Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 6.djvu/326

296 been prescribed to her to eat bears’ flesh and anoint herself with the grease.’ At this the Jew rejoiced and said in himself, ‘I will sell him to this merchant, so he may slaughter him and we be at peace from him,’ And Ali thought in himself, ‘By Allah, this fellow means to slaughter me; but deliverance is with God.’ Then said the Jew, ‘He is a present from me to thee.’ So the merchant took him and carried him to the butcher, to whom he said, ‘Take thy tools and follow me.’ So the butcher took his knives and followed the merchant to his house, where he bound the beast and fell to sharpening his knife; but when he went up to him to kill him, the bear escaped from his hands and rising into the air, disappeared from sight.

Now the reason of this was on this wise. When the Jew returned to his palace, his daughter questioned him of Ali and he told her what had happened; whereupon, ‘Call a genie,’ said she, ‘and ask him of the youth, whether he be indeed Quicksilver Ali or another who seeketh to put a cheat on thee.’ So Azariah called a genie and questioned him of Ali. And he answered, saying, ‘It is Ali of Cairo himself. The butcher has bound him and whetted his knife to kill him.’ Quoth the Jew, ‘Go, snatch him up and bring him hither, ere the butcher slaughter him.’ So the genie flew off and snatching Ali out of the butcher’s hands, carried him to the palace and set him down before the Jew, who took a cup of water and conjuring over it, sprinkled him therewith, saying, ‘Return to thine own shape.’ And he straightway became a man again as before. The Jew’s daughter Kemer, seeing him to be a handsome young man, fell in love with him and he with her; and she said to him, ‘O unlucky one, why dost thou go about to take my robe and enforce my father deal thus with thee?’ Quoth he, ‘I have engaged to get it for Zeyneb the Trickstress, that I may wed her therewith.’ And she