+passion, and the father of the damsel and the father of the youth looked
+fairly on the prospect of their union, which was near, and was plighted
+as the union of the two tribes.  So they met, and there was no voice
+against their meeting, and all the love that was in them they were free
+to pour forth far from the hearing of men, even where they would.  Before
+the rising of the sun, and ere his setting, the youth rode swiftly from
+the green tents of the Emir his father, to waylay her by the waters of
+the lake; and Bhanavar was there, bending over the lake, her image in the
+lake glowing like the fair fulness of the moon; and the youth leaned to
+her from his steed, and sang to her verses of her great loveliness ere
+she was wistful of him.  Then she turned to him, and laughed lightly a
+welcome of sweetness, and shook the falls of her hair across the blushes
+of her face and her bosom; and he folded her to him, and those two would
+fondle together in the fashion of the betrothed ones (the blessing of
+Allah be on them all!), gazing on each other till their eyes swam with
+tears, and they were nigh swooning with the fulness of their bliss.
+Surely 'twas an innocent and tender dalliance, and their prattle was that
+of lovers till the time of parting, he showing her how she
+looked best--she him; and they were forgetful of all else that is, in
+their sweet interchange of flatteries; and the world was a wilderness to
+them both when the youth parted with Bhanavar by the brook which bounded
+the tents of her tribe.
+
+It was on a night when they were so together, the damsel leaning on his
+arm, her eyes toward the lake, and lo! what seemed the reflection of a
+large star in the water; and there was darkness in the sky above it,
+thick clouds, and no sight of the heavens; so she held her face to him
+sideways and said, 'What meaneth this, O my betrothed? for there is
+reflected in yonder lake a light as of a star, and there is no star
+visible this night.'
+
+The youth trembled as one in trouble of spirit, and exclaimed, 'Look not
+on it, O my soul!  It is of evil omen.'
+
+But Bhanavar kept her gaze constantly on the light, and the light
+increased in lustre; and the light became, from a pale sad splendour,
+dazzling in its brilliancy.  Listening, they heard presently a gurgling
+noise as of one deeply drinking.  Then the youth sighed a heavy sigh and
+said, 'This is the Serpent of the Lake drinking of its waters, as is her
+wont once every moon, and whoso heareth her drink by the sheening of that
+light is under a destiny dark and imminent; so know I my days are
+numbered, and it was foretold of me, this!'  Now the youth sought to
+dissuade Bhanavar from gazing on the light, and he flung his whole body
+before her eyes, and clasped her head upon his breast, and clung about
+her, caressing her; yet she slipped from him, and she cried, 'Tell me of
+this serpent, and of this light.'
+
+So he said, 'Seek not to hear of it, O my betrothed!'
+
+Then she gazed at the light a moment more intently, and turned her fair
+shape toward him, and put up her long white fingers to his chin, and
+smoothed him with their softness, whispering, 'Tell me of it, my life!'
+
+And so it was that her winningness melted him, and he said, 'Bhanavar!
+the serpent is the Serpent of the Lake; old, wise, powerful; of the brood
+of the sacred mountain, that lifteth by day a peak of gold, and by night
+a point of solitary silver.  In her head, upon her forehead, between her
+eyes, there is a Jewel, and it is this light.'
+
+Then she said, 'How came the Jewel there, in such a place?'
+
+He answered, ''Tis the growth of one thousand years in the head of the
+serpent.'
+
+She cried, 'Surely precious?'
+
+He answered, 'Beyond price!'
+
+As he spake the tears streamed from him, and he was shaken with grief,
+but she noted nought of this, and watched the wonder of the light, and
+its increasing, and quivering, and lengthening; and the light was as an
+arrow of beams and as a globe of radiance.  Desire for the Jewel waxed in
+her, and she had no sight but for it alone, crying, ''Tis a Jewel
+exceeding in preciousness all jewels that are, and for the possessing it
+would I forfeit all that is.'
+
+So he said sorrowfully, 'Our love, O Bhanavar? and our hopes of
+espousal?'
+
+But she cried, 'No question of that!  Prove now thy passion for me, O
+warrior! and win for me that Jewel.'
+
+Then he pleaded with her, and exclaimed, 'Urge not this!  The winning of
+the Jewel is worth my life; and my life, O Bhanavar--surely its breath is
+but the love of thee.'
+
+So she said, 'Thou fearest a risk?'
+
+And he replied, 'Little fear I; my life is thine to cast away.  This
+Jewel it is evil to have, and evil followeth the soul that hath it.'
+
+Upon that she cried, 'A trick to cheat me of the Jewel! thy love is
+wanting at the proof.'
+
+And she taunted the youth her betrothed, and turned from him, and
+hardened at his tenderness, and made her sweet shape as a thorn to his
+caressing, and his heart was charged with anguish for her.  So at the
+last, when he had wept a space in silence, he cried, 'Thou hast willed
+it; the Jewel shall be thine, O my soul!'
+
+Then said he, 'Thou hast willed it, O Bhanavar! and my life is as a grain
+of sand weighed against thy wishes; Allah is my witness!  Meet me
+therefore here, O my beloved, at the end of one quarter-moon, even
+beneath the shadow of this palm-tree, by the lake, and at this hour, and
+I will deliver into thy hands the Jewel.  So farewell!  Wind me once
+about with thine arms, that I may take comfort from thee.'
+
+When their kiss was over the youth led her silently to the brook of their
+parting--the clear, cold, bubbling brook--and passed from her sight; and
+the damsel was exulting, and leapt and made circles in her glee, and she
+danced and rioted and sang, and clapped her hands, crying, 'If I am now
+Bhanavar the Beautiful how shall I be when that Jewel is upon me, the
+bright light which beameth in the darkness, and needeth to light it no
+other light?  Surely there will be envy among the maidens and the widows,
+and my name and the odour of my beauty will travel to the courts of far
+kings.'
+
+So was she jubilant; and her sisters that met her marvelled at her and
+the deep glow that was upon her, even as the glow of the Great Desert
+when the sun has fallen; and they said among themselves, 'She is covered
+all over with the blush of one that is a bride, and the bridegroom's kiss
+yet burneth upon Bhanavar!'
+
+So they undressed her and she lay among them, and was all night even as a
+bursting rose in a vase filled with drooping lilies; and one of the
+maidens that put her hand on the left breast of Bhanavar felt it full,
+and the heart beneath it panting and beating swifter than the ground is
+struck by hooves of the chosen steed sent by the Chieftain to the city of
+his people with news of victory and the summons for rejoicing.
+
+Now, the nights and the days of Bhanavar were even as this night, and she
+was as an unquiet soul till the appointed time for the meeting with her
+lover had come.  Then when the sun was lighting with slant beam the green
+grass slope by the blue brook before her, Bhanavar arrayed herself and
+went forth gaily, as a martial queen to certain conquest; and of all the
+flowers that nodded to the setting,--yea, the crimson, purple, pure
+white, streaked-yellow, azure, and saffron, there was no flower fairer in
+its hues than Bhanavar, nor bird of the heavens freer in its glittering
+plumage, nor shape of loveliness such as hers.  Truly, when she had taken
+her place under the palm by the waters of the lake, that was no
+exaggeration of the poet, where he says:
+
+          Snows of the mountain-peaks were mirror'd there
+            Beneath her feet, not whiter than they were;
+          Not rosier in the white, that falling flush
+            Broad on the wave, than in her cheek the blush.
+
+And again:
+
+          She draws the heavens down to her,
+               So rare she is, so fair she is;
+          They flutter with a crown to her,
+               And lighten only where she is.
+
+And he exclaims, in verse that applieth to her:
+
+               Exquisite slenderness!
+                 Sleek little antelope!
+                   Serpent of sweetness!
+                     Eagle that soaringly
+                     Wins me adoringly!
+                   Teach me thy fleetness,
+                 Vision of loveliness;
+               Turn to my tenderness!
+
+Now, when the sun was lost to earth, and all was darkness, Bhanavar fixed
+her eyes upon an opening arch of foliage in the glade through which the
+youth her lover should come to her, and clasped both hands across her
+bosom, so shaken was she with eager longing and expectation.  In her
+hunger for his approach, she would at whiles pluck up the herbage about
+her by the roots, and toss handfuls this way and that, chiding the
+peaceful song of the nightbird in the leaves above her head; and she was
+sinking with fretfulness, when lo! from the opening arch of the glade a
+sudden light, and Bhanavar knew it for the Jewel in the fingers of her
+betrothed, by the strength of its effulgence.  Then she called to him
+joyfully a cry of welcome, and quickened his coming with her calls, and
+the youth alighted from his mare and left it to pasture, and advanced to
+her, holding aloft the Jewel.  And the Jewel was of great size and
+purity, round, and all-luminous, throwing rays and beams everywhere about
+it, a miracle to behold,--the light in it shining, and as the very life
+of the blood, a sweet crimson, a ruby, a softer rose, an amethyst of
+tender hues: it was a full globe of splendours, showing like a very
+kingdom of the Blest; and blessed was the eye beholding it!  So when he
+was within reach of her arm, the damsel sprang to him and caught from his
+hand the Jewel, and held it before her eyes, and danced with it, and
+pressed it on her bosom, and was as a creature giddy with great joy in
+possessing it.  And she put the Jewel in her bosom, and looked on the
+youth to thank him for the Jewel with all her beauty; for the passion of
+a mighty pride in him who had won for her the Jewel exalted Bhanavar, and
+she said sweetly, 'Now hast thou proved to me thy love of me, and I am
+thine, O my betrothed,--wholly thine.  Kiss me, then, and cease not
+kissing me, for bliss is in me.'
+
+But the youth eyed her sorrowfully, even as one that hath great yearning,
+and no power to move or speak.
+
+So she said again, in the low melody of deep love-tones, 'Kiss me, O my
+lover! for I desire thy kiss.'
+
+Still he spake not, and was as a pillar of stone.
+
+And she started, and cried, 'Thou art whole? without a hurt?' Then sought
+she to coax him to her with all the softness of her half-closed eyes and
+budded lips, saying, ''Twas an idle fear!  and I have thee, and thou art
+mine, and I am thine; so speak to me, my lover! for there is no music
+like the music of thy voice, and the absence of it is the absence of all
+sweetness, and there is no pleasure in life without it.'
+
+So the tenderness of her fondling melted the silence in him, and
+presently his tongue was loosed, and he breathed in pain of spirit, and
+his words were the words of the proverb:
+
+     He that fighteth with poison is no match for the prick of a thorn.
+
+And he said, 'Surely, O Bhanavar, my love for thee surpasseth what is
+told of others that have loved before us, and I count no loss a loss that
+is for thy sake.'  And he sighed, and sang:
+
+          Sadder than is the moon's lost light,
+            Lost ere the kindling of dawn,
+            To travellers journeying on,
+
+          The shutting of thy fair face from my sight.
+            Might I look on thee in death,
+            With bliss I would yield my breath.
+
+          Oh! what warrior dies
+          With heaven in his eyes?
+          O Bhanavar! too rich a prize!
+            The life of my nostrils art thou,
+            The balm-dew on my brow;
+
+     Thou art the perfume I meet as I speed o'er the plains,
+     The strength of my arms, the blood of my veins.
+
+Then said he, 'I make nothing matter of complaint, Allah witnesseth! not
+even the long parting from her I love.  What will be, will be: so was it
+written!  'Tis but a scratch, O my soul!  yet am I of the dead and them
+that are passed away.  'Tis hard; but I smile in the face of bitterness.'
+
+Now, at his words the damsel clutched him with both her hands, and the
+blood went from her, and she was as a block of white marble, even as one
+of those we meet in the desert, leaning together, marking the wrath of
+the All-powerful on forgotten cities.  And the tongue of the damsel was
+dry, and she was without speech, gazing at him with wide-open eyes, like
+one in trance.  Then she started as a dreamer wakeneth, and flung herself
+quickly on the breast of the youth, and put up the sleeve from his arm,
+and beheld by the beams of the quarter-crescent that had risen through
+the leaves, a small bite on the arm of the youth her betrothed, spotted
+with seven spots of blood in a crescent; so she knew that the poison of
+the serpent had entered by that bite; and she loosened herself to the
+violence of her anguish, shrieking the shrieks of despair, so that the
+voice of her lamentation was multiplied about and made many voices in the
+night.  Her spirit returned not to her till the crescent of the moon was
+yellow to its fall; and lo! the youth was sighing heavy sighs and leaning
+to the ground on one elbow, and she flung herself by him on the ground,
+seeking for herbs that were antidotes to the poison of the serpent,
+grovelling among the grasses and strewn leaves of the wood, peering at
+them tearfully by the pale beams, and startling the insects as she moved.
+When she had gathered some, she pressed them and bruised them, and laid
+them along his lips, that were white as the ball of an eye; and she made
+him drink drops of the juices of the herbs, wailing and swaying her body
+across him, as one that seeketh vainly to give brightness again to the
+flames of a dying fire.  But now his time was drawing nigh, and he was
+weak, and took her hand in his and gazed on her face, sighing, and said,
+'There is nothing shall keep me by thee now, O my betrothed, my
+beautiful!  Weep not, for it is the doing of fate, and not thy doing.  So
+ere I go, and the grave-cloth separates thy heart from my heart, listen
+to me.  Lo, that Jewel! it is the giver of years and of powers, and of
+loveliness beyond mortal, yet the wearing of it availeth not in the
+pursuit of happiness.  Now art thou Queen over the serpents of this lake:
+it was the Queen-serpent I slew, and her vengeance is on me here.  Now
+art thou mighty, O Bhanavar! and look to do well by thy tribe, and that
+from which I spring, recompensing my father for his loss, pouring
+ointment on his affliction, for great is the grief of the old man, and he
+loveth me, and is childless.'
+
+Then the youth fell back and was still; and Bhanavar put her ear to his
+mouth, and heard what seemed an inner voice murmuring in him, and it was
+of his infancy and his boyhood, and of his father the Emir's first gift
+to him, his horse Zoora, in old times.  Presently the youth revived
+somewhat, and looked upon her; but his sight was glazed with a film, and
+she sang her name to him ere he knew her, and the sad sweetness of her
+name filled his soul, and he replied to her with it weakly, like a far
+echo that groweth fainter, 'Bhanavar!  Bhanavar!  Bhanavar!'  Then a
+change came over him, and the pain of the poison and the passion of the
+death-throe, and he was wistful of her no more; but she lay by him,
+embracing him, and in the last violence of his anguish he hugged her to
+his breast.  Then it was over, and he sank.  And the twain were as a
+great wave heaving upon the shore; lo, part is wasted where it falleth;
+part draweth back into the waters.  So was it!
+
+Now the chill of dawn breathed blue on the lake and was astir among the
+dewy leaves of the wood, when Bhanavar arose from the body of the youth,
+and as she rose she saw that his mare Zoora, his father's first gift, was
+snuffing at the ear of her dead master, and pawing him.  At that sight
+the tears poured from her eyelids, and she sobbed out to the mare, 'O
+Zoora!  never mare bore nobler burden on her back than thou in Zurvan my
+betrothed.  Zoora! thou weepest, for death is first known to thee in the
+dearest thing that was thine; as to me, in the dearest that was mine!
+And O Zoora, steed of Zurvan my betrothed, there's no loveliness for us
+in life, for the loveliest is gone; and let us die, Zoora, mare of Zurvan
+my betrothed, for what is dying to us, O Zoora, who cherish beyond all
+that which death has taken?'
+
+So spake she to Zoora the mare, kissing her, and running her fingers
+through the long white mane of the mare.  Then she stooped to the body of
+her betrothed, and toiled with it to lift it across the crimson saddle-
+cloth that was on the back of Zoora; and the mare knelt to her, that she
+might lay on her back the body of Zurvan; when that was done, Bhanavar
+paced beside Zoora the mare, weeping and caressing her, reminding her of
+the deeds of Zurvan, and the battles she had borne him to, and his
+greatness and his gentleness.  And the mare went without leading.  It was
+broad light when they had passed the glade and the covert of the wood.
