features and a pleasing expression, he held himself aloof from affairs of love, and to those who did urge him to marry and proffer him wealthy and suitable alliances, he had several times made answer that the time was not yet come and that he felt no inclination to take unto himself a wife.
Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed had received a good education; he could read with ease the most ancient works, wrote an elegant hand, knew by heart the verses of the Koran and the remarks of the commentators, and could have rattled you off the Moallakats of the famous poets that were nailed against the doors of the mosques without missing a verse; he was himself something of a poet, and took delight in composing sonorous rhymed couplets that he would declaim to airs fashioned by himself, with much grace and elegance.
Now, through much smoking of his nargile and dreaming in the coolness of eventide upon the marble pavement of his terrace, Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed had come to have exalted ideas in his head; he had determined that he would bestow his love only upon a peri, or, at the very least, upon a princess of royal birth. Therein lay the secret motive that made him look with such indifference upon the offers of marriage that were made him and refuse the proposals of the slave-merchants. The only companion who found favor in his eyes was his cousin Abdul-Malek, a gentle and timid youth, whose tastes seemed to be of a modesty equal to his own.
Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed, one day, was wending his way to the bazaar to purchase some flasks of attar-gul and other conserves of Constantinople that he stood
