Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 6.djvu/230

202 thee to tell me the best thou hast heard of stories of women and their verses.’ ‘I hear and obey,’ answered El Asmaï. ‘I have heard great store of women’s verses; but none pleased me save three lines I once heard from three girls.’ ‘Tell me of them,’ said the Khalif. ‘Know then, O Commander of the Faithful,’ replied the poet, ‘that I once abode a year in Bassora, and one day, as I was walking about, the heat was sore upon me and I sought for a place where I might take the noonday rest, but found none. Presently, however, I came upon a porch swept and watered, at the upper end whereof was an open lattice-window, whence exhaled a scent of musk and thereunder a wooden bench. I entered the porch, and lying down on the bench, would have slept, when, behold, I heard from within a girl’s sweet voice talking and saying, “O my sisters, we are sat here to spend this day in each other’s company; so come, let us each put down a hundred dinars and recite a line of verse; and whoso recites the goodliest and sweetest line, the three hundred dinars shall be hers.” “With all our hearts,” said the others; and the eldest recited the following verse:

Quoth the second:

Then said the youngest:

Quoth I, “If [the speaker] have beauty after the measure [of the goodliness] of this [her speech] the thing is every way complete.” Then I rose and was about to go away, when the door opened and out came a slave-girl, who said