+Before them, between great mountains, glimmered a space of rolling grass
+fed to deep greenness by many brooks.  The shadow of a mountain was over
+it, and one slant of the rising sun, down a glade of the mountain,
+touched the green tent of the Emir, where it stood a little apart from
+the others of his tribe.  Goats and asses of the tribe were pasturing in
+the quiet, but save them nothing moved among the tents, and it was deep
+peacefulness.  Bhanavar led Zoora slowly before the tent of the Emir, and
+disburdened Zoora of the helpless weight, and spread the long fair limbs
+of the youth lengthwise across the threshold of the Emir's tent, sitting
+away from it with clasped hands, regarding it.  Ere long the Emir came
+forth, and his foot was on the body of his son, and he knew death on the
+chin and the eyes of Zurvan, his sole son.  Now the Emir was old, and
+with the shock of that sight the world darkened before him, and he gave
+forth a groan and stumbled over the sunken breast of Zurvan, and
+stretched over him as one without life.  When Bhanavar saw that old man
+stretched over the body of his son, she sickened, and her ear was filled
+with the wailings of grief that would arise, and she stood up and stole
+away from the habitations of the tribe, stricken with her guilt, and
+wandered beyond the mountains, knowing not whither she went, looking on
+no living thing, for the sight of a thing that moved was hateful to her,
+and all sounds were sounds of lamentation for a great loss.
+
+Now, she had wandered on alone two days and two nights, and nigh morn she
+was seized with a swoon of weariness, and fell forward with her face to
+the earth, and lay there prostrate, even as one that is adoring the
+shrine; and it was on the sands of the desert she was lying.  It chanced
+that the Chieftain of a desert tribe passed at midday by the spot, and
+seeing the figure of a damsel unshaded' by any shade of tree or herb or
+tent-covering, and prostrate on the sands, he reined his steed and leaned
+forward to her, and called to her.  Then as she answered nothing he
+dismounted, and thrust his arm softly beneath her and lifted her gently;
+and her swoon had the whiteness of death, so that he thought her dead
+verily, and the marvel of her great loveliness in death smote the heart
+on his ribs as with a blow, and the powers of life went from him a moment
+as he looked on her and the long dark wet lashes that clung to her
+colourless face, as at night in groves where the betrothed ones wander,
+the slender leaves of the acacia spread darkly over the full moon.  And
+he cried, ''Tis a loveliness that maketh the soul yearn to the cold bosom
+of death, so lovely, exceeding all that liveth, is she!'
+
+After he had contemplated her longwhile, he snatched his sight from her,
+and swung her swiftly on the back of his mare, and leaned her on one arm,
+and sped westward over the sands of the desert, halting not till he was
+in the hum of many tents, and the sun of that day hung a red half-circle
+across the sand.  He alighted before the tent of his mother, and sent
+women in to her.  When his mother came forth to the greetings of her son,
+he said no word, but pointed to the damsel where he had leaned her at the
+threshold of her tent.  His mother kissed him on the forehead, and turned
+her shoulder to peer upon the damsel.  But when she had close view of
+Bhanavar, she spat, and scattered her hair, and stamped, and cried aloud,
+'Away with her! this slut of darkness!  there's poison on her very
+skirts, and evil in the look of her.'
+
+Then said he, 'O Rukrooth, my mother! art thou lost to charity and the
+uses of kindliness and the laws of hospitality, that thou talkest this of
+the damsel, a stranger?  Take her now in, and if she be past help, as I
+fear; be it thy care to give her decent burial; and if she live, O my
+mother, tend her for the love of thy son, and for the love of him be
+gentle with her.'
+
+While he spake, Rukrooth his mother knelt over the damsel, as a cat that
+sniffeth the suspected dish; and she flashed her eyes back on him,
+exclaiming scornfully, 'So art thou befooled, and the poison is already
+in thee!  But I will not have her, O my son! and thou, Ruark, my son,
+neither shalt thou have her.  What!  will I not die to save thee from a
+harm?  Surely thy frown is little to me, my son, if I save thee from a
+harm; and the damsel here is--I shudder to think what; but never lay
+shadow across my threshold dark as this!'
+
+Now, Ruark gazed upon his mother, and upon Bhanavar, and the face of
+Bhanavar was as a babe in sleep, and his soul melted to the parted
+sweetness of her soft little curved red lips and her closed eyelids, and
+her innocent open hands, where she lay at the threshold of the tent,
+unconscious of hardness and the sayings of the unjust.  So he cried
+fiercely, 'No paltering, O Rukrooth, my mother: and if not to thy tent,
+then to mine!'
+
+When she heard him say that in the voice of his anger, Rukrooth fixed her
+eyes on him sorrowfully, and sighed, and went up to him and drew his head
+once against her heart, and retreated into the tent, bidding the women
+that were there bring in the body of the damsel.
+
+It was the morning of another day when Bhanavar awoke; and she awoke in a
+dream of Zoora, the mare of Zurvan her betrothed, that was dead, and the
+name of Zoora was on her tongue as she started up.  She was on a couch of
+silk and leopard-skins; at her feet a fair young girl with a fan of
+pheasant feathers.  She stared at the hangings of the tent, which were
+richer than those of her own tribe; the cloths, and the cushions, and the
+embroideries; and the strangeness of all was pain to her, she knew not
+why.  Then wept she bitterly, and with her tears the memory of what had
+been came back to her, and she opened her arms to take into them the
+little girl that fanned her, that she might love something and be beloved
+awhile; and the child sobbed with her.  After a time Bhanavar said,
+'Where am I, and amongst whom, my child, my sister?'
+
+And the child answered her, 'Surely in the tent of the mother of Ruark,
+the chief, even chief of the Beni-Asser, and he found thee in the desert,
+nigh dead.  'Tis so; and this morning will Ruark be gone to meet the
+challenge of Ebn Asrac, and they will fight at the foot of the Snow
+Mountains, and the shadow of yonder date-palm will be over our tent here
+at the hour they fight, and I shall sing for Ruark, and kneel here in the
+darkness of the shadow.'
+
+While the child was speaking there entered to them a tall aged woman,
+with one swathe of a turban across her long level brows; and she had hard
+black eyes, and close lips and a square chin; and it was the mother of
+Ruark.  She strode forward toward Bhanavar to greet her, and folded her
+legs before the damsel.  Presently she said, 'Tell me thy story, and of
+thy coming into the hands of Ruark my son.'
+
+Bhanavar shuddered.  So Rukrooth dismissed the little maiden from the
+chamber of the tent, and laid her left hand on one arm of Bhanavar, and
+said, 'I would know whence comest thou, that we may deal well by thee and
+thy people that have lost thee.'
+
+The touch of a hand was as the touch of a corpse to Bhanavar, and the
+damsel was constrained to speak by a power she knew not of, and she told
+all to Rukrooth of what had been, the great misery, and the wickedness
+that was hers.  Then Ruark's mother took hold of Bhanavar a strong grasp,
+and eyed her long, piteously, and with reproach, and rocked forward and
+back, and kept rocking to and fro, crying at intervals, 'O Ruark! my son!
+my son! this feared I, and thou art not the first! and I saw it, I saw
+it!  Well-away! why came she in thy way, why, Ruark, my son, my fire-eye?
+Canst thou be saved by me, fated that thou art, thou fair-face?  And wilt
+thou be saved by me, my son, ere thy story be told in tears as this one,
+that is as thine to me?  And thou wilt seize a jewel, Ruark, O thou soul
+of wrath, my son, my dazzling Chief, and seize it to wear it, and think
+it bliss, this lovely jewel; but 'tis an anguish endless and for ever, my
+son!  Woe's me! an anguish is she without end.'
+
+Rukrooth continued moaning, and the thought that was in the mother of
+Ruark struck Bhanavar like a light in the land of despair that darkly
+illumineth the dreaded gulfs and abysses of the land, and she knew
+herself black in evil; and the scourge of her guilt was upon her, and she
+cursed herself before Rukrooth, and fawned before her, abasing her body.
+So Rukrooth was drawn to the damsel by the violence of her self-accusing
+and her abandonment to grief, and lifted her, and comforted her, and
+after awhile they had gentle speech together, and the two women opened
+their hearts and wept.  Then it was agreed between them that Bhanavar
+should depart from the encampment of the tribe before the return of
+Ruark, and seek shelter among her own people again, and aid them and the
+tribe of Zurvan, her betrothed, by the might of the Jewel which was hers,
+fulfilling the desire of Zurvan.  The mind of the damsel was lowly, and
+her soul yearned for the blessing of Rukrooth.
+
+Darkness hung over the tent from the shadow of the date-palm when
+Bhanavar departed, and the blessing of Rukrooth was on her head.  She
+went forth fairly mounted on a fresh steed; beside her two warriors of
+them that were left to guard the encampment of the tribe of Ruark in his
+absence; and Rukrooth watched at the threshold of her tent for the coming
+of Ruark.
+
+When it was middle night, and the splendour of the moon was beaming on
+the edge of the desert, Bhanavar alighted to rest by the twigs of a
+tamarisk that stood singly on the sands.  The two warriors tied the
+fetlocks of their steeds, and spread shawls for her, and watched over her
+while she slept.  And the damsel dreamed, and the roaring of the lion was
+hoarse in her dream, and it was to her as were she the red whirlwind of
+the desert before whom all bowed in terror, the Arab, the wild horsemen,
+and the caravans of pilgrimage; and none could stay her, neither could
+she stay herself, for the curse of Allah was on men by reason of her
+guilt; and she went swinging great folds of darkness across kingdoms and
+empires of earth where joy was and peace of spirit; and in her track
+amazement and calamity, and the whitened bones of noble youths, valorous
+chieftains.  In that horror of her dream she stood up suddenly, and
+thrust forth her hands as to avert an evil, and advanced a step; and with
+the act her dream was cloven and she awoke, and lo! it was sunrise; and
+where had been two warriors of the Beni-Asser, were now five, and besides
+her own steed five others, one the steed of Ruark, and Ruark with them
+that watched over her: pale was the visage of the Chief.  Ruark eyed
+Bhanavar, and signalled to his followers, and they, when they had lifted
+the damsel to her steed and placed her in their front, mounted likewise,
+and flourished their lances with cries, and jerked their heels to the
+flanks of their steeds, and stretched forward till their beards were
+mixed with the tossing manes, and the dust rose after them crimson in the
+sun.  So they coursed away, speeding behind their Chief and Bhanavar;
+sweet were the desert herbs under their crushing hooves!  Ere the shadow
+of the acacia measured less than its height they came upon a spring of
+silver water, and Ruark leaped from his steed, and Bhanavar from hers,
+and they performed their ablutions by that spring, and ate and drank, and
+watered their steeds.  While they were there Bhanavar lifted her eyes to
+Ruark, and said, 'Whither takest thou me, O my Chief?'
+
+His brow was stern, and he answered, 'Surely to the dwelling of thy
+tribe.'
+
+Then she wept, and pulled her veil close, murmuring, ''Tis well!'
+
+They spake no further, and pursued their journey toward the mountains and
+across the desert that was as a sea asleep in the blazing heat, and the
+sun till his setting threw no shade upon the sands bigger than what was
+broad above them.  By the beams of the growing moon they entered the
+first gorge of the mountains.  Here they relaxed the swiftness of their
+pace, picking their way over broken rocks and stunted shrubs, and the
+mesh of spotted creeping plants; all around them in shadow a freshness of
+noisy rivulets and cool scents of flowers, asphodel and rose blooming in
+plots from the crevices of the crags.  These, as the troop advanced,
+wound and widened, gradually receding, and their summits, which were
+silver in the moonlight, took in the distance a robe of purple, and the
+sides of the mountains were rounded away in purple beyond a space of
+emerald pasture.  Now, Ruark beheld the heaviness of Bhanavar, and that
+she drooped in her seat, and he halted her by a cave at the foot of the
+mountains, browed with white broom.  Before it, over grass and cresses,
+ran a rill, a branch from others, larger ones, that went hurrying from
+the heights to feed the meadows below, and Bhanavar dipped her hand in
+the rill, and thought, 'I am no more as thou, rill of the mountain, but a
+desert thing!  Thy way is forward, thy end before thee; but I go this way
+and that; my end is dark to me; not a life is mine that will have its
+close kissing the cold cheeks of the saffron-crocus.  Cold art thou, and
+I--flames!  They that lean to thee are refreshed, they that touch me
+perish.' Then she looked forth on the stars that were above the purple
+heights, and the blushes of inner heaven that streamed up the sky, and a
+fear of meeting the eyes of her kindred possessed her, and she cried out
+to Ruark, 'O Chief of the Beni-Asser, must this be? and is there no help
+for it, but that I return among them that look on me basely?'
+
+Ruark stooped to her and said, 'Tell me thy name.'
+
+She answered, 'Bhanavar is my name with that people.'
+
+And he whispered, 'Surely when they speak of thee they say not Bhanavar
+solely, but Bhanavar the Beautiful?'
+
+She started and sought the eye of the Chief, and it was fixed on her face
+in a softened light, as if his soul had said that thing.  Then she
+sighed, and exclaimed, 'Unhappy are the beautiful! born to misery!  Allah
+dressed them in his grace and favour for their certain wretchedness!  Lo,
+their countenances are as the sun, their existence as the desert; barren
+are they in fruits and waters, a snare to themselves and to others!'
+
+Now, the Chief leaned to her yet nearer, saying, 'Show me the Jewel.'
+
+Bhanavar caught up her hands and clenched them, and she cried bitterly,
+''Tis known to thee!  She told thee, and there be none that know it not!'
+
+Arising, she thrust her hand into her bosom, and held forth the Jewel in
+the palm of her white hand.  When Ruark beheld the marvel of the Jewel,
+and the redness moving in it as of a panting heart, and the flashing eye
+of fire that it was, and all its glory, he cried, 'It was indeed a Jewel
+for queens to covet from the Serpent, and a prize the noblest might risk
+all to win as a gift for thee.'
+
+Then she said, 'Thy voice is friendly with me, O Ruark! and thou scornest
+not the creature that I am.  Counsel me as to my dealing with the Jewel.'
+
+Surely the eyes of the Chief met the eyes of Bhanavar as when the
+brightest stars of midnight are doubled in a clear dark lake, and he sang
+in measured music:
+
+         'Shall I counsel the moon in her ascending?
+     Stay under that tall palm-tree through the night;
+          Rest on the mountain-slope
+          By the couching antelope,
+     O thou enthroned supremacy of light!
+        And for ever the lustre thou art lending,
+     Lean on the fair long brook that leaps and leaps,--
+          Silvery leaps and falls.
+          Hang by the mountain walls,
+     Moon! and arise no more to crown the steeps,
+        For a danger and dolour is thy wending!
+
+And, O Bhanavar, Bhanavar the Beautiful! shall I counsel thee, moon of
+loveliness,--bright, full, perfect moon!--counsel thee not to ascend and
+be seen and worshipped of men, sitting above them in majesty, thou that
+art thyself the Jewel beyond price?  Wah!  What if thou cast it from
+thee?--thy beauty remaineth!'
+
+And Bhanavar smote her palms in the moonlight, and exclaimed, 'How then
+shall I escape this in me, which is a curse to them that approach me?'
+
+And he replied:
+
+          Long we the less for the pearl of the sea
+          Because in its depths there 's the death we flee?
+          Long we the less, the less, woe's me!
+          Because thou art deathly,--the less for thee?
+
+She sang aloud among the rocks and the caves and the illumined waters:
+
+          Destiny! Destiny! why am I so dark?
+            I that have beauty and love to be fair.
+          Destiny! Destiny! am I but a spark
+            Track'd under heaven in flames and despair?
+          Destiny! Destiny! why am I desired
+            Thus like a poisonous fruit, deadly sweet?
