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my questions.” He looked at me with a smile and said, “O handmaid of God, tell me first how thou camest hither, and I will tell thee what has befallen me and the people of this city and the manner of my preservation.” So I told him my story, at which he marvelled, and questioned him of the people of the city. Quoth he, “Have patience with me a little, O my sister!” and shutting the Koran, laid it in a bag of satin. Then he made me sit down by his side, and I looked at him and behold, he was like the moon at its full, bright-faced, soft-sided, well-shaped and fair to look upon, as he were a figure of sugar,[1] even as says the poet of the like of him:
A seer of the stars one night was reading the book of the skies, When lo, in his scroll he saw a lovely youth arise.
Saturn had dyed his hair the hue of the raven’s wing And sprinkled upon his face the musk of Paradise:[2]
The rose of his cheeks from Mars its ruddy colour drew, And the Archer winged the shafts that darted from his eyes.
Hermes dowered the youth with his own mercurial wit, And the Great Bear warded off the baleful glance of spies.
Wonder seized on the sage at the sight of the lovely boy, For the full moon kissed the earth before him, servant-wise.
And indeed God the Most High had clad him in the garment of perfection and broidered it with the shining fringes of his cheeks, even as says the poet of him:
By the perfume of his eyelids and his slender waist I swear, By the arrows that he feathers with the witchery of his air,
By his sides so soft and tender and his glances bright and keen, By the whiteness of his forehead and the blackness of his hair,
By his arched imperious eyebrows, chasing slumber from my eyes, With their yeas and noes that hold me ’twixt rejoicing and despair,
By the myrtle of his whiskers and the roses of his cheeks, By his lips’ incarnate rubies and his teeth’s fine pearls and rare,
