Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 3.djvu/312

286 answered Alaeddin. ‘I know not her length from her breadth.’ ‘And why?’ asked Jaafer. ‘O Vizier,’ replied Alaeddin, ‘what befits the master befits not the servant.’) Then the Khalif and Jaafer disguised themselves and went privily to visit Alaeddin; but he knew them and rising to them, kissed the hands of the Khalif, who looked at him and read trouble in his face. So he said to him, ‘O Alaeddin, whence cometh this trouble in which I see thee? Hast thou gone in to Cout el Culoub?’ ‘O Commander of the Faithful,’ answered he, ‘what befits the master befits not the servant. No, I have not gone in to her nor do I know her length from her breadth; so do thou quit me of her.’ Quoth the Khalif, ‘I would fain see her and question her of her case.’ And Alaeddin replied, ‘I hear and obey, O Commander of the Faithful.’ So the Khalif went in to Cout el Culoub, who rose and kissed the ground before him, and said to her, ‘Hath Alaeddin gone in to thee?’ ‘No, O Commander of the Faithful,’ answered she; ‘I sent to bid him to me, but he would not come.’ So he bade carry her back to the harem and saying to Alaeddin, ‘Do not absent thyself from us,’ returned to his palace. Accordingly, next morning, Alaeddin mounted and rode to the Divan, where he took his seat as Chief of the Sixty. Presently the Khalif bade his treasurer give the Vizier Jaafer ten thousand dinars and said to the latter, ‘I charge thee to go down to the slave-market and buy Alaeddin a slave-girl with this sum.’ So Jaafer took Alaeddin and went down with him to the bazaar. As change would have it, that very day, the Amir Khalid, Chief of the Baghdad Police, had gone down to the market to buy a slave-girl for his son Hebezlem Bezazeh. Now this son he had by his wife Khatoun, and he was foul of favour and had reached the age of twenty, without learning to ride, albeit his father was a valiant cavalier and a doughty champion and delighted in battle and adventure. One