+          Destiny! Destiny! lo, my soul is tired,
+            Make me thy plaything no more, I entreat!
+
+Ruark laughed low, and said, 'What is this dread of Rukrooth my mother
+which weigheth on thee but silliness!  For she saw thee willing to do
+well by her; and thou with thy Jewel, O Bhanavar, do thou but well by
+thyself, and there will be no woman such as thou in power and excellence
+of endowments, as there is nowhere one such as thou in beauty.'  Then he
+sighed to her, 'Dare I look up to thee, O my Queen of Serpents?'  And he
+breathed as one that is losing breath, and the words came from him,
+'My soul is thine!'
+
+When she heard him say this, great trouble was on the damsel, for his
+voice was not the voice of Zurvan her betrothed; and she remembered the
+sorrow of Rukrooth.  She would have fled from him, but a dread of the
+displeasure of the Chief restrained her, knowing Ruark a soul of wrath.
+Her eyelids dropped and the Chief gazed on her eagerly, and sang in a
+passion of praises of her; the fires of his love had a tongue, his speech
+was a torrent of flame at the feet of the damsel.  And Bhanavar
+exclaimed, 'Oh, what am I, what am I, who have slain my love, my lover!--
+that one should love me and call on me for love?  My life is a long
+weeping for him!  Death is my wooer!'
+
+Ruark still pleaded with her, and she said in fair gentleness, 'Speak not
+of it now in the freshness of my grief!  Other times and seasons are
+there.  My soul is but newly widowed!'
+
+Fierce was the eye of the Chief, and he sprang up, crying, 'By the life
+of my head, I know thy wiles and the reading of these delays: but I'll
+never leave thee, nor lose sight of thee, Bhanavar!  And think not to fly
+from me, thou subtle, brilliant Serpent! for thy track is my track, and
+thy condition my condition, and thy fate my fate.  By Allah! this is so.'
+
+Then he strode from her swiftly, and called to his Arabs.  They had
+kindled a fire to roast the flesh of a buffalo, slaughtered by them from
+among a herd, and were laughing and singing beside the flames of the
+fire.  So by the direction of their Chief the Arabs brought slices of
+sweet buffalo-flesh to Bhanavar, with cakes of grain: and Bhanavar ate
+alone, and drank from the waters before her.  Then they laid for her a
+couch within the cave, and the aching of her spirit was lulled, and she
+slept there a dreamless sleep till morning.
+
+By the morning light Bhanavar looked abroad for the Chief, and he was
+nowhere by.  A pang of violent hope struck through her, and she pressed
+her bosom, praying he might have left her, and climbed the clefts and
+ledges of the mountain to search over the fair expanse of pasture beyond,
+for a trace of him departing.  The sun was on the heads of the heavy
+flowers, and a flood of gold down the gorges, and a delicate rose hue on
+the distant peaks and upper dells of snow, which were as a crown to the
+scene she surveyed; but no sight of Ruark had she.  And now she was
+beginning to rejoice, but on a sudden her eye caught far to east a
+glimpse of something in motion across an even slope of the lower hills
+leaning to the valley; and it was a herd that rushed forward, like a
+black torrent of the mountains flinging foam this way and that, and after
+the herd and at the sides of the herd she distinguished the white cloaks
+and scarfs and glittering steel of the Arabs of Ruark.  Presently she saw
+a horseman break from the rest, and race in a line toward her.  She knew
+this one for Ruark, and sighed and descended slowly to meet him.  The
+greeting of the Chief was sharp, his manner wild, and he said little ere
+he said, 'I will see thee under the light of the Jewel, so tie it in a
+band and set it on thy brow, Bhanavar!'
+
+Her mouth was open to intercede with his desire, but his forehead became
+black as night, and he shouted in the thunder of his lion-voice, 'Do
+this!'
+
+She took the Jewel from its warm bed in her bosom, and held it, and got
+together a band of green weeds, and set it in the middle of the band, and
+tied the band on her brow, and lifted her countenance to the Chief.
+Ruark stood back from her and gazed on her; and he would have veiled his
+sight from her, but his hand fell.  Then the might of her loveliness
+seized Bhanavar likewise, and the full orbs of her eyes glowed on the
+Chief as on a mirror,
+and she moved her serpent figure scornfully, and smiled, saying, 'Is it
+well?'
+
+And he, when he could speak, replied, ''Tis well!  I have seen thee! for
+now can I die this day, if it be that I am to die.  And well it is! for
+now know I there is truly no place but the tomb can hold me from thee!'
+
+Bhanavar put the Jewel from her brow into her bosom, and questioned him,
+'What is thy dread this day, O my Chief?'
+
+He answered her gravely, 'I have seen Rukrooth my mother while I slept;
+and she was weeping, weeping by a stream, yea, a stream of blood; and it
+was a stream that flowed in a hundred gushes from her own veins.  The sun
+of this dawn now, seest thou not? 'tis overcrimson; the vulture hangeth
+low down yonder valley.'  And he cried to her, 'Haste! mount with me; for
+I have told Rukrooth a thing; and I know that woman crafty in the
+thwarting of schemes; such a fox is she where aught accordeth not with
+her forecastings, and the judgment of her love for me!  By Allah!  'twere
+well we clash not; for that I will do I do, and that she will do doth
+she.'
+
+So the twain mounted their steeds, and Ruark gathered his Arabs and
+placed them, some in advance, some on either side of Bhanavar; and they
+rode forward to the head of the valley, and across the meadows, through
+the blushing crowds of flowers, baths of freshest scents, cool breezes
+that awoke in the nostrils of the mares neighings of delight; and these
+pranced and curvetted and swung their tails, and gave expression to their
+joy in many graceful fashions; but a gloom was on Ruark, and a quick fire
+in his falcon-eye, and he rode with heels alert on the flanks of his
+mare, dashing onward to right and left, as do they that beat the jungle
+for the crouching tiger.  Once, when he was well-nigh half a league in
+front, he wheeled his mare, and raced back full on Bhanavar, grasping her
+bridle, and hissing between his teeth, 'Not a soul shall have thee save
+I: by the tomb of my fathers, never, while life is with us!'
+
+And he taunted her with bitter names, and was as one in the madness of
+intoxication, drunken with the aspect of her matchless beauty and with
+exceeding love for her.  And Bhanavar knew that the dread of a mishap was
+on the mind of the Chief.
+
+Now, the space of pasture was behind them a broad lake of gold and
+jasper, and they entered a region of hills, heights, and fastnesses,
+robed in forests that rose in rounded swells of leafage, each over each--
+above all points of snow that were as flickering silver flames in the
+farthest blue.  This was the country of Bhanavar, and she gazed
+mournfully on the glades of golden green and the glens of iron blackness,
+and the wild flowers, wild blossoms, and weeds well known to her that
+would not let her memory rest, and were wistful of what had been.  And
+she thought, 'My sisters tend the flocks, my mother spinneth with the
+maidens of the tribe, my father hunteth; how shall I come among them but
+strange?  Coldly will they regard me; I shall feel them shudder when they
+take me to their bosoms.'
+
+She looked on Ruark to speak with him, but the mouth of the Chief was set
+and white; and even while she looked, cries of treason and battle arose
+from the Arabs that were ahead, hidden by a branching wind of the way
+round a mountain slant.  Then the eyes of the Chief reddened, his
+nostrils grew wide, and the darkness of his face was as flame mixed with
+smoke, and he seized Bhanavar and hastened onward, and lo! yonder were
+his men overmatched, and warriors of the mountains bursting on them from
+an ambush on all sides.  Ruark leapt in his seat, and the light of combat
+was on him, and he dug his knees into his mare, and shouted the war-cry
+of his tribe, lifting his hands as it were to draw down wrath from the
+very heavens, and rushed to the encounter.  Says the poet:
+
+     Hast thou seen the wild herd by the jungle galloping close?
+     With a thunder of hooves they trample what heads may oppose:
+     Terribly, crushingly, tempest-like, onward they sweep:
+     But a spring from the reeds, and the panther is sprawling in air,
+     And with muzzle to dust and black beards foam-lash'd, here and there,
+     Scatter'd they fly, crimson-eyed, track'd with blood to the deep.
+
+Such was the onset of Ruark, his stroke the stroke of death; and ere the
+echoes had ceased rolling from that cry of his, the mountain-warriors
+were scattered before him on the narrow way, hurled down the scrub of the
+mountain, even as dead leaves and loosened stones; so like an arm of
+lightning was the Chief!
+
+Now Ruark pursued them, and was lost to Bhanavar round a slope of the
+mountain.  She quickened her pace to mark him in the glory of the battle,
+and behold! a sudden darkness enveloped her, and she felt herself in the
+swathe of tightened folds, clasped in an arm, and borne rapidly she knew
+not whither, for she could hear and see nothing.  It was to her as were
+she speeding constantly downward in darkness to the lower realms of the
+Genii of the Caucasus, and every sense, and even that of fear, was
+stunned in her.  How long an interval had elapsed she knew not, when the
+folds were unwound; but it was light of day, and the faces of men, and
+they were warriors that were about her, warriors of the mountain; but of
+Ruark and his Arabs no voice.  So she said to them, 'What do ye with me?'
+
+And one among them, that was a youth of dignity and grace, and a
+countenance like morning on the mountains, answered, 'The will of
+Rukrooth, O lady! and it is the plight of him we bow to with Rukrooth,
+mother of the Desert-Chief.'
+
+She cried, 'Is he here, the Prince, that I may speak with him?'
+
+The same young warrior made answer, 'Not so; forewarned was he, and well
+for him!'
+
+Bhanavar drew her robe about her and was mute.  Ere the setting of the
+moon they journeyed on with her; and continued so three days and nights
+through the defiles and ravines and matted growths of the mountains.  On
+the fourth dawn they were on the summit of a lofty mountain-rise; below
+them the sun, shooting a current of gold across leagues of sea.  Then he
+that had spoken with Bhanavar said, 'A sail will come,' and a sail came
+from under the sun.  Scarce had the ship grated shore when the warriors
+lifted Bhanavar, and waded through the water with her, and placed her
+unwetted in the ship, and one, the fair youth among the warriors, sprang
+on board with her, remaining by her.  So the captain pushed off, and the
+wind filled the sails, and Bhanavar was borne over the lustre of the sea,
+that was as a changing opal in its lustre, even as a melted jewel flowing
+from the fingers of the maker, the Almighty One.  The ship ceased not
+sailing till they came to a narrow strait, where the sea was but a river
+between fair sloping hills alight with towers and palaces, opening a way
+to a great city that was in its radiance over the waters of the sea as
+the aspect of myriad sheeny white doves breasting the wave.  Hitherto the
+young warrior had held aloof in coldness of courtesy from Bhanavar; but
+now he sat by her, and said, 'The bond between my prince and Rukrooth is
+accomplished, and it was to snatch thee from the Chief of the Beni-Asser
+and bring thee even to this city.'
+
+Bhanavar exclaimed, 'Allah be praised in all things, and his will be
+done!'
+
+The youth continued, 'Thou art alone here, O lady, exposed to the perils
+of loneliness; surely it were well if I linger with thee awhile, and see
+to thy welfare in this city, even as a brother with a sister; and I will
+deal honourably by thee.'
+
+Bhanavar looked on the young warrior and blushed at his exceeding
+sweetness with her; the soft freshness of his voice was to her as the
+blossom-laden breeze in the valleys of the mountains, and she breathed
+low the words of her gratitude, saying, 'If I am not a burden, let this
+be so.'
+
+Then said he, 'Know me by my name, which is Almeryl; and that we seem
+indeed of one kin, make known unto me thine.'
+
+She replied, 'Ill-omened is it, this name of Bhanavar!'
+
+The youth among warriors gazed on her a moment with the fluttering eye of
+bashfulness, and said, 'Can they that have marked thee call thee other
+than Bhanavar the Beautiful?'
+
+She remembered that Ruark had spoken in like manner, and the curse of her
+beauty smote her, and she thought, 'This fair youth, he hath not a mother
+to watch over him and ward off souls of evil.  I dread there will come a
+mishap to him through me; Allah shield him from it!'  And she sought to
+dissuade him from resting by her, but he cried, ''Tis but a choice to
+dwell with thee or with the dogs in the street outside thy door, O
+Bhanavar!'
+
+Now, the ship sailed close up to the quay, and cast anchor there in the
+midst of other ships of merchandise.  Almeryl then threw a robe over his
+mountain dress and spoke with the captain apart, and he and Bhanavar took
+leave of the captain, and landed on the quay among the porters, and of
+these one stepped forward to them and shouted cheerily, 'Where be the
+burdens and the bales, O ye, fair couple fashioned in the eye of elegant
+proportions?  Ye twin palm-trees, male and female!  Wullahy! broad is the
+back of your servant.'
+
+Almeryl beckoned to him that he should follow them, and he followed them,
+blessing the wind that had brought them to that city and the day.  So
+they passed through the streets and lanes of the city, and the porter
+pointed out this house and that house wanting an occupant, and Almeryl
+fixed on one in an open thoroughfare that had before it a grass-plot, and
+behind a garden with fountains and flowers, and grass-knolls shaded by
+trees; and he paid down the half of its price, and had it furnished
+before nightfall sumptuously, and women in it to wait on Bhanavar, and
+stuffs and goods, and scents for the bath,--all luxuries whatsoever that
+tradesmen and merchants there could give in exchange for gold.  Then
+Almeryl dismissed the porter in Allah's name, and gladdened his spirit
+with a gift over the due of his hire that exalted him in the eyes of the
+porter, and the porter went from him, exclaiming, 'In extremity Ukleet is
+thy slave!' and he sang:
+
+     Shouldst thou see a slim youth with a damsel arriving,
+     Be sure 'tis the hour when thy fortune is thriving;
+     A generous fee makes the members so supple
+     That over the world they could carry this couple.
+
+Now so it was that the youth Almeryl and the damsel Bhanavar abode in the
+city they had come to weeks and months, and life to either of them as the
+flowing of a gentle stream, even as brother and sister lived they,
+chastely, and with temperate feasting.  Surely the youth loved her with a
+great love, and the heart of Bhanavar turned not from him, and was won
+utterly by his gentleness and nobleness and devotion; and they relied on
+each other's presence for any joy, and were desolate in absence, as the
+poet says:
+
+               When we must part, love,
+               Such is my smart, love,
+               Sweetness is savourless,
+               Fairness is favourless!
+               But when in sight, love,
+               We two unite, love,
+               Earth has no sour to me;
+               Life is a flower to me!
+
+And with the increase of every day their passion increased, and the
+revealing light in their eyes brightened and was humid, as is sung by him
+that luted to the rage of hearts:
+
+               Evens star yonder
+                 Comes like a crown on us,
+               Larger and fonder
+                 Grows its orb down on us;
+               So, love, my love for thee
+                 Blossoms increasingly;
+               So sinks it in the sea,
+                 Waxing unceasingly.
+
+On a night, when the singing-girls had left them, the youth could contain
+himself no more, and caught the two hands of Bhanavar in his, saying,
+'This that is in my soul for thee thou knowest, O Bhanavar!  and 'tis
+spoken when I move and when I breathe, O my loved one!  Tell me then the
+cause of thy shunning me whenever I would speak of it, and be plain with
+thee.'
+
+For a moment Bhanavar sought to release herself from his hold, but the
+love in his eyes entangled her soul as in a net, and she sank forward to
+him, and sighed under his chin, ''Twas indeed my very love of thee that
+made me.'
+
+The twain embraced and kissed a long kiss, and leaned sideways together,
+and Bhanavar said, 'Hear me, what I am.'
+
+Then she related the story of the Serpent and the Jewel, and of the death
+of her betrothed.  When it was ended, Almeryl cried, 'And was this all?--
+this that severed us?'  And he said, 'Hear what I am.'
