so how couldst thou make head against men and cavaliers!” And she turned to go back to the monastery.  Sherkan was confounded, and called out to her, saying “O my lady!  Wilt thou go away, and leave the wretched stranger, the broken-hearted slave of love?” So she turned to him laughing, and said, “What wouldst thou?  I grant thy prayer.”  “Have I set foot in thy country and tasted the sweetness of thy favors,” replied Sherkan, “and shall I return without eating of thy victual and tasting of thy hospitality?  Indeed, I am become one of thy servitors.”  Quoth she, “None but the base refuses hospitality:  on my head and eyes be it!  Do me the favor to mount and ride along the stream, abreast of me, for thou art my guest.”  At this Sherkan rejoiced, and hastening back to his horse, mounted and rode along the river-bank, keeping abreast of her, till he came to a drawbridge that hung by pulleys and chains of steel, made fast with hooks and padlocks.  Here stood the ten damsels awaiting the lady, who spoke to one of them in the Greek tongue and said to her, “Go to him; take his horse’s rein and bring him over into the monastery."...  They went on till they reached a vaulted gate, arched over with marble.  This she opened, and entered with Sherkan into a long vestibule, vaulted with ten arches, from each of which hung a lamp of crystal, shining like the rays of the sun.  The damsels met her at the end of the vestibule, bearing perfumed flambeaux and having on their heads kerchiefs embroidered with all manner of jewels, and went on before her, till they came to the inward of the monastery, where Sherkan saw couches set up all around, facing one another and overhung with curtains spangled with gold.  The floor was paved with all kinds of variegated marbles, and in the midst was a basin of water with four and twenty spouts of gold around it from which issued water like liquid silver; whilst at the upper end stood a throne covered with silks of royal purple.  Then said the damsel, “O my lord, mount this throne.”  So he seated himself on it, and she withdrew:  and when she had been absent awhile, he asked the servants of her, and they said, “She hath gone to her sleeping-chamber; but we will serve thee as thou shalt order.”  So they set before him rare meats, and he ate till he was satisfied, when they brought him a basin of gold and an ewer of silver and he washed his hands.  Then his mind reverted to his troops, and he was troubled, knowing not what had befallen them in his absence and thinking how he had forgotten his father’s injunctions, so that he abode, oppressed with anxiety and repenting of what he had done, till the dawn broke and the day appeared, when he lamented and sighed and became drowned in the sea of melancholy, repeating the following verses:—­

     “I lack not of prudence, and yet in this case, I’ve been fooled;
          so what shift shall avail unto me? 
     If any could ease me of love and its stress, Of my might and
          my virtue I’d set myself free. 
     But alas! my heart’s lost in maze of desire, And no helper save
          God in my strait can I see.