hast tarried long from me, and that hath heaped care upon my care.”  Then he dismissed his servants and bade the doors be shut; after which he said to the jeweller, “By Allah, O my brother, I have not closed my eyes since the day I saw thee last; for the slave-girl came to me yesterday with a sealed letter from her mistress Shams al-Nahar;” and went on to tell him all that had passed with her, adding, “By the Lord, I am indeed perplexed concerning mine affair and my patience faileth me:  for Abu al-Hasan was a comforter who cheered me because he knew the slave-girl.”  When the jeweller heard his words, he laughed; and Ali said, “Why dost thou laugh at my words, thou on whose coming I congratulated myself and to whom I looked for provision against the shifts of fortune?” Then he sighed and wept and repeated these couplets,[FN#210]

     “Full many laugh at tears they see me shed *
          Who had shed tears an bore they what I bore;
     None feeleth pity for th’ afflicted’s woe, *
          Save one as anxious and in woe galore: 
     My passion, yearning, sighing, thought, repine *
          Are for me cornered in my heart’s deep core: 
     He made a home there which he never quits, *
          Yet rare our meetings, not as heretofore: 
     No friend to stablish in his place I see; *
          No intimate but only he and —­he.”

Now when the jeweller heard these lines and understood their significance, he wept also and told him all that had passed betwixt himself and the slave-girl and her mistress since he left him.  And Ali bin Bakkar gave ear to his speech, and at every word he heard his colour shifted from white to red and his body grew now stronger and then weaker till the tale came to an end, when he wept and said, “O my brother, I am a lost man in any case:  would mine end were nigh, that I might be at rest from all this!  But I beg thee, of thy favour, to be my helper and comforter in all my affairs till Allah fulfil whatso be His will; and I will not gainsay thee with a single word.”  Quoth the jeweller, “Nothing will quench thy fire save union with her whom thou lovest; and the meeting must be in other than this perilous place.  Better it were in a house of mine where the girl and her mistress met me; which place she chose for herself, to the intent that ye twain may there meet and complain each to other of what you have suffered from the pangs of love.”  Quoth Ali bin Bakkar, “O good Sir, do as thou wilt and with Allah be thy reward!; and what thou deemest is right do it forthright:  but be not long in doing it, lest I perish of this anguish.”  “So I abode with him (said the jeweller) that night conversing with him till the morning morrowed,”—­And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.

       When it was the One Hundred and Sixty-third Night,