+
+So he told Bhanavar how Rukrooth, the mother of Ruark, had sent
+messengers to the Prince his father, warning him of the passage of Ruark
+through the mountains with one a Queen of Serpents, a sorceress, that had
+bewitched him and enthralled him in a mighty love for her, to the ruin of
+Ruark; and how the Chief was on his way with her to demand her in
+marriage at the hands of her parents; and the words of Rukrooth were, 'By
+the service that was between thee and my husband, and by the death he
+died, O Prince, rescue the Chief my son from this damsel, and entrap her
+from him, and have her sent even to the city of the inland sea, for no
+less a distance than that keepeth Ruark from her.'
+
+And Almeryl continued, 'I questioned the messengers myself, and they told
+me the marvel of thy loveliness and the peril to him that looked on it,
+so I swore there was no power should keep me from a sight of thee, O my
+loved one! my prize! my life! my sleek antelope of the hills!  Surely
+when my father appointed the warriors to lie in wait for thy coming, I
+slipped among them, so that they thought it ordered by him I should head
+them.  The rest is known to thee, O my fountain of blissfulness! but the
+treachery to Ruark was the treachery of Ebn Asrac, not of such warriors
+as we; and I would have fallen on Ebn Asrac, had not Ruark so routed that
+man without faith.  'Twas all as I have said, blessed be Allah and his
+decrees!'
+
+Bhanavar gazed on her beloved, and the bridal dew overflowed her
+underlids, and she loosed her hair to let it flow, part over her
+shoulders, part over his, and in sighs that were the measure of music she
+sang:
+
+          I thought not to love again!
+            But now I love as I loved not before;
+          I love not; I adore!
+     O my beloved, kiss, kiss me! waste thy kisses like a rain.
+          Are not thy red lips fain?
+            Oh, and so softly they greet!
+            Am I not sweet?
+       Sweet must I be for thee, or sweet in vain:
+          Sweet to thee only, my dear love!
+       The lamps and censers sink, but cannot cheat
+          These eyes of thine that shoot above
+          Trembling lustres of the dove!
+       A darkness drowns all lustres: still I see
+            Thee, my love, thee!
+       Thee, my glory of gold, from head to feet!
+     Oh, how the lids of the world close quite when our lips meet!
+
+Almeryl strained her to him, and responded:
+
+          My life was midnight on the mountain side;
+            Cold stars were on the heights:
+          There, in my darkness, I had lived and died,
+            Content with nameless lights.
+          Sudden I saw the heavens flush with a beam,
+            And I ascended soon,
+          And evermore over mankind supreme,
+            Stood silver in the moon.
+
+And he fell playfully into a new metre, singing:
+
+          Who will paint my beloved
+            In musical word or colour?
+          Earth with an envy is moved:
+            Sea-shells and roses she brings,
+            Gems from the green ocean-springs,
+            Fruits with the fairy bloom-dews,
+            Feathers of Paradise hues,
+            Waters with jewel-bright falls,
+            Ore from the Genii-halls:
+          All in their splendour approved;
+          All; but, match'd with my beloved,
+            Darker, and denser, and duller.
+
+Then she kissed him for that song, and sang:
+
+          Once to be beautiful was my pride,
+            And I blush'd in love with my own bright brow:
+          Once, when a wooer was by my side,
+            I worshipp'd the object that had his vow:
+          Different, different, different now,
+            Different now is my beauty to me:
+          Different, different, different now!
+            For I prize it alone because prized by thee.
+
+Almeryl stretched his arm to the lattice, and drew it open, letting in
+the soft night wind, and the sound of the fountain and the bulbul and the
+beam of the stars, and versed to her in the languor of deep love:
+
+          Whether we die or we live,
+            Matters it now no more:
+          Life has nought further to give:
+            Love is its crown and its core.
+          Come to us either, we're rife,--
+            Death or life!
+
+          Death can take not away,
+            Darkness and light are the same:
+          We are beyond the pale ray,
+            Wrapt in a rosier flame:
+          Welcome which will to our breath;
+            Life or death!
+
+So did these two lovers lute and sing in the stillness of the night,
+pouring into each other's ears melodies from the new sea of fancy and
+feeling that flowed through them.
+
+Ere they ceased their sweet interchange of tenderness, which was but one
+speech from one soul, a glow of light ran up the sky, and the edge of a
+cloud was fired; and in the blooming of dawn Almeryl hung over Bhanavar,
+and his heart ached to see the freshness of her wondrous loveliness; and
+he sang, looking on her:
+
+          The rose is living in her cheeks,
+            The lily in her rounded chin;
+          She speaks but when her whole soul speaks,
+            And then the two flow out and in,
+          And mix their red and white to make
+            The hue for which I'd Paradise forsake.
+
+          Her brow from her black falling hair
+            Ascends like morn: her nose is clear
+          As morning hills, and finely fair
+            With pearly nostrils curving near
+          The red bow of her upper lip;
+            Her bosom's the white wave beneath the ship.
+
+          The fair full earth, the enraptured skies,
+            She images in constant play:
+          Night and the stars are in her eyes,
+            But her sweet face is beaming day,
+          A bounteous interblush of flowers:
+            A dewy brilliance in a dale of bowers.
+
+Then he said, 'And this morning shall our contract of marriage be written
+and witnessed?'
+
+She answered, 'As my lord willeth; I am his.'
+
+Said he, 'And it is thy desire?'
+
+She nestled to him and dinted his bare arm with the pearls of her mouth
+for a reply.
+
+So that morning their contract of marriage was written, and witnessed by
+the legal number of witnesses in the presence of the Cadi, with his
+license on it endorsed; and Bhanavar was the bride of Almeryl, he her
+husband.  Never was youth blessed in a bride like that youth!
+
+Now, the twain lived together the circle of a full year of delightful
+marriage, and love lessened not in them, but was as the love of the first
+day.  Little cared they, having each other, for the loneliness of their
+dwelling in that city, where they knew none save the porter Ukleet, who
+went about their commissions.  Sometimes to amuse themselves with his
+drolleries, they sent for him, and were bountiful with him, and made him
+drink with them on the lawn of their garden leaning to an inlet of the
+sea; and then he would entertain them with all the scandal and gossip of
+the city, and its little folk and great.  When he was outrageously
+extravagant in these stories of his, Bhanavar exclaimed, 'Are such
+things, now? can it be true?'
+
+And he nodded in his conceit, and replied loftily, ''Tis certain, O my
+Prince and Princess! ye be from the mountains, unused to the follies and
+dissipations of men where they herd; and ye know them not, men!'
+
+The lamps being lit in the garden to the edges of the water, where they
+lay one evening, Ukleet, who had been in his briskest mood, became grave,
+and put his forefinger to the side of his nose and began, 'Hear ye aught
+of the great tidings?  Wullahy!  no other than the departure of the wife
+of Boolp, the broker, into darkness.  'Tis of Boolp ye hire this house,
+and had ye a hundred houses in this city ye might have had them from
+Boolp the broker, he that's rich; and glory to them whom Allah
+prospereth, say I!  And I mention this matter, for 'tis certain now Boolp
+will take another wife to him to comfort him, for there be two things
+beloved of Boolp, and therein manifesteth he taste and the discernment of
+excellence, and what is approved; and of these two things let the love of
+his hoards of the yellow-skinned treasure go first, and after that
+attachment to the silver-skinned of creation, the fair, the rapturous;
+even to them!  So by this see ye not Boolp will yearn in his soul for
+another spouse?  Now, O ye well-matched pair! what a chance were this,
+knew ye but a damsel of the mountains, exquisite in symmetry, a moon to
+enrapture the imagination of Boolp, and in the nature of things herit his
+possessions! for Boolp is an old man, even very old.'
+
+They laughed, and cried, 'We know not of such a damsel, and the broker
+must go unmarried for us.'
+
+When next Ukleet sat before them, Almeryl took occasion to speak of Boolp
+again, and said, 'This broker, O Ukleet, is he also a lender of money?'
+
+Ukleet replied, 'O my Prince, he is or he is not: 'tis of the maybes.  I
+wot truly Boolp is one that baiteth the hook of an emergency.'
+
+The brows of the Prince were downcast, and he said no more; but on the
+following morning he left Bhanavar early under a pretext, and sallied
+forth from the house of their abode alone.
+
+Since their union in that city they had not been once apart, and Bhanavar
+grieved and thought, 'Waneth his love for me?' and she called her women
+to her, and dressed in this dress and that dress, and was satisfied with
+none.  The dews of the bath stood cold upon her, and she trembled, and
+fled from mirror to mirror, and in each she was the same surpassing
+vision of loveliness.  Then her women held a glass to her, and she
+examined herself closely, if there might be a fleck upon her anywhere,
+and all was as the snow of the mountains on her round limbs sloping in
+the curves of harmony, and the faint rose of the dawn on slants of snow
+was their hue.  Twining her fingers and sighing, she thought, 'It is not
+that! he cannot but think me beautiful.' She smiled a melancholy smile at
+her image in the glass, exclaiming, 'What availeth it, thy beauty? for he
+is away and looketh not on thee, thou vain thing!  And what of thy
+loveliness if the light illumine it not, for he is the light to thee,
+and it is darkness when he's away.'
+
+Suddenly she thought, 'What's that which needeth to light it no other
+light?  I had well-nigh forgotten it in my bliss, the Jewel!'  Then she
+went to a case of ebony-wood, where she kept the Jewel, and drew it
+forth, and shone in the beam of a pleasant imagination, thinking, ''Twill
+surprise him!'  And she robed herself in a robe of saffron, and set
+lesser gems of the diamond and the emerald in the braid of her hair, and
+knotted the Serpent Jewel firmly in a band of gold-threaded tissue, and
+had it woven in her hair among the braids.  In this array she awaited his
+coming, and pleased her mind with picturing his astonishment and the joy
+that would be his.  Mute were the women who waited on her, for in their
+lives they had seen no such sight as Bhanavar beneath the beams of the
+Jewel, and the whole chamber was aglow with her.
+
+Now, in her anxiety she sent them one and one repeatedly to look forth at
+the window for the coming of the Prince.  So, when he came not she went
+herself to look forth, and stretched her white neck beyond the casement.
+While her head was exposed, she heard a cry of some one from the house in
+the street opposite, and Bhanavar beheld in the house of the broker an
+old wrinkled fellow that gesticulated to her in a frenzy.  She snatched
+her veil down and drew in her head in anger at him, calling to her maids,
+'What is yonder hideous old dotard?'
+
+And they answered, laughing, ''Tis indeed Boolp the broker, O fair
+mistress and mighty!'
+
+To divert herself she made them tell her of Boolp, and they told her a
+thousand anecdotes of the broker, and verses of him, and the constancy of
+his amorous condition, and his greediness.  And Bhanavar was beguiled of
+her impatience till it was evening, and the Prince returned to her.  So
+they embraced, and she greeted him as usual, waiting what he would say,
+searching his countenance for a token of wonderment; but the youth knew
+not that aught was added to her beauty, for he looked nowhere save in her
+eyes.  Bhanavar was nigh weeping with vexation, and pushed him from her,
+and chid him with lack of love and weariness of her; and the eye of the
+Prince rose to her brow to read it, and he saw the Jewel.  Almeryl
+clapped his hands, crying, 'Wondrous!  And this thy surprise for me, my
+fond one? beloved of mine!'  Then he gazed on her a space, and said,
+'Knowest thou, thou art terrible in thy beauty, Bhanavar, and hast the
+face of lightning under that Jewel of the Serpent?'
+
+She kissed him, whispering, 'Not lightning to thee!  Yet lovest thou
+Bhanavar?'
+
+He replied, 'Surely so; and all save Bhanavar in this world is the
+darkness of oblivion to me.'
+
+When it was the next morning, Almeryl rose to go forth again.  Ere he had
+passed the curtain of the chamber Bhanavar caught him by the arm, and she
+was trembling violently.  Her visage was a wild inquiry: 'Thou goest?--
+and again?  There is something hidden from me!'
+
+Almeryl took her to his heart, and caressed her with fond flatteries,
+saying, 'Ask but what is beating under these two pomegranates, and thou
+learnest all of me.'
+
+But she stamped her foot, crying, 'No! no! I will hear it! There's a
+mystery.'
+
+So he said, 'Well, then, it is this only; small matter enough.  I have a
+business with the captain of the vessel that brought us hither, and I
+must see him ere he setteth sail; no other than that, thou jealous,
+watchful star!  Pierce me with thine eyes; it is no other than that.'
+
+She levelled her lids at him till her lustrous black eyelashes were as
+arrows, and mimicked him softly, 'No other than that?'
+
+And he replied, 'Even so.'
+
+Then she clung to him like a hungry creature, repeating, 'Even so,' and
+let him go.  Alone, she summoned a slave, a black, and bade him fetch to
+her without delay Ukleet the porter, and the porter was presently ushered
+in to her, protesting service and devotion.  So, she questioned him of
+Almeryl, and the Prince's business abroad, what he knew of it.  Ukleet
+commenced reciting verses on the ills of jealousy, but Bhanavar checked
+him with an eye that Ukleet had seen never before in woman or in man, and
+he gaped at her helplessly, as one that has swallowed a bone.  She
+laughed, crying, 'Learn, O thou fellow, to answer my like by the letter.'
+
+Now, what she heard from Ukleet when he had recovered his wits, was that
+the Prince had a business with none save the lenders of money.  So she
+spake to Ukleet in a kindly tone, 'Thou art mine, to serve me?'
+
+He was as one fascinated, and delivered himself, 'Yea, O my mistress!
+with tongue-service, toe-service, back-service, brain-service, whatso
+pleaseth thy sweet presence.'
+
+Said she, 'Hie over to the broker opposite, and bring him hither to me.'
+
+Ukleet departed, saying, 'To hear is to obey.'
+
+She sat gazing on the Jewel and its counterchanging splendours in her
+hand, and the thought of Almeryl and his necessity was her only thought.
+Not ten minutes of the hour had passed before the women waiting on her
+announced Ukleet and the broker Boolp.  Bhanavar gave little heed to the
+old fellow's grimaces, and the compliments he addressed her, but handed
+him the Jewel and desired his valuation of its worth.  The face of Boolp
+was a keen edge when he regarded Bhanavar, but the sight of the Jewel
+sharpened it tenfold, and he tossed his arms, exclaiming, 'A jewel,
+this!'
+
+So Bhanavar cried to him, 'Fix a price for it, O thou broker!'
+
+And Boolp, the old miser, debated, and began prating,
+
+'O lady! the soul of thy slave is abashed by a double beam, this the
+jewel of jewels, thou truly of thy sex; and saving thee there's no jewel
+of worth like this one, and together ye be--wullahy! never felt I aught
+like this since my espousal of Soolka that 's gone, and 'twas nothing
+like it then!  Now, O my Princess, confess it freely--this is but a
+pretext, this valuation of the Jewel, and Ukleet our go-between; and
+leave the rewarding of him to me.  Wullahy!  I can be generous, and my
+days of favour with fair ladies be not yet over.  Blessed be Allah for
+this day!  And thinkest thou those eyes fell on me with discriminating
+observation ere my sense of perception was struck by thee?  Not so, for I
+had noted thee, O moon of hearts, from my window yonder.'
+
+In this fashion Boolp the broker went on prating, and bowing, and
+screwing the corners of his little acid eyes to wink the wink of common
+accord between himself and Bhanavar.  Meantime she had spoken aside to
+one of her women, and a second black slave entered the chamber, bearing
+in his hand a twisted scourge, and that slave laid it on the back of
+Boolp the broker, and by this means he was brought quickly to the
+valuation of the Jewel.  Then he named a sum that was a great sum,
+but not the value of the Jewel to the fiftieth part, nay nor the five-
+hundredth part, of its value; and Ukleet remonstrated with him, but he
+was resolute, saying, 'Even that sum leaves me a beggar.'
+
+So Bhanavar said, 'My desire is for immediate payment of the money, and
+the Jewel is thine for that sum.'
