Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/286

252 a network of fine pearls. The canopy was spread above a fountain of ivory and cornelian, plated with glittering gold and set with pearls and rubies and other jewels, and thereby stood a couch and a pillar of red gold. On the top of the pillar was perched a bird fashioned of red rubies and holding in its bill a pearl, that shone like a star; and on the couch lay a damsel, as she were the shining sun, never saw eyes a fairer. She was clad in a robe of fine pearls, with a crown of red gold on her head, filleted with gems, and on her brow were two great jewels, whose light was as the light of the sun. On her breast she wore a jewelled amulet, filled with musk and ambergris and worth the empire of the Cæsars, and round her neck hung a collar of rubies and great pearls, [hollow and] full of odoriferous musk. Whoso looked on her would deem her alive and not dead, for it seemed as if she gazed on them with eyes as they were gazelles’ eyes, that followed them from side to side.

The Amir Mousa marvelled at her beauty and was confounded at the blackness of her hair and the redness of her cheeks and said to her, ‘Peace be on thee, O damsel!’ But she returned not his salutation and the Sheikh said to him, ‘O Amir, verily this damsel is dead and there is no life in her; so how shall she return thy greeting? Indeed, she is but a corpse embalmed with exceeding art; her eyes were taken out after her death and quicksilver set under them, after which they were restored to their sockets. Wherefore they glisten and when the air moves the lashes, she seems to wink and it appears to the beholder as though she looked at him, for all she is dead.’ At this the Amir marvelled beyond measure and said, ‘Glory be to God, who subjecteth His creatures unto death!’

Now the couch, on which the damsel lay, had steps, and thereon stood two slaves, one white and the other