Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/336

302 in the garden, where the lady was then walking with her maidens. She bade one of the latter hasten and bring her the letter, for she could read writing; and when she had read it and saw what he said in it of his love and passion and longing, she wrote him a reply, to the effect that she was smitten with a yet fiercer passion for him and threw the letter down to him from one of the windows of the pavilion. When he saw her, he picked up the reply and after reading it, came under the window and said to her, “Let me down a string, that I may send thee this key, which do thou take and keep by thee.” So she let down a string and he tied the key to it.

Then he went away and repairing to one of his father’s viziers, complained to him of his passion for the lady and that he could not live without her; and the vizier said, “And how dost thou bid me contrive?” Quoth the prince, “I would have thee lay me in a chest and commit it to the merchant, feigning to him that it is thine and desiring him to keep it for thee in his country-house some days, that I may have my will of her; then do thou demand it back from him.” The vizier answered, “With all my heart.” So the prince returned to his palace and fixing the padlock, the key whereof he had given the lady, on a chest he had by him, entered the latter, whereupon the vizier locked it upon him and setting it on a mule, carried it to the pavilion of the merchant. The latter, seeing the vizier, came forth to him and kissed his hands, saying, “Belike our lord the vizier hath some need or business which we may have the pleasure of accomplishing for him?” “Yes,” answered the vizier; “I would have thee set this chest in the priviest place in thy house and keep it till I seek it of thee.” So the merchant made the porter carry it in and set it down in one of his storehouses, after which he went out upon some occasion of his. As soon as he was gone, his wife went up to the chest and