+
+Now the broker went to fetch the money, and returned with it in bags of
+gold one-half the amount, and bags of silver one-third, and the remainder
+in writing made due at a certain period for payment.  And he groaned and
+handed her the money, and took the Jewel in his hands; ejaculating, 'In
+the name of Allah!'
+
+That evening, when it was dark and the lamps lit in the chamber, and the
+wine set and the nosegay, Almeryl asked of Bhanavar to see her under the
+light of the Jewel.  She warded him with an excuse, but he was earnest
+with her.  So she feigned that he teased her, saying, ''Tis that thou art
+no longer content with me as I am, O my husband!'  Then she said, 'Wert
+thou successful in thy dealings this day?'
+
+His arm slackened round her, and he answered nothing.  So she cried, 'Fie
+on thee, thou foolish one! and what is thy need of running over this
+city?  Know I not thy case and thine occasion, O my beloved?  Surely I am
+Queen of Serpents, a mistress of enchantments, a diviner of things
+hidden, and I know thee.  Here, then, is what thou requirest, and conceal
+not from me thy necessity another time, my husband!'
+
+Upon that she pointed his eye to the money-bags of gold and of silver.
+Almeryl was amazed, and asked her, 'How came these? for I was at the last
+extremity, without coin of any kind.'
+
+She answered, 'How, but by the Serpents!'
+
+And he exclaimed, 'Would that I might work as that porter worketh, rather
+than this!'
+
+Now, seeing he bewailed her use of the powers of the Jewel, Bhanavar fell
+between his arms, and related to him her discovery of his condition, and
+how she disposed of the Jewel to the broker, and of the scourging of
+Boolp; and he praised her, and clave to her, and they laughed and
+delighted their souls in plenteousness, and bliss was their portion; as
+the poet says,
+
+          Bliss that is born of mutual esteem
+          And tried companionship, I truly deem
+          A well-based palace, wherein fountains rise
+          From springs that have their sources in the skies.
+
+So were they for awhile.  It happened that one day, that was the last day
+of the year since her wearing of the Jewel, Ukleet said to them, 'Be
+wary! the Vizier Aswarak hath his eye on you, and it is no cool one.  I
+say nothing: the wise are discreet in their tellings of the great.  'Tis
+certain the broker Boolp forgetteth not his treatment here.'
+
+They smiled, turning to each other, and said, 'We live innocently, we
+harm no one, what should we fear?'
+
+During the night of that day Bhanavar awoke and kissed the Prince; and
+lo! he shuddered in his sleep as with the grave-cold.  A second time she
+was awakened on the breast of Almeryl by a dream of the Serpents of the
+Lake Karatis--the lake of the Jewel; and she stood up, and there was in
+the street a hum of voices, and she saw there before the house armed men
+with naked steel in their hands.  Scarce had she called Almeryl to her,
+when the outer door of their house was forced, and she shrieked to him,
+''Tis thou they come for: fly, O my Prince, my husband! the way of the
+garden is clear.'
+
+But he said sadly, 'Nay, what am I? it is thou they would win from me.
+I'll leave thee not in this life.'
+
+So she cried, 'O my soul, then together!--but I shall hinder thee, and be
+a burden to thy flight.'
+
+And she called on the All-powerful for aid, and ran with him into the
+garden of the house, and lo! by the water side at the end of the garden a
+boat full of armed soldiers with scimitars.  So these fell upon them, and
+bound them, and haled them into the house again, where was the dark
+Vizier Aswarak, and certain officers of the night watch with a force.
+The Vizier cried when he saw them, 'I accuse thee, Prince Almeryl, of
+being here in the city of our lord the King, to conspire against him and
+his authority.'
+
+Almeryl faced the Vizier firmly, and replied, 'I knew not in my life I
+had made an enemy; but there is one here who telleth that of me.'
+
+The Vizier frowned, saying, 'Thou deniest this?  And thou here, and thy
+father at war with the sovereignty of our lord the King!'
+
+Almeryl beheld his danger, and he said, 'Is this so?'
+
+Then cried the Vizier, 'Hear him! is not that a fair simulation?' So he
+called to the guard, 'Shackle him!'  When that was done, he ordered the
+house to be sacked, and the women and the slaves he divided for a spoil,
+but he reserved Bhanavar to himself: and lo!  twice she burst away from
+them that held her to hang upon the lips of Almeryl, and twice was she
+torn from him as a grape-bunch is torn from the streaming vine, and the
+third time she swooned and the anguish of life left her.
+
+Now, Bhanavar was borne to the harem of the Vizier, and for days she
+suffered no morsel of food to enter her mouth, and was dying, had not the
+Vizier in the cunning of his dissimulation fed her with distant glimpses
+of Almeryl, to show her he yet lived.  Then she thought, 'While my
+beloved liveth, life is due to me'; and she ate and drank and reassumed
+her fair fulness and the queenliness that was hers; but the Vizier had no
+love of her, and respected her, considering in his mind, 'Time will
+exhaust the fury of this tigress, and she is a fruit worth the waiting
+for.  Wullahy!  I shall have possessed her ere the days of over-
+ripening.'
+
+There was in the harem of the Vizier a mountain-girl that had been
+brought there in her childhood, and trained to play upon the lute and
+accompany her voice with the instrument.  To this little damsel Bhanavar
+gave her heart, and would listen all day, as in a trance, to her luting,
+till the desire to escape from that bondage and gather tidings of Almeryl
+mastered her, and she persuaded one of the blacks of the harem with a
+bribe to procure her an interview with the porter Ukleet.  So at a
+certain hour of the night Ukleet was introduced into the garden of the
+harem, and he was in the darkness of that garden a white-faced porter
+with knees that knocked the dread-march together; but Bhanavar
+strengthened his soul, and he said to her, ''Twas the doing of Boolp the
+broker: and he whispered the Vizier of thee and thy beauty, O my
+mistress!  Surely thy punishment and this ruin is but part payment to
+Boolp of the price of the Jewel, the great Jewel that's in the hands of
+the Vizier.'
+
+Then she questioned him: 'And Almeryl, the Prince, my husband, what of
+him?'
+
+Ukleet was dumb, and Bhanavar asked to hear no more.  Surely she was at
+the gates of pale spirits within an hour of her interview with Ukleet,
+and there was no blessedness for her save in death, the stiffer of ills,
+the drug that is infallible.  As is said:
+
+          Dark is that last stage of sorrow
+          Which from Death alone can borrow
+          Comfort:--
+
+Bhanavar would have died then, but in a certain pause of her fever the
+Vizier stood by her.  She looked at him long as she lay, and the life in
+her large eyes was ebbing away slowly; but there seemed presently a
+check, as an eddy comes in the stream, and the light of intelligence
+flowed like a reviving fire into her eyes, and her heart quickened with
+desire of life while she looked on the Vizier.  So she passed the pitch
+of that fever, and bloomed anew in her beauty, and cherished it, for she
+had a purpose.
+
+Now, there was rejoicing in the harem of the Vizier Aswarak when Bhanavar
+arose from the couch; and the Vizier exulted, thinking, 'I have tamed
+this wild beauty, or she had reached death in that extremity.'  So he
+allowed Bhanavar greater freedom and indulgences, and Bhanavar feigned to
+give her soul to the pleasures women delight in, and the Vizier buried
+her in gems and trinkets and costly raiment, robes of exquisite silks,
+the choicest of Samarcand and China; and he permitted her to make
+purchases among certain of the warehouses of the city and the shops of
+the tradesmen, jewellers and others, so that she went about as she would,
+but for the slaves that attended her and the overseer of the harem.  This
+continued, and Aswarak became urgent with her, and to remove suspicion
+from him she named a day from that period when she would be his.
+Meantime she contrived to see Ukleet the porter frequently, and within a
+week of her engagement with the Vizier she gazed from a lattice-window of
+the harem, and beheld in the garden, by the beams of the moon, Ukleet,
+and he was looking as on the watch for her.  So she sent to him the
+little mountain-girl she loved, but Ukleet would tell her nothing; then
+went she herself, greeting him graciously, for his service was other than
+that of self-seeking.
+
+Ukleet said, 'O Lady, mistress of hearts, moon of the tides of will! 'tis
+certain I was thy slave from the hour I beheld thee first, and of the
+Prince, thy husband; Allah rest his soul!  Now these be my tidings.
+Wullahy! the King is one maddened with the reports I've spread about of
+thy beauty, yea! raging.  And I have a friend in his palace, even an
+under-cook, acute in the interpreting of wishes.  There was he always
+gabbling of thy case, O my Princess, till the head-cook seized hold on
+it, and so it went to the chamberlain, thence to the chief of the
+eunuchs, and from him in a natural course, to the King.  Now from the
+King the tracking of this tale went to the under-cook down again, and
+from him to me.  So was I summoned to the King, and the King discoursed
+with me--I with him, in fair fluency; he in ejaculations of desire to
+have sight of thee, I in expatiation on that he would see when he had his
+desire.  Now in this have I not done thee a service, O sovereign of
+fancies?'
+
+Bhanavar mused and said, 'On the after-morrow I pass through the city to
+make a selection of goods, and I shall pass at noon by the great mosque,
+on my way to the shop of Ebn Roulchook, the King's jeweller, beyond the
+meat-market.  Of a surety, I know not how my lord the King may see me.'
+
+Said the porter, ''Tis enough! on my head be it.' And he went from her,
+singing the song:
+
+          How little a thing serves Fortune's turn
+            When she's intent on doing!
+          How easily the world may burn
+            When kings come out a-wooing!
+
+Now, ere she set forth on the after-morrow to make her purchases,
+Bhanavar sent word to the Vizier Aswarak that she would see him, and he
+came to her drunken with alacrity, for he augured favourably that her
+reluctance was melting toward him: so she said, 'O my master, my time of
+mourning is at an end, and I would look well before thee, even as one
+worthy of being thy bride; so bestow on me, I pray thee, for my wearing
+that day, the jewels that be in thy treasury, the brightest and clearest
+of them, and the largest.'
+
+The Vizier Aswarak replied, and he was one in great satisfaction of soul,
+'All that I have are thine.  Wullahy! and one, a marvel, that I bought of
+Boolp the broker, that had it from an African merchant.'  So he commanded
+the box wherein he had deposited the Jewel to be brought to him there in
+the chamber of Bhanavar, and took forth the Serpent Jewel between his
+forefinger and thumb, and laughed at the eager eyes of Bhanavar when she
+beheld it, saying, ''Tis thine! thy bridal gift the day I possess thee.'
+
+Bhanavar trembled at the sight of the Jewel, and its redness was to her
+as the blood of Zurvan and Almeryl.  She stretched her hand out for it
+and cried, 'This day, O my lord, make it mine.'
+
+So the Vizier said, 'Nay, what I have spoken will I keep to; it has cost
+me much.'
+
+Bhanavar looked at him, and uttered in a soft tone, 'Truly it has cost
+thee much.'
+
+Then she exclaimed, as in play, 'See me, how I look by its beam.' And in
+her guile she snatched the Jewel from him, and held it to her brow.  Then
+Aswarak started from her and feared her, for the red light of the Jewel
+glowed, and darkened the chamber with its beam, darkening all save the
+lustre that was on the visage of Bhanavar.  He shouted, 'What's this!
+Art thou a sorceress?'
+
+She removed the Jewel, and ceased glaring on him, and said, 'Nothing but
+thy poor slave!'
+
+Then he coaxed her to give him the Jewel, and she would not; he commanded
+her peremptorily, and she hesitated; so he grasped her tightened hand,
+and his face loured with wrath; yet she withheld the Jewel from him
+laughing; and he was stirred to extreme wrath, and drew from his girdle
+the naked scimitar, and menaced her with it.  And he looked mighty; but
+she dreaded him little, and stood her full height before him, daring him,
+and she was as the tigress defending a cub from a wilder beast.  Now when
+he was about to call in the armed slaves of the palace, she said, 'I warn
+thee, Vizier Aswarak! tempt me not to match them that serve me with them
+that serve thee.'
+
+He ground his teeth in fury, crying, 'A conspiracy! and in the harem!
+Now, thou traitress! the logic of the lash shall be tried upon thee.' And
+he roared, 'Ho! ye without there! ho!'
+
+But ere the slaves had entered Bhanavar rubbed the Jewel on her bosom,
+muttering, 'I have forborne till now!  Now will I have a sacrifice,
+though I be it.'  And rubbing the Jewel, she sang,
+
+          Hither! hither!
+            Come to your Queen;
+          Come through the grey wall,
+            Come through the green!
+
+There was heard a noise like the noise of a wind coming down a narrow
+gorge above falling waters, a hissing and a rushing of wings, and behold!
+Bhanavar was circled by rings and rings of serpent-folds that glowed
+round her, twisted each in each, with the fierceness of fire, she like a
+flame rising up white in the midst of them.  The black slaves, when they
+had lifted the curtain of the harem-chamber, shrieked to see her, and
+Aswarak crouched at her feet with the aspect of an angry beast carved in
+stone.  Then Bhanavar loosed on either of the slaves a serpent, saying,
+'What these have seen they shall not say.'  And while the sweat dropped
+heavily from the forehead of Aswarak, she stepped out of the circle of
+serpents, singing,
+
+               Over! over!
+                 Hie to the lake!
+               Sleep with the left eye,
+                 Keep the right awake.
+
+Then the serpents spread with a great whirr, and flew through the high
+window and the walls as they had come, and she said to the Vizier, 'What
+now?  Fearest thou?  I have spared thee, thou that madest me desolate!
+and thy slaves are a sacrifice for thee.  Now this I ask: Where lies my
+beloved, the Prince my husband?  Speak nothing of him, save the place of
+his burial!'
+
+So he told her, 'In the burial-ground of the great prison.'
+
+She rolled her eyes on the Vizier darkly, exclaiming, 'Even where the
+felons lie entombed, he lieth!'  And she began to pant, pale with what
+she had done, and leaned to the floor, and called,
+
+          Yellow stripe, with freckle red,
+          Coil and curl, and watch by my head.
+
+And a serpent with yellow stripes and red freckles came like a javelin
+down to her, and coiled and curled round her head, and she slept an hour.
+When she arose the Vizier was yet there, sitting with folded knees.  So
+she sped the serpent to the Lake Karatis, and called her women to her,
+and went to an inner room, and drew an outer robe and a vest over that
+she had on, and passed the Vizier, and said, 'Art thou not rejoiced in
+thy bride, O Aswarak?  'Twas a wondrous clemency, hers!  Now but four
+more days and thou claimest her.  Say nothing of what thou hast seen, or
+thou wilt shortly see nothing further to say, my master.'
+
+So she left the Vizier sitting still in that chamber, and mounted a mule,
+attended by slaves on foot before and behind her, and passed through the
+streets till she came to the shop of Ebn Roulchook.  The King was in
+disguise at the extremity of the shop, and while she examined this and
+that of the precious stones, Bhanavar for a moment made bare the beauty,
+of her face, and love's fires took fast hold of the King, and he cried,
+'I marvel not at the eloquence of the porter.'
+
+Now, she made Ebn Roulchook bring to her a circlet of gold, with a hollow
+in the frontal centre, and fit into that hollow the Serpent Jewel.  So,
+while she laughed and chatted with her women Bhanavar lifted the circlet,
+and made her countenance wholly bare even to the neck and the beginning
+slope of the bosom, and fixed the circlet to her head with the Jewel
+burning on her brow.  Then when he beheld the glory of excelling
+loveliness that she was, and the splendour in her eyes under the Jewel,
+the King shouted and parted with his disguise, and Ebn Roulchook and the
+women and slaves with Bhanavar fled to the courtyard that was behind the
+shop, leaving Bhanavar alone with the King.  Surely Bhanavar returned not
+to the dwelling of the Vizier.
