your own imagination and your rhymes, and I left you with an affectation of haughty disdain. It was your wish to marry Leila, the slave: Boudroulboudour, the peri, takes it upon her to replace her. I will be Leila for all the world beside and peri for you alone, for I have your happiness at heart and the world would never forgive you the enjoyment of a felicity greater than its own. Fairy though I be, it would tax all my powers to protect you against the envy and the wickedness of mankind."
These conditions were rapturously accepted by Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed, and the wedding-feast was celebrated just as if he had really married little Leila.
Such is substantially the story that I dictated to Scheherazade, with the assistance of Francesco.
"How did the Sultan like your Arab story, and what has become of Scheherazade?"
"I have never seen her since."
I am afraid that Schahriar did not like the story and gave orders, in earnest, this time, to chop off the poor Sultana's head.
Friends of mine, returning from Bagdad, have, told me that they saw a woman sitting on the steps of a mosque, whose craze it was to think that she was Dinarzarde of the Thousand and One Nights, and that she kept repeating these words over and over:
"Sister, if you are not sleeping, tell us, I pray you, one of those pretty stories that you know so well."
She would wait a few moments, turning her head and listening intently, and as she received no answer would begin to weep, then would dry her eyes with a gold-embroidered handkerchief, all stained with spots of blood.
