Page:Tales of Today.djvu/87

Rh Poor Scheherazade hereupon raised her long henna-stained eyes upward toward the ceiling with a look so soft, lustrous, melting, and suppliant that my heart was softened and I made up my mind to do a great thing.

"I did have a subject, such as it is, that I was intending to spin into a feuilleton; I will dictate it to you and you can translate it into Arabic, adding the embroideries, the flowers and pearls of poesy, in which it is deficient; there is a title ready made for it: we will christen our story the Thousand and Second Night."

Scheherazade took a block of paper and began to write from right to left, in the Oriental way, with great swiftness. There was no time to lose: she had to be in the capital of the kingdom of Samarcand that same evening.

There once lived in the city of Cairo a young man named Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed, who had his residence on the place of the Esbekick.

His father and mother had died some years before, leaving him a moderate fortune, but one which sufficed to yield him a living without having recourse to the toil of his hands; others would have essayed the venture of loading a ship with merchandise, or sending a few camels laden with precious stuffs to accompany the caravan which traffics between Bagdad and Mecca, but Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed chose rather to live tranquilly, and his pleasures consisted in smoking tombeki in his nargile, in drinking sherbets and eating the dried confections of Damascus.

Although he was of attractive presence, with regular