+
+Now, the King Mashalleed espoused Bhanavar, and she became his queen and
+ruled him, and her word was the dictate of the land.  Then caused she the
+body of Almeryl, with the severed head of the Prince, to be disinterred,
+and entombed secretly in the palace; and she had lamps lit in the vault,
+and the pall spread, and the readers of the Koran to read by the tomb;
+and then she stole to the tomb hourly, in the day and in the night,
+wailing of him and her utter misery, repeating verses at the side of the
+tomb, and they were,
+
+               Take me to thee!
+             Like the deep-rooted tree,
+           My life is half in earth, and draws
+          Thence all sweetness; oh may my being pause
+               Soon beside thee!
+
+               Welcome me soon!
+             As to the queenly moon,
+           Man's homage to my beauty sets;
+          Yet am I a rose-shrub budding regrets:
+               Welcome me soon.
+
+               Soul of my soul!
+             Have me not half, but whole.
+           Dear dust, thou art my eyes, my breath!
+          Draw me to thee down the dark sea of death,
+               Soul of my soul!
+
+And she sang:
+
+          Sad are they who drink life's cup
+            Till they have come to the bitter-sweet:
+          Better at once to toss it up,
+            And trample it beneath the feet;
+          For venom-charged as serpents' eggs
+            'Tis then, and knows not other change.
+       Early, early, early, have I reached the dregs
+     Of life, and loathe and love the bittersweet, revenge!
+
+Then turned she aside, and sang musingly:
+
+          I came to his arms like the flower of the spring,
+          And he was my bird of the radiant wing:
+          He flutter'd above me a moment, and won
+          The bliss of my breast as a beam of the sun,
+          Untouch'd and untasted till then--
+
+The voice in her throat was like a drowning creature, and she rose up,
+and chanted wildly:
+
+               I weep again?
+
+       What play is this? for the thing is dead in me long since:
+          Will all the reviving rain
+        Of heaven bring me back my Prince?
+          But I, when I weep, when I weep,
+             Blood will I weep!
+             And when I weep,
+          Sons for fathers shall weep;
+          Mothers for sons shall weep;
+          Wives for husbands shall weep!
+        Earth shall complain of floods red and deep,
+               When I weep!
+
+Upon that she ran up a secret passage to her chamber and rubbed the
+Jewel, and called the serpents, to delight her soul with the sight of her
+power, and rolled and sported madly among them, clutching them by the
+necks till their thin little red tongues hung out, and their eyes were as
+discoloured blisters of venom.  Then she arose, and her arms and neck and
+lips were glazed with the slime of the serpents, and she flung off her
+robes to the close-fitting silken inner vest looped across her bosom with
+pearls, and whirled in a mazy dance-measure among them, and sang
+melancholy melodies, making them delirious, fascinating them; and they
+followed her round and round, in twines and twists and curves, with
+arched heads and stiffened tails; and the chamber swam like an undulating
+sea of shifting sapphire lit by the moon of midnight.  Not before the
+moon of midnight was in the sky ceased Bhanavar sporting with the
+serpents, and she sank to sleep exhausted in their midst.
+
+Such was the occupation of the Queen of Mashalleed when he came not to
+her.  The women and slaves of the palace dreaded her, and the King
+himself was her very slave.
+
+Meanwhile the plot of her unforgivingness against Aswarak ripened: and
+the Vizier beholding the bride he had lost Queen of Mashalleed his
+master, it was as she conceived, that his heart was eaten with jealousy
+and fierce rage.  Bhanavar as she came across him spake mildly, and gave
+him gentle looks, sad glances, suffering not his fires to abate, the
+torment of his love to cool.  Each night he awoke with a serpent in his
+bed; the beam of her beauty was as the constant bite of a serpent,
+poisoning his blood, and he deluded his soul with the belief that
+Bhanavar loved him notwithstanding, and that she was seized forcibly from
+him by the King.  'Otherwise,' thought he, 'why loosed she not a serpent
+from the host to strangle me even as yonder black slaves?'  Bhanavar knew
+the mind of Aswarak, and considered, 'The King is cunning and weak, a
+slave to his desires, and in the bondage of the jewel, my beauty.  The
+Vizier is unscrupulous, a hatcher of intrigues; but that he dreads me and
+hopes a favour of me, he would have wrought against me ere now.  'Tis
+then a combat 'twixt him and me.  O my soul, art thou dreaming of a fair
+youth that was the bliss of thy bosom night and day, night and day?  The
+Vizier shall die!'
+
+One morning, and it was a year from the day she had become Queen of
+Mashalleed, Bhanavar sprang up quickly from the side of the King; and he
+was gazing on her in amazement and loathing.  She flew to her chamber,
+chasing forth her women, and ran to a mirror.  Therein she saw three
+lines that were on her brow, lines of age, and at the corners of her
+mouth and about her throat a slackness of skin, the skin no longer its
+soft rosy white, but withered brown as leaves of the forest.  She
+shrieked, and fell back in a swoon of horror.  When she recovered, she
+ran to the mirror again, and it was the same sight.  And she rose from
+swooning a third time, and still she beheld the visage of a hag; nothing
+of beauty there save the hair and the brilliant eyes.  Then summoned she
+the serpents in a circle, and the number of them was that of the days in
+the year: and she bared her wrist and seized one, a gray-silver with
+sapphire spots, and hissed at him till he hissed, and foam whitened the
+lips of each.  Thereupon she cried:
+
+               Treble-tongue and throat of hell,
+               What is come upon me, tell!
+
+And the Serpent replied,
+
+               Jewel Queen! beauty's price!
+               'Tis the time for sacrifice!
+
+She grasped another, one of leaden colour, with yellow bars and silver
+crescents, and cried:
+
+               Treble-tongue and throat of fire,
+               Name the creature ye require!
+
+And the Serpent replied:
+
+               Ruby lip! poison tooth!
+               We are hungry for a youth.
+
+She grasped another that writhed in her fingers like liquid emerald, and
+cried:
+
+               Treble-tongue and throat of glue!
+               How to know the one that's due?
+
+And the Serpent replied:
+
+               Breast of snow! baleful bliss!
+               He that wooing wins a kiss.
+
+She clutched one at her elbow, a hairy serpent with yellow languid eyes
+in flame-sockets and livid-lustrous length--a disease to look on, and
+cried:
+
+               Treble-tongue and throat of gall!
+               There's a youth beneath the pall.
+
+And the Serpent replied:
+
+               Brilliant eye! bloody tear!
+               He has fed us for a year.
+
+She squeezed that hairy serpent till her finger-points whitened in his
+neck, and he dropped lifelessly, crying:
+
+               Treble-tongues and things of mud!
+               Sprang my beauty from his blood?
+
+And the Serpents rose erect, replying:
+
+               Yearly one of us must die;
+                 Yearly for us dieth one;
+               Else the Queen an ugly lie
+                 Lives till all our lives be done!
+
+Bhanavar stood up, and hurried them to Karatis.  When she was alone she
+fell toward the floor, repeating, ''Tis the Curse!' Suddenly she thought,
+'Yet another year my beauty shall be nourished by my vengeance, yet
+another!  And, O Vizier, the kiss shall be thine, the kiss of doom; for I
+have doomed thee ere now.  Thou, thou shalt restore me to my beauty: that
+only love I now my Prince is lost.'
+
+So she veiled her face in the close veil of the virtuous, and despatched
+Ukleet, whom she exalted in the palace of the King, to the Vizier; and
+Ukleet stood before Aswarak, and said, 'O Vizier, my mistress truly is
+longing for you with excessive longing, and in what she now undergoeth is
+forgotten an evil done by you to her; and she bids you come and concert
+with her a scheme deliberately as to the getting rid of this tyrant who
+is an affliction to her, and her life is lessened by him.'
+
+The Vizier was deceived by his passion, and he chuckled and exclaimed,
+'My very dream! and to mind me of her, then, she sent the serpents!
+Wullahy, in the matter of women, wait!  For, as the poet declareth:
+
+          'Tis vanity our souls for such to vex;
+          Patience is a harvest of the sex.''
+
+And they fret themselves not overlong for husbands that are gone, these
+young beauties.  I know them.  Tell the Queen of Serpents I am even hers
+to the sole of my foot.'
+
+So it was understood between them that the Vizier should be at the gate
+of the garden of the palace that night, disguised; and the Vizier
+rejoiced, thinking, 'If she have not the Jewel with her, it shall go ill
+with me, and I foiled this time!'
+
+Ukleet then proceeded to the house of Boolp the broker, fronting the
+gutted ruins where Bhanavar had been happy in her innocence with Almeryl,
+the mountain prince, her husband.  Boolp was engaged haggling with a
+slave-merchant the price of a fair slave, and Ukleet said to him,'Yet
+awhile delay, O Boolp, ere you expend a fraction of treasure, for truly a
+mighty bargain of jewels is waiting for you at the palace of my lord the
+King.  So come thither with all your money-bags of gold and silver, and
+your securities, and your bonds and dues in writing, for 'tis the
+favourite of the King requireth you to complete a bargain with her, and
+the price of her jewels is the price of a kingdom.'
+
+Said Boolp, 'Hearing is compliance in such a case.'
+
+And Ukleet continued, 'What a fortune is yours, O Boolp! truly the tide
+of fortune setteth into your lap.  Fail not, wullahy!  to come with all
+you possess, or if you have not enough when she requireth it to complete
+the bargain, my mistress will break off with you.  I know not if she
+intend even other game for you, O lucky one!'
+
+Boolp hitched his girdle and shrugged, saying, ''Tis she will fail, I
+wot,--she, in having therewith to complete the bargain between us.  Wa!
+wa!--there!  I've done this before now.  Wullahy! if she have not enough
+of her rubies and pearls to outweigh me and my gold, go to, Boolp will
+school her!  What says the poet?--
+
+    ''Earth and ocean search, East, West, and North, to the South,
+     None will match the bright rubies and pearls of her mouth.''
+
+'Aha! what? O Ukleet!  And he says:
+
+           ''The lovely ones a bargain made
+            With me, and I renounced my trade,
+          Half-ruined; 'Ah!' said they, 'return and win!
+          To even scales ourselves we will throw in!'''
+
+How so?  But let discreetness reign and security flourisheth!'
+
+Ukleet nodded at him, and repeated the distich:
+
+          Men of worth and men of wits
+          Shoot with two arrows, and make two hits.
+
+So he arranged with Boolp the same appointment as with the Vizier, and
+returned to Queen Bhanavar.
+
+Now, in the dark of night Aswarak stood within the gate of the palace-
+garden of Mashalleed that was ajar, and a hand from a veiled figure
+reached to him, and he caught it, in the fulness of his delusion, crying,
+'Thou, my Queen?'  But the hand signified silence, and drew him past the
+tank of the garden and through a court of the palace into a passage lit
+with lamps, and on into a close-curtained chamber, and beyond a heavy
+curtain into another, a circular passage descending between black
+hangings, and at the bottom a square vault draped with black, and in it
+precious woods burning, oils in censers, and the odour of ambergris and
+myrrh and musk floating in clouds, and the sight of the Vizier was for a
+time obscured by the thickness of the incenses floating.  As he became
+familiar with the place, he saw marked therein a board spread at one end
+with viands and wines, and the nosegay in a water-vase, and cups of gold
+and a service of gold,--every preparation for feasting mightily.  So the
+soul of Aswarak leapt, and he cried, 'Now unveil thyself, O moon of our
+meeting, my mistress!'
+
+The voice of Bhanavar answered him, 'Not till we have feasted and
+drunken, and it seemeth little in our eyes.  Surely the chamber is
+secure: could I have chosen one better for our meeting, O Aswarak?'
+
+Upon that he entreated her to sit with him to the feast, but she cried,
+'Nay! delay till the other is come.'
+
+Cried he, 'Another?'
+
+But she exclaimed, 'Hush!' and saying thus went forward to the foot of
+the passage, and Boolp was there, following Ukleet, both of them under a
+weight of bags and boxes.  So she welcomed the broker, and led him to the
+feast, he coughing and wheezing and blinking, unwitting the vexation of
+the Vizier, nor that one other than himself was there.  When Boolp heard
+the voice of the Vizier, in astonishment, addressing him, he started back
+and fell upon his bags, and the task of coaxing him to the board was as
+that of haling a distempered beast to the water.  Then they sat and
+feasted together, and Ukleet with them; and if Aswarak or Boolp waxed
+impatient of each other's presence, he whispered to them, 'Only wait! see
+what she reserveth for you.'  And Bhanavar mused with herself, 'Truly
+that reserved shall be not long coming!'  So they drank, and wine got the
+mastery of Aswarak, so that he made no secret of his passion, and began
+to lean to her and verse extemporaneously in her ear; and she stinted not
+in her replies, answering to his urgency in girlish guise, sighing behind
+the veil, as if under love's influence.  And the Vizier pressed close,
+and sang:
+
+     'Tis said that love brings beauty to the cheeks
+       Of them that love and meet, but mine are pale;
+     For merciless disdain on me she wreaks,
+       And hides her visage from my passionate tale:
+     I have her only, only when she speaks.
+               Bhanavar, unveil!
+
+     I have thee, and I have thee not!  Like one
+       Lifted by spirits to a shining dale
+     In Paradise, who seeks to leap and run
+       And clasp the beauty, but his foot doth fail,
+     For he is blind: ah! then more woful none!
+               Bhanavar, unveil!
+
+He thrust the wine-cup to her, and she lifted it under her veil, and then
+sang, in answer to him:
+
+     My beauty! for thy worth
+               Thank the Vizier!
+
+     He gives thee second birth:
+               Thank the Vizier!
+
+     His blooming form without a fault:
+               Thank the Vizier!
+
+     Is at thy foot in this blest vault:
+               Thank the Vizier!
+
+     He knoweth not he telleth such a truth,
+               Thank the Vizier!
+
+     That thou, thro' him, spring'st fresh in blushing youth:
+               Thank the Vizier!
+
+     He knoweth little now, but he shall soon be wise:
+               Thank the Vizier!
+
+     This meeting bringeth bloom to cheeks and lips and eyes:
+               Thank the Vizier!
+
+     O my beloved in this blest vault, if I love thee for aye,
+               Thank the Vizier!
+
+     Thine am I, thine! and learns his soul what it has taught--to die,
+               Thank the Vizier!
+
+Now, Aswarak divined not her meaning, and was enraptured with her, and
+cried, 'Wullahy! so and such thy love!  Thine am I, thine!  And what a
+music is thy voice, O my mistress!  'Twere a bliss to Eblis in his
+torment could he hear it.  Life of my head!  and is thy beauty increased
+by me?  Nay, thou flatterer!'  Then he said to her, 'Away with these
+importunate dogs! 'tis the very hour of tenderness!  Wullahy! they offend
+my nostril: stung am I at the sight of them.'
+
+She rejoined,--
+
+               O Aswarak! star of the morn!
+     Thou that wakenest my beauty from night and scorn,
+               Thy time is near, and when 'tis come,
+     Long will a jackal howl that this thy request had been dumb.
+               O Aswarak! star of the morn!
+
+So the Vizier imaged in his mind the neglect of Mashalleed from these
+words, and said, 'Leave the King to my care, O Queen of Serpents, and
+expend no portion of thy power on him; but hasten now the going of these
+fellows; my heart is straitened by them, and I, wullahy! would gladly see
+a serpent round the necks of either.'
+
+She continued,--
+
+          O Aswarak! star of the morn!
+     Lo! the star must die when splendider light is born;
+          In stronger floods the beam will drown:
+     Shrink, thou puny orb, and dread to bring me my crown,
+          O Aswarak! star of the morn!
+
+Then said she, 'Hark awhile at those two!  There's a disputation between
+them.'
+
+So they hearkened, and Ukleet was pledging Boolp, and passing the cup to
+him; but a sullenness had seized the broker, and he refused it, and
+Ukleet shouted, 'Out, boon-fellow! and what a company art thou, that thou
+refusest the pledge of friendliness?  Plague on all sulkers!'
