Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 2.djvu/386

349 Fekan?” And she answered, “Know that she is distraught for love of thee.” At this he rose and taking off his [upper] clothes, put them on her and promised her all good. Then said she, “Know that I mean to pass this night with thee, that I may repeat to thee what talk I have heard and divert thee with tales of many a slave of love, whom passion hath made sick.” Quoth he, “Tell me a story, that will gladden my heart and dispel my cares.” “With all my heart,” answered she and sitting down beside him, with the dagger under her clothes, began thus, “The pleasantest thing I ever heard was as follows: BAKOUN’S STORY OF THE HASHISH-EATER.

A certain man loved the fair and spent his substance on them, till he became a beggar and used to go about the streets and markets, seeking his bread. One day, as he went along, a splinter of iron pierced his finger and made it bleed; so he sat down and wiping away the blood, bound up his finger. Then he went on, crying out, till he came to a bath, and entering found it clean (and empty). So he took off his clothes and sitting down by the basin, fell to pouring water on his head, till he was tired, when he went out to the room in which was the tank of cold water. Finding none there, he shut himself up [in a cabinet] and taking out a piece of hashish, swallowed it. The fumes of the drug spread through his brain and he rolled over on to the marble floor. Then the hashish made it appear to him as if a great lord were kneading him and as if two slaves stood at his head, one bearing a bowl and the other washing gear and all the requisites of the bath. When he saw this, he said to himself, ‘Meseems these are mistaken in me; or else they are of the company of us hashish-eaters.’ Then he stretched out his legs and it seemed to him that the bathman said to