Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/75

57 I doubt not but thou art Aboulhusn of Khorassan the money-changer.” With this I fell aweepinga-weeping [sic] and he said to me, “Why dost thou weep? By Allah, she for whom thou weepest is yet more passionately in love with thee than thou with her! And indeed her case with thee is notorious among all the women of the palace. But what wouldst thou have?” Quoth I, “I would have thee succour me in my affliction.” So he appointed me for the morrow and I returned home.

Next morning, I betook myself to him and waited in his chamber till he came, when he said to me, “Know that, when she returned to her apartment yesternight, after having made an end of her service about the Khalif’s person, I related to her all that passed between me and thee and she is minded to foregather with thee. So abide thou with me till the end of the day.” Accordingly I abode with him till dark, when he brought me a shirt of gold-inwoven stuff and a suit of the Khalif’s apparel and clothing me therein, incensed me and I became most like the Khalif. Then he brought me to a gallery with rows of doors on each side and said to me, “These are the lodgings of the chief of the slave-girls; and when thou passest along the gallery, do thou lay a bean at each door,—for it is the Khalif’s wont to do this every night,—till thou come to the second passage on thy right hand, when thou wilt see a door with a threshold of alabaster. Touch it with thy hand; or, if thou wilt, count the doors, so many, and enter the one whose marks are thus and thus. There thy mistress will see thee and take thee in with her. As for thy coming forth, God will make it easy to me, though I carry thee out in a chest.”

Then he left me and returned, whilst I went on, counting the doors and laying at each a bean. When I had