Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/315

287 Then she turned its pegs and tuned its strings and laying it in her lap, bent over it as the mother bends over her child; and it seemed as it were of her and her lute that the poet spoke in the following verses:

Then she preluded in fourteen different modes and sang an entire piece to the lute, so as to confound the lookers-on and delight her hearers. After which she recited this couplet:

Then she rose and exhibited tricks of sleight of hand and legerdemain and all manner of pleasing arts, till the lady Zubeideh came near to fall in love with her and said in herself, ‘Verily, my cousin Er Reshid is not to blame for loving her!’ Then Cout el Culoub kissed the earth before Zubeideh and sat down, whereupon they set food before her. Then they brought her the drugged dish of sweetmeats and she ate thereof; and hardly had it settled in her stomach when her head fell backward and she sank on the ground, asleep. With this, Zubeideh said to her women, ‘Carry her up to one of the chambers, till I call for her.’ And they answered, ‘We hear and obey.’ Then she bade one of her eunuchs fashion her a chest and commanded to make the semblance of a tomb and to spread the report that Cout el Culoub had choked and died,