yet they ceased not to live after their olden fashion as middle class folk[FN#122] without spending on diet overmuch or squandering money.  But Alaeddin had now thrown off the ungraciousness of his boyhood; he shunned the society of scapegraces and he began to frequent good men and true, repairing daily to the market-street of the merchants and there companying with the great and the small of them, asking about matters of merchandise and learning the price of investments and so forth; he likewise frequented the Bazars of the Goldsmiths and the Jewellers[FN#123] where he would sit and divert himself by inspecting their precious stones and by noting how jewels were sold and bought therein.  Accordingly, he presently became ware that the tree-fruits, wherewith he had filled his pockets what time he entered the Enchanted Treasury, were neither glass nor crystal but gems rich and rare; and he understood that he had acquired immense wealth such as the Kings never can possess.  He then considered all the precious stones which were in the Jewellers’ Quarter, but found that their biggest was not worth his smallest.  On this wise he ceased not every day repairing to the Bazar and making himself familiar with the folk and winning their loving will;[FN#124] and enquiring anent selling and buying, giving and taking, the dear and the cheap, until one day of the days when, after rising at dawn and donning his dress he went forth, as was his wont, to the Jewellers’ Bazar; and, as he passed along it he heard the crier crying as follows:  “By command of our magnificent master, the King of the Time and the Lord of the Age and the Tide, let all the folk lock up their shops and stores and retire within their houses, for that the Lady Badr al-Budur,[FN#125] daughter of the Sultan, designeth to visit the Hammam; and whoso gainsayeth the order shall be punished with death-penalty and be his blood upon his own neck!” But when Alaeddin heard the proclamation, he longed to look upon the King’s daughter and said in his mind, “Indeed all the lieges talk of her beauty and loveliness and the end of my desires is to see her.”—­And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

        When it was the Five Hundred and Fortieth Night,

Quoth Dunyazad, “O sister mine an thou be other than sleepy, do tell us some of thy pleasant tales,” whereupon Shahrazad replied, “With love and good will.”—­It hath reached me, O King of the Age, that Alaeddin fell to contriving some means whereby he might look upon the Princess Badr al-Budur and at last judged best to take his station behind the Hammam door whence he might see her face as she entered.[FN#126] Accordingly, without stay or delay he repaired to the Baths before she was expected and stood a-rear of the entrance, a place whereat none of the folk happened to be looking.  Now when the Sultan’s daughter had gone the rounds of the city and its main streets and had solaced herself by sight-seeing, she finally reached the Hammam and whilst entering she raised her veil, when her face rose before sight as it were a pearl of price or a sheeny sun, and she was as one of whom the describer sang,