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76 that went straight to Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed's heart:

"I sometimes visit Bedreddin's shop on my way home from the bath, to purchase essences and boxes of perfume."

The merchant, conducting Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed to the most remote recess of his shop, congratulated him upon his good fortune and whispered mysteriously in his ear:

"That young lady is no other than the princess Ayesha, daughter of the Caliph."

Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed returned to his abode utterly bewildered by his happiness and scarce daring to believe that it could be true. And yet, modest as he was, he could not be blind to the fact that the princess Ayesha had looked on him with an eye of favor. That great busybody, Chance, had exceeded his most audacious dreams. How he congratulated himself now that he had not yielded to the advice of those friends of his who had urged him to marry, and that he had not been seduced by the alluring descriptions that old women gave him of marriageable young girls, who, as is well known by every one, invariably have the eyes of the gazelle, a face like the full moon, hair longer than the tail of Al Borack, the prophet's favorite mare, a mouth as red as jasper, with a breath sweet as ambergris, and a thousand perfections beside which disappear at the same time as the haick and the nuptial veil: how he rejoiced that he was untrammeled by any vulgar tie, and free to abandon himself entirely to his new passion!

It was all to no purpose that he turned and twisted on his divan, he could not sleep; the image of the