myself enhonoured by thy service.”  Then the Lady Badr al-Budur sat with him at table, and the twain fell to eating and presently the Princess expressed a wish to drink, when the handmaid filled her a cup forthright and then crowned another for the Maroccan.  So she drank to his long life and his secret wishes and he also drank to her life; then the Princess, who was unique in eloquence and delicacy of speech, fell to making a cup companion of him and beguiled him by addressing him in the sweetest terms full of hidden meaning.  This was done only that he might become more madly enamoured of her, but the Maghrabi thought that it resulted from her true inclination for him; nor knew that it was a snare set up to slay him.  So his longing for her increased, and he was dying of love for her when he saw her address him in such tenderness of words and thoughts, and his head began to swim and all the world seemed as nothing in his eyes.  But when they came to the last of the supper and the wine had mastered his brains and the Princess saw this in him, she said, “With us there be a custom throughout our country, but I know not an it be the usage of yours or not.”  The Moorman replied, “And what may that be?” So she said to him, “At the end of supper each lover in turn taketh the cup of the beloved and drinketh it off;” and at once she crowned one with wine and bade the handmaid carry to him her cup wherein the drink was blended with the Bhang.  Now she had taught the slave-girl what to do and all the handmaids and eunuchs in the pavilion longed for the Sorcerer’s slaughter and in that matter were one with the Princess.  Accordingly the damsel handed him the cup and he, when he heard her words and saw her drinking from his cup and passing hers to him noted all that show of love, fancied himself Iskander, Lord of the Two Horns.  Then said she to him, the while swaying gracefully to either side and putting her hand within his hand, “O my life, here is thy cup with me and my cup with thee, and on this wise [FN#206] do lovers drink from each other’s cups.”  Then she bussed the brim and drained it to the dregs and again she kissed its lip and offered it to him.  Thereat he hew for joy and meaning to do the like, raised her cup to his mouth and drank off the whole contents, without considering whether there was therein aught harmful or not.  And forthright he rolled upon his back in deathlike condition and the cup dropped from his grasp, whereupon the Lady Badr al-Budur and the slave-girls ran hurriedly and opened the pavilion door to their lord Alaeddin who, disguised as a Fellah, entered therein.—­And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

     When it was the Five Hundred and Eighty-fourth Night,