+
+And the broker, the old miser, obstinate as are the half-fuddled, began
+to mumble, 'I came not here to drink, O Ukleet, but to make a bargain;
+and my bags be here, and I like not yonder veil, nor the presence of
+yonder Vizier, nor the secresy of this.  Now, by the Prophet and that
+interdict of his, I'll drink no further.'
+
+And Ukleet said, 'Let her not mark your want of fellowship, or 'twill go
+ill with you.  Here be fine wines, spirited wines!  choice flavours! and
+you drink not!  Where's the soul in you, O Boolp, and where's the life in
+you, that you yield her to the Vizier utterly?  Surely she waiteth a
+gallant sign from you, so challenge her cheerily.'
+
+Quoth Boolp, 'I care not.  Shall I leave my wealth and all I possess void
+of eyes? and she so that I recognise her not behind the veil?'
+
+Ukleet pushed the old miser jeeringly: 'You not recognise her?  Oh,
+Boolp, a pretty dissimulation!  Pledge her now a cup to the snatching of
+the veil, and bethink you of a fitting verse, a seemly compliment,--
+something sugary.'
+
+Then Boolp smoothed his head, and was bothered; and tapped it, and
+commenced repeating to Bhanavar:
+
+             I saw the moon behind a cloud,
+          And I was cold as one that's in his shroud:
+               And I cried, Moon!--
+
+Ukleet chorused him, 'Moon!' and Boolp was deranged in what he had to
+say, and gasped,--
+
+          Moon!  I cried, Moon!--and I cried, Moon!
+
+Then the Vizier and Ukleet laughed till they fell on their backs; so
+Bhanavar took up his verse where he left it, singing,--
+
+                    And to the cry
+          Moon did make fair the following reply:
+          'Dotard, be still!  for thy desire
+          Is to embrace consuming fire.'
+
+Then said Boolp, 'O my mistress, the laws of conviviality have till now
+restrained me; but my coming here was on business, and with me my bags,
+in good faith.  So let us transact this matter of the jewels, and after
+that the song of--
+
+                        ''Thou and I
+                         A cup will try,''
+
+even as thou wilt.'
+
+Bhanavar threw aside her outer robe and veil, and appeared in a dress of
+sumptuous blue, spotted with gold bees; her face veiled with a veil of
+gauzy silver, and she was as the moon in summer heavens, and strode mar
+jestically forward, saying, 'The jewels?  'tis but one.  Behold!'
+
+The lamps were extinguished, and in her hand was the glory of the Serpent
+Jewel, no other light save it in the vaulted chamber.
+
+So the old miser perked his chin and brows, and cried wondering, 'I know
+it, this Jewel, O my mistress.'
+
+She turned to the Vizier, and said, lifting the red gloom of the Jewel on
+him, 'And thou?'
+
+Aswarak ate his under-lip.
+
+Then she cried, 'There's much ye know in common, ye two.'
+
+Thereupon Bhanavar passed from the feast on to the centre of the vault,
+and stood before the tomb of Almeryl, and drew the cloth from it; and
+they saw by the glow of the Jewel that it was a tomb.  When she had
+mounted some steps at the side of the tomb, she beckoned them to come,
+crying, in a voice of sobs, 'This which is here, likewise ye may know.'
+
+So they came with the coldness of a mystery in their blood, and looked as
+she looked intently over a tomb.  The lid was of glass, and through the
+glass of the lid the Jewel flung a dark rosy ray on the body of Almeryl
+lying beneath it.
+
+Now, the miser was perplexed at the sight; but Aswarak stepped backward
+in defiance, bellowing, ''Twas for this I was tricked to come here!  Is 't
+fooling me a second time?  By Allah! look to it; not a second time will
+Aswarak be fooled.'
+
+Then she ran to him, and exclaimed, 'Fooled?  For what cam'st thou to
+me?'
+
+And he, foaming and grinding his breath, 'Thou woman of wiles!   thou
+serpent! but I'll be gone from here.'
+
+So she faltered in sweetness, knowing him doomed, and loving to dally
+with him in her wickedness, 'Indeed if thou cam'st not for my kiss--'
+
+Then said the Vizier, 'Yet a further guile!  Was't not an outrage to
+bring me here?'
+
+She faltered again, leaning the fair length of her limbs on a couch, ''Tis
+ill that we are not alone, else could these lips convince thee well: else
+indeed!'
+
+And the Vizier cried, 'Chase then these intruders from us, O thou
+sorceress, and above all serpents in power! for thou poisonest with a
+touch; and the eye and the ear alike take in thy poisons greedily.  Thou
+overcomest the senses, the reason, the judgment; yea, vindictiveness,
+wrath, suspicions; leading the soul captive with a breath of thine, as
+'twere a breeze from the gardens of bliss.'
+
+Bhanavar changed her manner a little, lisping, 'And why that starting
+from the tomb of a dead harmless youth?  And that abuse of me?'
+
+He peered at her inquiringly, echoing 'Why?'
+
+And she repeated, as a child might repeat it, 'Why that?'
+
+Then the Vizier smote his forehead in the madness of utter perplexity,
+changing his eye from Bhanavar to the tomb of Almeryl, doubting her
+truth, yet dreading to disbelieve it.  So she saw him fast enmeshed in
+her subtleties, and clapped her hands crying, 'Come again with me to the
+tomb, and note if there be aught I am to blame in, O Aswarak, and plight
+thyself to me beside it.'
+
+He did nothing save to widen his eye at her somewhat; and she said, 'The
+two are yonside the tomb, and they hear us not, and see us not by this
+light of the Jewel; so come up to it boldly with me; free thy mind of its
+doubt, and for a reconcilement kiss me on the way.'
+
+Aswarak moved not forward; but as Bhanavar laid the Jewel in her bosom he
+tore the veil from her darkened head, and caught her to him and kissed
+her.  Then Bhanavar laughed and shouted, 'How is it with thee, Vizier
+Aswarak?'
+
+He was tottering, and muttered, ''Tis a death-chill hath struck me even to
+my marrow.'
+
+So she drew the Jewel forth once more, and rubbed it ablaze, and the
+noise of the Serpents neared; and they streamed into the vault and under
+it in fiery jets, surrounding Bhanavar, and whizzing about her till in
+their velocity they were indivisible; and she stood as a fountain of fire
+clothed in flashes of the underworld, the new loveliness of her face
+growing vivid violet like an incessant lightning above them.  Then
+stretched she her two hands, and sang to the Serpents:--
+
+               Hither, hither, to the feast!
+               Hither to the sacrifice!
+               Virtue for my sake hath ceased:
+               Now to make an end of Vice!
+
+               Twisted-tail and treble-tongue,
+               Swelling length and greedy maw!
+               I have had a horrid wrong;
+               Retribution is the law!
+
+               Ye that suck'd my youthful lord,
+               Now shall make another meal:
+               Seize the black Vizier abhorr'd;
+               Seize him! seize him throat and heel!
+
+               Set your serpent wits to find
+               Tortures of a new device:
+               Have him! have him heart and mind!
+               Hither to the sacrifice'
+
+Then she whirled with them round and round as a tempest whirls; and when
+she had wound them to a fury, lo, she burst from the hissing circle and
+dragged Ukleet from the vault into the passage, and blocked the entrance
+to the vault.  So was Queen Bhanavar avenged.
+
+Now, she said to Ukleet, 'Ransom presently the broker,--him they will not
+harm,' and hastened to the King that he might see her in her beauty.  The
+King reclined on cushions in the harem with a fair slave-girl, newly from
+the mountains, toying with the pearls in her locks.  Then thought
+Bhanavar, 'Let him not slight me!'  So she drew a rose-coloured veil over
+her face and sat beside Mashalleed.  The King continued his fondling with
+the girl, saying to her, 'Was there no destiny foretold of thy coming to
+the palace of the King to rule it, O Nashta, starbeam in the waters! and
+hadst thou no dream of it?'
+
+Bhanavar struck the King's arm, but he noticed her not, and Nashta
+laughed.  Then Bhanavar controlled her trembling and said, 'A word, O
+King! and vouchsafe me a hearing.'
+
+The King replied languidly, still looking on Nashta, ''Tis a command that
+the voice of none that are crabbed and hideous be heard in the harem, and
+I find comfort in it, O Nashta! but speak thou, my fountain of sweet-
+dropping lute-notes!'
+
+Bhanavar caught the King's hand and said, 'I have to speak with thee;
+'tis the Queen.  Chase from us this little wax puppet a space.'
+
+The King disengaged his hand and leaned it over to Nashta, who began
+playing with it, and fitting on it a ring, giggling.  Then, as he
+answered nothing, Bhanavar came nearer and slapped him on the cheek.
+Mashalleed started to his feet, and his hand grasped his girdle; but that
+wrathfulness was stayed when he beheld the veil slide from her visage.
+So he cried, 'My Queen! my soul!'
+
+She pointed to Nashta, and the King chid the girl, and sent her forth
+lean with his shifted displeasure, as a kitten slinks wet from a fish-
+pond where it had thought to catch a great fish.  Then Bhanavar
+exclaimed, 'There was a change in thy manner to me before that creature.'
+
+He sought to dissimulate with her, but at last he confessed, 'I was truly
+this morning the victim of a sorcery.'
+
+Thereupon she cried, 'And thou went angered to find me not by thee on the
+couch, but one in my place, a hag of ugliness.  Hear then the case, O
+Mashalleed!  Surely that old crone had a dream, and it was that if she
+slept one night by the King she would arise fresh in health from her
+ills, and with powers lasting a year to heal others of all maladies with
+a touch.  So she came to me, petitioning me to bring this about.  O my
+lord the King, did I well in being privy to her desire?'
+
+The King could not doubt this story of Bhanavar, seeing her constant
+loveliness, and the arch of her flashing brow, and the oval of her cheek
+and chin smooth as milk.  So he said, 'O my Queen!  I had thought to go,
+as I must, gladly; but how shall I go, knowing thy truth, thy beauty
+unchanged; thee faithful, a follower of the injunctions of the Prophet in
+charitable deeds?'
+
+Cried she, 'And whither goeth my lord, and on what errand?'
+
+He answered, 'The people of a province southward have raised the standard
+of revolt and mocked my authority; they have been joined by certain of
+the Arab chiefs subject to my dominion, and have defeated my armies.
+'Tis to subdue them I go; yea, to crush them.  Yet, wallaby!  I know not.
+Care I if kingdoms fall away, and nations, so that I have thee?  Nay, let
+all pass, so that thou remain by me.'
+
+Bhanavar paced from him to a mirror, and frowned at the reflection of her
+fairness, thinking, 'Such had he spoken to the girl Nashta, or another,
+this King!' And she thought, 'I have been beloved by the noblest three on
+earth; I will ask no more of love; vengeance I have had.  'Tis time that
+I demand of my beauty nothing save power, and I will make this King my
+stepping-stone to power, rejoicing my soul with the shock of armies.'
+
+Now, she persuaded Mashalleed to take her with him on his expedition
+against the Arabs; and they set forth, heading a great assemblage of
+warriors, southward to the land bordering the Desert.  The King credited
+the suggestions of Bhanavar, that Aswarak had disappeared to join the
+rebels, and pressed forward in his eagerness to inflict a chastisement
+signal in swiftness upon them and that traitor; so eagerly Mashalleed
+journeyed to his army in advance, that the main body, with Bhanavar, was
+left by him long behind.  She had encouraged him, saying, 'I shall love
+thee much if thou art speedy in winning success.'  The Queen was housed
+on an elephant, harnessed with gold, and with silken purple trappings;
+from the rose-hued curtains of her palanquin she looked on a mighty march
+of warriors, filling the extent of the plains; all day she fed her sight
+on them.  Surely the story of her beauty became noised among the guards
+of her person that rode and ran beneath the royal elephant, till the
+soldiers of Mashalleed spake but of the beauty of the Queen, and Bhanavar
+was as a moon shining over that sea of men.
+
+Now, they had passed the cultivated fields, and were halting by the ford
+of a river bordering the Desert, when lo! a warrior on the yonside,
+riding in a cloud of dust, and his shout was, 'The King Mashalleed is
+defeated, and flying.'  Then the Captains of the host witnessed to the
+greatness of Allah, and were troubled with a dread, fearing to advance;
+but Bhanavar commanded a horse to be saddled for her, and mounted it, and
+plunged through the ford singly; so they followed her, and all day she
+rode forward
+on horseback, touching neither food nor drink.  By night she was a league
+beyond the foremost of them, and fell upon the King encamped in the
+Desert, with the loose remnant of his forces.  Mashalleed, when he had
+looked on her, forgot his affliction, and stood up to embrace her, but
+Bhanavar spurned him, crying, 'A time for this in the time of disgrace?'
+Then she said, 'How came it?'
+
+He answered, 'There was a Chief among the enemy, an Arab, before the
+terror of whom my people fled.'
+
+Cried she, 'Conquer him on the morrow, and till then I eat not, drink
+not, sleep not.'
+
+On the morrow Mashalleed again encountered the rebels, and Bhanavar,
+seated on her elephant, from a sand-hillock under a palm, beheld the
+prowess of the Arab Chief and the tempest of battle that he was.  She
+thought, 'I have seen but one mighty in combat like that one, Ruark, the
+Chief of the Beni-Asser.' Thereupon she coursed toward the King, even
+where the arrows gloomed like locusts, thick and dark in the air aloof,
+and said, 'The victory is with yonder Chief!  Hurl on him three of thy
+sons of valour.'
+
+The three were selected, and made onslaught on this Chief, and perished
+under his arm.
+
+Bhanavar saw them fall, and exclaimed, 'Another attack on him, and with
+thrice three!'
+
+Her will was the mandate of Mashalleed, and these likewise were ordered
+forth, and closed on the Chief, but he darted from their toils and
+wheeled about them, spearing them one by one till the nine were in the
+dust.  Bhanavar compressed her dry lips and muttered to the King, 'Head
+thou a body against him.'
+
+Mashalleed gathered round his standard the chosen of his warriors, and
+smoothed his beard, and headed them.  Then the Chief struck his lance
+behind him, and stretched rapidly a half-circle across the sand, and
+halted on a knoll.  When they neared him he retreated in a further half-
+circle, and continued this wise, wasting the fury of Mashalleed, till he
+stood among his followers.  There, as the King hesitated and prepared to
+retreat, he and the others of the tribe levelled their lances and hung
+upon his rear, fretting them, slaughtering captains of the troop.  When
+Mashalleed turned to face his pursuer, the Chief was alone, immovable on
+his mare, fronting the ranks.  Then Bhanavar taunted the King, and he
+essayed the capture of that Chief a second time and a third, and it was
+each time as the first.  Bhanavar looked about her with rapid eyes,
+murmuring, 'Oh, what a Chief is he!  Oh that a cloud would fall, a smoke
+arise, to blind these hosts, that I might sling my serpents on him
+unseen, for I will not be vanquished, though it be by Ruark!'  So she
+drew to the King, and the altercation between them was fierce in the fury
+of the battle, he saying, ''Tis a feint of the Chief, this challenge; and
+I must succour the left of my army by the well, that he is overmatching
+with numbers'; and she, 'If thou head them not, then will I, and thou
+shalt behold a woman do what thou durst not, and lose her love and win
+her scorn.'  While they spake the Arabs they looked on seemed to flutter
+and waver, and the Chief was backing to them, calling to them as 'twere
+words of shame to rally them.  Seeing this, Mashalleed charged against
+the Chief once more, and lo! the Arabs opened to receive him, closing on
+his band of warriors like waters whitened by the storm on a fleet of
+swift-scudding vessels: and there was a dust and a tumult visible, such
+as is seen in the darkness when a vessel struck by the lightning-bolt is
+sinking--flashes of steel, lifting of hands, rolling of horsemen and
+horses.  Then Bhanavar groaned aloud, 'They are lost!  Shame to us! only
+one hope is left-that 'tis Ruark, this Chief!'  Now, the view of the
+plain cleared, and with it she beheld the army of Mashalleed broken, the
+King borne down by a dust of Arabs; so she unveiled her face and rode on
+the host with the horsemen that guarded her, glorious with a crown of
+gold and the glowing Jewel on her brow.  When she was a javelin's flight
+from them the Arabs shouted and paused in terror, for the light of her
+head was as the sun setting between clouds of thunder; but that Chief
+dashed forward like a flame beaten level by the wind, crying, 'Bhanavar;
+Bhanavar!' and she knew the features of Ruark; so she said, 'Even I!'
