Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 4.djvu/165

141  it came up, as it had been the lightest of things. Then said the Khalif, “Go down and bring up what is there; for none but one of thy name and favour and quality hath gone down there since the place was made, and the slaying of the bear and the woman was appointed to be at thy hand. This was recorded with me and I was awaiting its fulfilment.” Accordingly, I went down and brought up all the treasure, whereupon the Khalif sent for beasts of burden and carried it away, after giving me the porter’s crate, with what was therein. So I carried it home and opened me a shop in the market. And [quoth he who tells the tale] this market is still extant and is known as Werdan’s Market. THE KING’S DAUGHTER AND THE APE.

There was once a King’s daughter, whose heart was taken with love of a black slave: he did away her maidenhead, and she became passionately addicted to amorous dalliance, so that she could not endure from it a single hour and made moan of her case to one of her body women, who told her that no thing doth the deed of kind more abundantly than the ape. Now it chanced, one day, that an ape-leader passed under her lattice, with a great ape; so she unveiled her face and looking upon the ape, signed to him with her eyes, whereupon he broke his bonds and shackles and climbed up to the princess, who hid him in a place with her, and he abode, eating and drinking and clicketing, night and day. Her father heard of this and would have killed her; but she took the alarm and disguising herself in a [male] slave’s habit, loaded a mule with gold and jewels and precious stuffs past count; then, taking horse with the ape, fled to Cairo, where she took up her abode in one of the houses without the city.

Now, every day, she used to buy meat of a young man,