Page:Turkish fairy tales and folk tales (1901).djvu/185

 the youth were dazzled even to blindness. It was the World's most beauteous Damsel who had appeared in the door of the palace, and the great light was the rosiness of her two radiant cheeks. She approached the prince and spoke to him, but scarcely did the youth perceive her than he fainted away before her eyes. When he came to himself again they brought him into the damsel's palace, and there he rejoiced exceedingly in the World's most beauteous Damsel, for her face was as the face of a Houri, and her presence was as a vision of Peris.

"Oh, prince!" began the damsel, "thou that art the son of Shah Suleiman, canst aid me in my deep distress. In the vast garden of the Demon of Autumn there is a bunch of singing-pomegranates: if thou canst get them for me I will be thine for ever and ever."

Then the youth gave her his hand upon it, the hand of loyal friendship, and departed far far away. He went on and on without stopping, he went on, and for months and months he crossed deserts where man had never trod, and mountains over which there was no path. "Oh, my Creator," he sighed, "wilt thou not show me the right way?" and he rose up again each morning from the place where he had sunk down exhausted the night before, and so he went on and on from day to day till the path led him right