+And he cried again, 'Bhanavar!  Bhanavar!' and was as one stricken by a
+shaft.  Then Bhanavar threw on him certain of the horsemen with her, and
+he suffered them without a sign to surround him and grasp his mare by the
+bridle-rein, and bring him, disarmed, before the Queen.  At sight of
+Ruark a captive the Arabs fell into confusion, and lost heart, and were
+speedily chased and scattered from the scene like a loose spray before
+the wind; but Mashalleed the King rejoiced mightily and praised Bhanavar,
+and the whole army of the King praised her, magnifying her.
+
+Now, with Ruark she interchanged no syllable, and said not farewell to
+him when she departed with Mashalleed, to encounter other tribes; and the
+Chief was bound and conducted a prisoner to the city of the inland sea,
+and cast into prison, in expectation of Death the releaser, and continued
+there wellnigh a year, eating the bitter bread of captivity.  In the
+evening of every seventh day there came to him a little mountain girl,
+that sat by him and leaned a lute to her bosom, singing of the mountain
+and the desert, but he turned his face from her to the wall.  One day she
+sang of Death the releaser, and Ruark thought, ''Tis come!  she warneth
+me!  Merciful is Allah!'  On the morning that followed Ukleet entered the
+cell, and with him three slaves, blacks, armed with scimitars.  So Ruark
+stood up and bore witness to his faith, saying, 'Swift with the stroke!'
+but Ukleet exclaimed, 'Fear not! the end is not yet.'
+
+Then said he, 'Peace with thee!  These slaves, O Chief, excelling in
+martial qualities! surely they're my retinue, and the retinue of them of
+my rank in the palace; and where I go they go; for the exalted have more
+shadows than one! yea, three have they in my case, even very grimly black
+shadows, whereon the idle expend not laughter, and whoso joketh in their
+hearing, 'tis, wullahy! the last joke of that person.  In such-wise are
+the powerful known among men, they that stand very prominent in the beams
+of prosperity!  Now this of myself; but for thee--of a surety the Queen
+Bhanavar, my mistress, will be here by the time of the rising of the
+moon.  In the name of Allah!'  Saying that he departed in his greatness,
+and Ruark watched for her that rose in his soul as the moon in the
+heavens.
+
+Meanwhile Bhanavar had mused, ''Tis this day, the day when the Serpents
+desire their due, and the King Mashalleed they shall have; for what is
+life to him but a treachery and a dalliance, and what is my hold on him
+but this Jewel of the Serpents?  He has had the profit of beauty, and he
+shall yield the penalty: my kiss is for him, my serpent-kiss.  And I will
+release Ruark, and espouse him, and war with kings, sultans, emperors,
+infidels, subduing them till they worship me.'
+
+She flashed her figure in the glass, and was lovely therein as one in the
+light of Paradise; but ere she reached the King Mashalleed, lo! the hour
+of the Serpents had struck, and her beauty melted from her as snow melts
+from off the rock; and she was suddenly haggard in utter uncomeliness,
+and knew it not, but marched, smiling a grand smile, on to the King.  Now
+as Mashalleed lifted his eyes to her he started amazed, crying, 'The hag
+again!' and she said, 'What of the hag, O my lord the King?' Thereat he
+was yet more amazed, and exclaimed, 'The hag of ugliness with the voice
+of Bhanavar!  Has then the Queen lent that loathsomeness her voice also?'
+
+Bhanavar chilled a moment, and looked on the faces of the women present,
+and they were staring at her, the younger ones tittering, and among them
+Nashta, whom she hated.  So she cried, 'Away with ye!'  But the King
+commanded them, 'Stay!'  Then the Queen leaned to him, saying, 'I will
+speak with my lord alone'; whereat he shrank from her, and spat.  Ice and
+flame shivered through the blood of Bhanavar, yet such was her eagerness
+to give the kiss to Mashalleed, that she leaned to him, still wooing him
+to her with smiles.  Then the King seized her violently, and flung her
+over the marble floor to the very basin of the fountain, and the crown
+that was on her brow fell and rolled to the feet of Nashta.  The girl
+lifted it, laughing, and was in the act of fitting it to her fair head
+amid the chuckles of her companions, when a slap from the hand of
+Bhanavar spun her twice round, and she dropped to the marble insensible.
+The King bellowed in wrath, and ran to Nashta, crying to the Queen,
+'Surrender that crown to her, foul hag!'  But Bhanavar had bent over the
+basin of the fountain, and beheld the image of her change therein, and
+was hurrying from the hall and down the corridors of the palace to the
+private chamber.  So he made bare the steel by his side, and followed her
+with a number of the harem guard, menacing her, and commanding her to
+surrender the crown with the Jewel.  Ere she could lay hand on a veil, he
+was beside her, and she was encompassed.  In that extremity Bhanavar
+plucked the Jewel from her crown, and rubbed it, calling the Serpents to
+her.  One came, one only, and that one would not move from her to sling
+himself about the neck of Mashalleed, but whirled round her, hissing:
+
+               Every hour a serpent dies,
+               Till we have the sacrifice:
+               Sweeten, sweeten, with thy kiss,
+               Quick! a soul for Karatis.
+
+Surely the King bit his breath, marvelling, and his fury became an awful
+fear, and he fell back from her, molesting her no further.  Then she
+squeezed the serpent till his body writhed in knots, and veiled herself,
+and sprang down a secret passage to the garden, and it was the time of
+the rising of the moon.  Coolness and soothingness dropped on her as a
+balm from the great light, and she gazed on it murmuring, as in a memory:
+
+          Shall I counsel the moon in her ascending?
+          Stay under that dark palm-tree through the night,
+               Rest on the mountain slope,
+               By the couching antelope,
+          O thou enthroned supremacy of light!
+            And for ever the lustre thou art lending
+          Lean on the fair long brook that leaps and leaps,
+               Silvery leaps and falls:
+               Hang by the mountain-walls,
+          Moon! and arise no more to crown the steeps,
+            For a danger and dolour is thy wending!
+
+And she panted and sighed, and wept, crying, 'Who, who will kiss me or
+have my kiss now, that I may indeed be as yonder beam?  Who, that I may
+be avenged on this King?  And who sang that song of the ascending of the
+moon, that comes to me as a part of me from old times?'  As she gazed on
+the circled radiance swimming under a plume of palm leaves, she
+exclaimed, 'Ruark!  Ruark the Chief!'  So she clasped her hands to her
+bosom, and crouched under the shadows of the garden, and fled through the
+garden gates and the streets of the city, heavily veiled, to the prison
+where Ruark awaited her within the walls and Ukleet without.  The
+Governor of the prison had been warned by Ukleet of her coming, and the
+doors and bars opened before her unchallenged, till she stood in the cell
+of Ruark; her eyes, that were alone unveiled, scanned the countenance of
+the Chief, the fevered lustre-jet of his looks, and by the little
+moonlight in the cell she saw with a glance the straw-heap and the
+fetters, and the black-bread and water untasted on the bench--signs of
+his misery and desire for her coming.  So she greeted him with the word
+of peace, and he replied with the name of the All-Merciful.  Then said
+she, 'O Ruark, of Rukrooth thy mother tell me somewhat.'
+
+He answered, 'I know nought of her since that day.  Allah have her in his
+keeping!'
+
+So she cried, 'How?  What say'st thou, Ruark? 'tis a riddle.'
+
+Then he, 'The oath of Ruark is no rope of sand!  He swore to see her not
+till he had set eyes on Bhanavar.'
+
+She knelt by the Chief, saying in a soft voice, 'Very greatly the Chief
+of the Beni-Asser loved Bhanavar.'  And she thought, 'Yea!  greatly and
+verily love I him; and he shall be no victim of the Serpents, for I defy
+them and give them other prey.'  So she said in deeper notes, 'Ruark! the
+Queen is come hither to release thee. O my Chief!  O thou soul of wrath!
+Ruark, my fire-eye! my eagle of the desert! where is one on earth beloved
+as thou art by Bhanavar?'  The dark light in his eyes kindled as light in
+the eyes of a lion, and she continued, 'Ruark, what a yoke is hers who
+weareth this crown!  He that is my lord, how am I mated to him save in
+loathing?  O my Chief, my lion! hadst thou no dream of Bhanavar, that she
+would come hither to unbind thee and lift thee beside her, and live with
+thee in love and veilless loveliness,--thine?  Yea! and in power over
+lands and nations and armies, lording the infidel, taming them to
+submission, exulting in defiance and assaults and victories and
+magnanimities--thou and she?'  Then while his breast heaved like a broad
+wave, the Queen started to her feet, crying, 'Lo, she is here! and this
+she offereth thee, Ruark!'
+
+A shrill cry parted from her lips, and to the clapping of her hands
+slaves entered the cell with lamps, and instruments to strike off the
+fetters from the Chief; and they released him, and Ruark leaned on their
+shoulders to bear the weight of a limb, so was he weakened by captivity;
+but Bhanavar thrust them from the Chief, and took the pressure of his
+elbow on her own shoulder, and walked with him thus to the door of the
+cell, he sighing as one in a dream that dreameth the bliss of bliss.  Now
+they had gone three paces onward, and were in the light of many lamps,
+when behold! the veil of Bhanavar caught in the sleeve of Ruark as he
+lifted it, and her visage became bare.  She shrieked, and caught up her
+two hands to her brow, but the slaves had a glimpse of her, and said
+among themselves, 'This is not the Queen.'  And they murmured, ''Tis an
+impostor! one in league with the Chief.' Bhanavar heard them say, 'Arrest
+her with him at the Governor's gate,' and summoned her soul, thinking,
+'He loveth me, the Chief!  he will look into my eyes and mark not the
+change.  What need I then to dread his scorn when I ask of him the kiss:
+now must it be given, or we are lost, both of us!' and she raised her
+head on Ruark, and said to him, ' my Chief, ere we leave these walls and
+join our fates, wilt thou plight thyself to me with a kiss?'
+
+Ruark leapt to her like the bounding leopard, and gave her the kiss, as
+were it his whole soul he gave.  Then in a moment Bhanavar felt the blush
+of beauty burn over her, and drew the veil down on her face, and suffered
+the slaves to arrest her with Ruark, and bring her before the Governor,
+and from the Governor to the King in his council-chamber, with the Chief
+of the Beni-Asser.
+
+Now, the King Mashalleed called to her, 'Thou traitress! thou sorceress!
+thou serpent!'
+
+And she answered under the veil, 'What, O my lord the King! and wherefore
+these evil names of me?'
+
+Cried he, 'Thou thing of guile! and thou hast pleaded with me for the
+life of the Chief thus long to visit him in secret!  Life of my head I
+but Mashalleed is not one to be fooled.'
+
+So she said, ''Tis Bhanavar! hast thou forgotten her?'
+
+Then he waxed white with rage, exclaiming, 'Yea, 'tis she! a serpent in
+the slough! and Ukleet in the torture hath told of thee what is known to
+him.  Unveil! unveil!'
+
+She threw the veil from her figure, and smiled, for Mashalleed was mute,
+the torrent of invective frozen on his mouth when he beheld the miracle
+of beauty that she was, the splendid jewel of throbbing loveliness.  So
+to scourge him with the bitter lash of jealousy, Bhanavar turned her eyes
+on Ruark, and said sweetly, 'Yet shalt thou live to taste again the bliss
+of the Desert.  Pleasant was our time in it, O my Chief!'  The King
+glared and choked, and she said again, 'Nor he conquered thee, but I; and
+I that conquered thee, little will it be for me to conquer him: his
+threats are the winds of idleness.'
+
+Surely the world darkened before the eyes of Mashalleed, and he arose and
+called to his guard hoarsely, 'Have off their heads!' They hesitated,
+dreading the Queen, and he roared, 'Slay them!'
+
+Bhanavar beheld the winking of the steel, but ere the scimitars
+descended, she seized Ruark, and they stood in a whizzing ring of
+serpents, the sound of whom was as the hum of a thousand wires struck by
+storm-winds.  Then she glowed, towering over them with the Chief clasped
+to her, and crying:
+
+          King of vileness! match thy slaves
+          With my creatures of the caves.
+
+And she sang to the Serpents:
+
+          Seize upon him! sting him thro'!
+          Thrice this day shall pay your due.
+
+But they, instead of obeying her injunction, made narrower their circle
+round Bhanavar and the Chief.  She yellowed, and took hold of the nearest
+Serpent horribly, crying:
+
+               Dare against me to rebel,
+               Ye, the bitter brood of hell?
+
+And the Serpent gasped in reply:
+
+               One the kiss to us secures:
+               Give us ours, and we are yours.
+
+Thereupon another of the Serpents swung on, the feet of Ruark, winding
+his length upward round the body of the Chief; so she tugged at that one,
+tearing it from him violently, and crying:
+
+               Him ye shall not have, I swear!
+               Seize the King that's crouching there.
+
+And that Serpent hissed:
+
+               This is he the kiss ensures:
+               Give us ours, and we are yours.
+
+Another and another Serpent she flung from the Chief, and they began to
+swarm venomously, answering her no more.  Then Ruark bore witness to his
+faith, and folded his arms with the grave smile she had known in the
+desert; and Bhanavar struggled and tussled with the Serpents in
+fierceness, strangling and tossing them to right and left.  'Great is
+Allah!' cried all present, and the King trembled, for never was sight
+like that seen, the hall flashing with the Serpents, and a woman-serpent,
+their Queen, raging to save one from their fury, shrieking at intervals:
+
+               Never, never shall ye fold,
+               Save with me the man I hold.
+
+But now the hiss and scream of the Serpents and the noise of their
+circling was quickened to a slurred savage sound and they closed on
+Ruark, and she felt him stifling and that they were relentless.  So in
+the height of the tempest Bhanavar seized the Jewel in the gold circlet
+on her brow and cast it from her.  Lo!  the Serpents instantly abated
+their frenzy, and flew all of them to pluck the Jewel, chasing the one
+that had it in his fangs through the casement, and the hall breathed
+empty of them.  Then in the silence that was, Bhanavar veiled her face
+and said to the Chief, 'Pass from the hall while they yet dread me.  No
+longer am I Queen of Serpents.'
+
+But he replied, 'Nay! said I not my soul is thine?'
+
+She cried to him, 'Seest thou not the change in me?  I was bound to those
+Serpents for my beauty, and 'tis gone!  Now am I powerless, hateful to
+look on, O Ruark my Chief!'
+
+He remained still, saying, 'What thou hast been thou art.'
+
+She exclaimed, 'O true soul, the light is hateful to me as I to the
+light; but I will yet save thee to comfort Rukrooth, thy mother.'
+
+So she drew him with her swiftly from the hall of the King ere the King
+had recovered his voice of command; but now the wrath of the All-powerful
+was upon her and him!  Surely within an hour from the flight of the
+Serpents, the slaves and soldiers of Mashalleed laid at his feet two
+heads that were the heads of Ruark and Bhanavar; and they said, 'O great
+King, we tracked them to her chamber and through to a passage and a vault
+hung with black, wherein were two corpses, one in a tomb and one
+unburied, and we slew them there, clasping each other, O King of the
+age!'
+
+Mashalleed gazed upon the head of Bhanavar and sighed, for death had made
+the head again fair with a wondrous beauty, a loveliness never before
+seen on earth.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+How little a thing serves Fortune's turn
+Ripe with oft telling and old is the tale
+The curse of sorrow is comparison!
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Shaving of Shagpat, v1
+by George Meredith
+