they hold such people in awe. It was here that I beheld the maiden, and forthwith the madness came upon me and I loved her.
"I was astonished that such beauty should be found in so remote and so barbarous a place; for this girl was a daughter of the village folk, and their women are commonly coarse and big and ill- favoured, with their hands roughened by hard labour, and their faces tanned black as the bottom of a cooking-pot by exposure to the sun, since they do much work in the rice-fields. But this girl, Túan, was slender and delicate, and her face was light in colour, and had the effulgence of the moon when it is at the full in truth I cannot tell to you the wonder of her beauty. Even now, when I am old, as I then was young, my liver waxes hot at the thought of her loveliness. For every man in the world there is al- ways one woman. Allah knoweth that our loves are many so many that no man may retain in his mind the memory of all of them; but the others are as shadows while one is the reality. So it hath been with me. I was a son of the king's city, born to mate with one bred gently in the precincts of the court; yet at the sight of this village nuaiden, my liver was crumbled to atoms, and I knew that life held nought of worth to me until I could have her for my own. Therefore. I sent the marriage portion lo her parents, who were much elated that my father's son should desire to wed their daughter.
"A day was set apart for the feast of the Becom- ing One; and while I awaited its coming. I was de-
