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and that he ceased not to lust after him, whenever the North wind moved him, and to gnash his teeth for that he had given him away. Quoth the King, ‘Wag not thou thy tongue at him, or I will cut off thy head.’ However, he wrote Abou Aamir a letter, as from the boy, to the following effect: ‘O my lord, thou knowest that thou wast all and one to me and that I never ceased from delight with thee. Albeit I am with the Sultan, yet would I choose rather solitude with thee, but that I fear the King’s mischief: wherefore contrive thou to demand me of him.’ This letter he sent to Abou Aamir by a little page, whom he enjoined to say, ‘This is from such an one: the King never speaks to him.’ When the Vizier read the letter and heard the cheating message, he smelt a rat and wrote on the back of the scroll the following lines:
After experience’s laws, doth it become a man Of sense unto the lion’s lair his steps foolwise to bend?
I’m none of those whose reason love and passion overcrow; Nor am I ignorant of that the envious do pretend.
Wert thou my soul, I gave thee up obediently, and now Shall soul, from body sundered, back again thereunto wend?
When En Nasir knew of this answer, he marvelled at the Vizier’s quickness of wit and would never again lend ear to any insinuation against him. Then said he to him, ‘How didst thou escape falling into the snare?’ And he answered, saying, ‘Because my reason is unentangled in the toils of passion.’
THE ROGUERIES OF DELILEH THE CRAFTY AND HER DAUGHTER ZEYNEB THE TRICKSTRESS.
There lived in the Khalifate of Haroun er Reshid two men named Ahmed ed Denef and Hassan Shouman, past masters in trick and cunning, who had done rare things in their time; wherefore the Khalif invested them with
