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A damsel made for love and decked with subtle grace; You’d say the very sun had borrowed from her face.
She came in robes of green, the likeness of the leaf That the pomegranate’s flower cloth in the bud encase.
“How call’st thou this thy dress?” we said to her, and she Made answer with a word full of malicious grace.
“Breaker of Hearts,” quoth she, “I call it, for therewith I’ve broken many a heart among the human race.”
Then they dressed her in the seventh dress, which was of a colour between saffron and orange, even as says the poet:
Scented with sandal and musk and ambergris, lo! she comes. The blended hues of her dress ’twixt orange and saffron show.
Slender and shapely she is; vivacity bids her arise, But the weight of her hips says, “Sit, or softly and slowly go.”
When I solicit her kiss and sue for my heart’s desire, “Be gracious,” her beauty says, but her coquetry answers, “No.”
They unveiled the bride, in all her seven dresses, before Bedreddin Hassan, leaving the hunchback sitting by himself; and when she opened her eyes, she said, “O my God, grant that this youth may be my husband and deliver me from this humpbacked groom.” Then they dismissed the company and all who were present retired, except Bedreddin Hassan and the hunchback, whilst the tire-women carried off the bride to undress her and prepare her for the bridegroom. Thereupon the hunchback came up to Bedreddin Hassan and said to him, “O my lord, thou hast cheered us with thy company to-night and overwhelmed us with thy favours. Wilt thou not now rise and depart?” “In the name of God,” replied Bedreddin, and rising, went out of the door, where the Afrit met him and said to him, “Stay where thou art, and when the hunchback goes out to the draught-house, enter thou the bride chamber and do not hesitate, but sit down in the alcove, and when the bride comes, say to her, ‘’Tis I who am thy husband, for the King only played this trick on thee, to
