beauty and loveliness; and presently she selected of them a score who were all maidenhoods, illustrious for comeliness and seemliness.  These she taught in verse and poetry and in the strangenesses of history and in striking instruments of mirth and merriment until they surpassed all the folk of their day; and she assiduously enjoined upon them the drinking of wine pure and new and boon-companionship with choice histories and strange tales and the rare events of the time.  Such was the case with Al-Hayfa; but as regards her father, King Al-Mihrjan, as one night he was lying abed pondering what he had heard from the Voice, suddenly there addressed him a sound without a form and said, “O King of the Age,” whereat he was fully aroused by sore terror and his vitals fluttered and his wits were bewildered and he was perplexed as to his affair.  So he took refuge with Allah from Satan the Stoned and repeated somewhat of the Koran and fenced himself about with certain of the holy names of Allah the Munificent; then he would have returned to his couch but was unable even to place cheek on pillow.  Presently sounded the Voice a second time, saying, “O King of the Age, O Mihrjan, verily shalt thou die by reason of her;” and forthwith improvised the following couplets,

“Ho thou!  Hear, O Mihrjan, what to thee shall be said * Learn the
     drift of my words in these lines convey’d: 
Thy daughter, Al-Hayfa (the girded round * With good, and with
     highest of grade array’d)
Shall bring with right hand to thee ruin-bowl * And reave thee of
     realm with the sharp-biting blade."[FN#182]

Now when Al-Mihrjan had heard what the Voice had spoken of verse and had produced for him of prose, he was wholly aroused from his sleep and became like one drunken with wine who knew not what he did and his vitals fluttered and increased his cark and care and anxious thought.  So he removed from that site into another stead and was stirred up and went awandering about.  Then he set his head upon the pillow but was unable to close his eyelids and the Voice drew nearer and cried upon him in frightful accents and said, “O Mihrjan, dost thou not hearken to my words and understand my verse; to wit, that thy daughter Al-Hayfa shall bequeath to thee shame and thou shalt perish by cause of her?” Then the Unseen One recited these couplets,[FN#183]

“I see thee, O Mihrjan, careless-vain * who from hearing the
     words of the wise dost abstain: 
I see Al-Hayfa, by potent lord * Upraised in her charms and
     speech sweet of strain,
Who shall home thee in grave sans a doubt and she * Shall seize
     thy king-ship and reave thy reign.”