Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/167

147 “How call’st thou this thy dress?” asked we, and she replied A word wherein the wise a lesson well might trace. “Breaker of Hearts,” quoth she, “I call it; for therewith I’ve broken many a heart among the amorous race.”

Then they sat talking and laughing, whilst he stood gazing on them, drowned in the sea of passion and wandering in the valley of melancholy thought. And he said in himself, ‘By Allah, my sister forbade me not to open the door, but because of these maidens and lest I should fall in love with one of them!’ And he continued to gaze on the charms of the chief damsel, who was the loveliest creature God had made in her time, and indeed she outdid all mortals in beauty. She had a mouth like Solomon’s seal and hair blacker than the night of estrangement to the despairing lover; her forehead was as the new moon of the Feast of Ramazan and her eyes were like unto gazelles’ eyes. She had a polished aquiline nose and cheeks like blood-red anemones, lips like coral and teeth like strung pearls in carcanets of virgin gold and a neck like an ingot of silver, above a shape like a willow-wand. Her belly was full of folds and dimples, such as enforce the distracted lover to magnify God and extol Him therefor, and her navel held an ounce of musk, most sweet of savour. She had thighs great and plump, like columns of marble or bolsters stuffed with ostrich-down, and between them somewhat as it were a great hummock or a hare with ears laid back; and indeed she surpassed the willow-wand and the bamboo-cane with her