Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/225

203 whilst his tongue forgot not to name God the Most High and call on Him for protection.

Presently, there appeared cressets and flambeaux and lanterns and up came the army of women. So he arose and mingling with them, became as one of them. A little before daybreak, they set out, and Hassan with them, and fared on till they came to their encampment, where they dispersed, each to her tent, and Hassan followed his protectress into hers. When she entered, she threw down her arms and put off her hauberk and veil. So Hassan did the like and looking at her, saw her to be a grizzled old woman, blue-eyed and big-nosed, a calamity of calamities. Indeed, she was the foulest of all created things, with pock-marked face and bald eyebrows, gap-toothed and chapfallen, with hoary hair, running nose and slavering mouth; even as saith of the like of her the poet:

And indeed she was like a pied snake or a bald she-wolf. When she looked at Hassan, she marvelled and said, ‘How won this man to these lands and in which of the ships was he and how came he hither in safety?’ And she fell to questioning him of his case and wondering at his coming, whereupon he fell at her feet and rubbed his face on them and wept till he swooned away; and when he came to himself he recited the following verses:

When will the days vouchsafe reunion to us twain And our long-severed loves reknit into one skein? When shall I win of them the long-desired delight, Reproach that hath an end and love that doth remain? If Nile ran like my tears, ’twould leave no barren place Unwatered in the world nor any desert plain;