Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 1.djvu/349

323 thy voice.’ ‘I hear and obey,’ replied she; and the Vizier left her and went away. Some days after this it chanced, as Fate would have it, that the damsel went to the bath in the house, where some of the serving-women washed her, after which she arrayed herself in rich apparel, and her beauty and grace redoubled. Then she went in to the Vizier’s wife and kissed her hand; and the lady said to her, ‘May it profit thee, O Enis el Jelis! How didst thou find the bath?’ ‘O my lady,’ answered she, ‘I lacked but thy presence there.’ Thereupon said the mistress to her waiting-women, ‘Come with me to the bath, for it is some days since I went thither.’ ‘We hear and obey,’ answered they; and rose and accompanied her to the bath, after Enis el Jelis had retired to her own chamber and the lady had set two little slave-girls to keep the door, charging them to let none go in to the damsel. Presently, as Enis el Jelis sat resting after the bath, in came the Vizier’s son, whose name was Noureddin Ali, and asked after his mother and her women, to which the two little slaves replied that they had gone to the bath. The damsel heard Noureddin’s voice and said to herself, ‘I wonder what like is this youth, of whom his father says that there is not a girl in the quarter but he has had to do with her. By Allah, I long to see him!’ So she rose, fresh as she was from the bath, and going to the door, looked at Noureddin and saw that he was like the moon at its full. The sight cost her a thousand sighs, and Noureddin, chancing to look that way, caught a glance of her that caused him also a thousand regrets, and each fell into the snare of the other’s love. Then he went up to the two little slaves and cried out at them, whereupon they fled before him and stood afar off to see what he would do. And behold, he went up to the door of the damsel’s chamber and entering, said to her, ‘Art thou she whom my father bought for me?’ ‘Yes,’ answered she: whereupon Noureddin, who