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Moreover in this garden were all manner sweet-scented herbs and plants and fragrant flowers, such as jessamine and henna and water-lilies[1] and spikenard and roses of all kinds and plaintain and myrtle and so forth: and indeed it was without parallel, seeming as it were a piece of Paradise to him who beheld it. If a sick man entered it, he came forth from it like a raging lion, and the tongue availeth not to its description, by reason of that which was therein of wonders and rarities that are not found but in Paradise: and how should it not be thus, when its doorkeeper’s name was Rizwan? Though widely different were their stations.
When the sons of the merchants had walked about the garden and taken their pleasure therein [awhile], they sat down in one of its pavilions and seated Noureddin in their midst on a rug of leather of Et Taïf,[2] Night dccclxvi.embroidered with gold, leaning on a round cushion of minever, stuffed with ostrich down. And they gave him a fan of ostrich feathers, whereon were written the following verses:
A fan, whose breath is fragrant; it calleth aye to mind The days of joy and solace, when fortune still was kind,
And to the face of noble and freeborn youths restores Their sweetness at all seasons, with its perfuméd wind.
Then they laid by their turbans and [upper] clothes and sat talking and contending with one another in discourse, while they all kept their eyes fixed on Noureddin and gazed on his beauty. Presently, up came a slave with a tray on his head, wherein were dishes of china and crystal containing meats of all sorts, whatever walks [the earth] or wings the air or swims the waters, such as grouse and
