Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 3.djvu/180

160 Belovéd in pleasure and pain, chagrin and contentment alike, Whate’er may betide, ye alone are the goal that my wishes ensue. There’s one that still holdeth a heart, a heart sore tormented of mine; Ah, would she’d have ruth on my plight and pity the soul that she slew! Not every one’s eye is as mine, worn wounded and cankered with tears, And hearts that are, even as mine, the bondslaves of passion, are few. Ye acted the tyrant with me, saying, “Love is a tyrant, I trow.” Indeed, ye were right, and the case has proved what ye said to be true. Alack! They’ve forgotten outright a passion-distraught one, whose faith Time ’minisheth not, though the fires in his entrails rage ever anew. If my foeman in love be my judge, to whom shall I make my complaint? To whom of injustice complain, to whom for redress shall I sue? Were it not for my needing of love and the ardour that burns in my breast, I had not a heart love-enslaved and a soul that for passion must rue.

To return to the princess Budour. When she awoke, she sought her husband and found him not: then she saw the ribbon of her trousers undone and the talisman missing and said to herself, ‘By Allah, this is strange! Where is my husband? It would seem as if he had taken the talisman and gone away, knowing not the secret that is in it. Whither can he have gone? It must have been some extraordinary matter that drew him away, for he cannot brook to leave me an hour. May God curse the talisman and its hour!’ Then she considered awhile and said in herself, ‘If I go out and tell the servants that my husband is lost, they will covet me: I must use stratagem.’ So she rose and donned some of her husband’s clothes and boots and spurs and a turban like his, drawing the loose end across her face for a chin-band. Then setting a slave-girl in her litter, she went forth the tent and called to the servants, who brought her Kemerezzeman’s horse; and she mounted and bade load the beasts and set forward. So they bound on the burdens and departed, none doubting but she was Kemerezzeman, for she resembled