Said the old man, “Rejoice in all good, O my son, and know thou that to-day I give a marriage-feast, to which I have bidden many guests, and I have made ready plenty of meats, the best and most delicious that heart can desire.  So if thou wilt come with me to my place, I will give thee freely all thou lackest without asking thee a price or aught else.  Moreover I will teach thee the ways of this city; and, praised be Allah, O my son, that I, and none other have happened upon thee.”  “As thou wilt,” answered As’ad, “do as thou art disposed, but make haste, for indeed my brother awaiteth me and his whole heart is with me.”  The old man took As’ad by the hand and carried him to a narrow lane, smiling in his face and saying, “Glory be to Him who hath delivered thee from the people of this city!” And he ceased not walking till he entered a spacious house, wherein was a saloon and behold, in the middle of it were forty old men, well stricken in years, collected together and forming a single ring as they sat round about a lighted fire, to which they were doing worship and prostrating themselves.[FN#381] When As’ad saw this, he was confounded and the hair of his body stood on end though he knew not what they were; and the Shaykh said to them, “O Elders of the Fire, how blessed is this day!” Then he called aloud, saying, “Hello, Ghazban!” Whereupon there came out to him a tall black slave of frightful aspect, grim-visaged and flat nosed as an ape who, when the old man made a sign to him, bent As’ad’s arms behind his back and pinioned them; after which the Shaykh said to him, “Let him down into the vault under the earth and there leave him and say to my slave girl Such-an-one, ’Torture him night and day and give him a cake of bread to eat morning and evening against the time come of the voyage to the Blue Sea and the Mountain of Fire, whereon we will slaughter him as a sacrifice.’” So the black carried him out at another door and, raising a flag in the floor, discovered a flight of twenty steps leading to a chamber[FN#382] under the earth, into which he descended with him and, laying his feet in irons, gave him over to the slave girl and went away.  Meanwhile, the old men said to one another, “When the day of the Festival of the Fire cometh, we will sacrifice him on the mountain, as a propitiatory offering whereby we shall pleasure the Fire.”  Presently the damsel went down to him and beat him a grievous beating, till streams of blood flowed from his sides and he fainted; after which she set at his head a scone of bread and a cruse of brackish water and went away and left him.  In the middle of the night, he revived and found himself bound and beaten and sore with beating:  so he wept bitter tears; and recalling his former condition of honour and prosperity, lordship and dominion, and his separation from his sire and his exile from his native land.—­And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say,

      When it was the Two Hundred and Twenty-eighth Night,