Now when it was the Nine Hundred and Seventieth Night,
She resumed, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Kamar al-Zaman said to the jeweller, “The setting is conformable to my wishes, but the stone is not to my liking. I have a handsomer than this: so take the seal-ring and give it to one of thy slave-women.” Then he gave him a fourth stone and an hundred dinars, saying, “Take thy hire and excuse the trouble we have given thee.” Obayd replied, “O merchant, all the trouble thou hast given us thou hast requited us and hast overwhelmed us with thy great bounties: and indeed my heart is taken with love of thee and I cannot brook parting from thee. So, Allah upon thee, be thou my guest this night and heal my heart.” He rejoined, “So be it; but needs must I go to my Khan, that I may give a charge to my domestics and tell them that I shall sleep abroad to-night, so they may not expect me.” “Where dost thou lodge?” asked the jeweller; and he answered, “In such a Khan.” Quoth Obayd, “I will come for thee there;” and quoth the other, “’Tis well.” So the jeweller repaired to the Khan before sundown, fearing lest his wife should be anangered with him, if he returned home without his guest; and, carrying Kamar al-Zaman to his house, seated him in a saloon that had not its match. Halimah saw him, as he entered, and was ravished with him. They talked till supper was served when they ate and drank; after which appeared coffee and sherbets, and the jeweller ceased not to entertain him with talk till eventide, when they prayed the obligatory prayers. Then entered a handmaid with two cups[410] of night drink, which when they had drunk, drowsiness overcame them and they slept. Presently in came the jeweller’s wife and seeing them asleep, looked upon Kamar al-Zaman’s face and her wit was confounded at his beauty. Said she, “How can he sleep who loveth the fair?” and, turning him over on his back, sat astraddle upon his breast. Then, in the mania of her passion for him, she rained down kisses on his cheeks, till she left a mark upon them and they became exceeding red and his cheek bones shone; and, she sucked his lips, till the blood ran out into her mouth; but with all this, her fire was not quenched nor her thirst assuaged. She ceased not to kiss and clip him and twine leg with leg, till the fore-brow of Morn grew white and the dawn broke forth in light; when she put in his pocket four cockals[411] and went away. Then she sent her maid with something like snuff, which she applied to their nostrils and they sneezed and awoke, when the slave-girl said, “O my lords, prayer is a duty; so rise ye and pray the dawn-prayer.” And she brought them basin and ewer.[412] Quoth Kaman al-Zamar “O master, ’tis late and we have overslept ourselves;” and quoth the jeweller, “O my friend verily the air of this room is heavy; for, whenever I sleep in it, this happens to me.” Rejoined Kamar al-Zaman, “True,” and proceeded to make the Wuzu ablution; but, when he put the water to his face, his cheeks and lips burned him. Cried he, “Prodigious! If the air of the room be heavy and we have been drowned in sleep, what aileth my cheeks and lips that they burn me?” And he said to the jeweller, “O master, my cheeks and lips burn me.” The other replied, “I guess this cometh of the mosquito-bites.” “Strange!” said Kamar al-Zaman. “Hath this thing happened to thee?” Replied Obayd, “No! But whenever I have by me a guest like thee, he complaineth in the morning of the mosquito-bites, and this happeneth only when he is like thee beardless. If he be bearded the mosquitoes sting him not, and naught hindereth them from me but my beard. It seems mosquitoes love not bearded men.”[413] Rejoined Kamar al-Zaman, “True.” Then the maid brought them early breakfast and they broke their fast and went out. Kamar al-Zaman betook himself to the old woman, who exclaimed, when she saw him, “I see the marks of joyance on thy face: tell me what thou hast seen.” Said he, “I have seen nothing. Only I supped with the house-master in a saloon and prayed the night-prayer, after which we fell asleep and woke not till morning.” She laughed and said, “What be those marks on thy cheeks and lips?” He answered, “’Twas the mosquitoes of the saloon that did this with me;” and she rejoined, “’Tis well.