Ukleet said, ’O Lady, mistress of hearts, moon of the tides of will! ’tis certain I was thy slave from the hour I beheld thee first, and of the Prince, thy husband; Allah rest his soul!  Now these be my tidings.  Wullahy! the King is one maddened with the reports I’ve spread about of thy beauty, yea! raging.  And I have a friend in his palace, even an under-cook, acute in the interpreting of wishes.  There was he always gabbling of thy case, O my Princess, till the head-cook seized hold on it, and so it went to the chamberlain, thence to the chief of the eunuchs, and from him in a natural course, to the King.  Now from the King the tracking of this tale went to the under-cook down again, and from him to me.  So was I summoned to the King, and the King discoursed with me—­I with him, in fair fluency; he in ejaculations of desire to have sight of thee, I in expatiation on that he would see when he had his desire.  Now in this have I not done thee a service, O sovereign of fancies?’

Bhanavar mused and said, ’On the after-morrow I pass through the city to make a selection of goods, and I shall pass at noon by the great mosque, on my way to the shop of Ebn Roulchook, the King’s jeweller, beyond the meat-market.  Of a surety, I know not how my lord the King may see me.’

Said the porter, ‘’Tis enough! on my head be it.’  And he went from her, singing the song: 

     How little a thing serves Fortune’s turn
      When she’s intent on doing! 
     How easily the world may burn
      When kings come out a-wooing!

Now, ere she set forth on the after-morrow to make her purchases, Bhanavar sent word to the Vizier Aswarak that she would see him, and he came to her drunken with alacrity, for he augured favourably that her reluctance was melting toward him:  so she said, ’O my master, my time of mourning is at an end, and I would look well before thee, even as one worthy of being thy bride; so bestow on me, I pray thee, for my wearing that day, the jewels that be in thy treasury, the brightest and clearest of them, and the largest.’

The Vizier Aswarak replied, and he was one in great satisfaction of soul, ’All that I have are thine.  Wullahy! and one, a marvel, that I bought of Boolp the broker, that had it from an African merchant.’  So he commanded the box wherein he had deposited the Jewel to be brought to him there in the chamber of Bhanavar, and took forth the Serpent Jewel between his forefinger and thumb, and laughed at the eager eyes of Bhanavar when she beheld it, saying, ‘’Tis thine! thy bridal gift the day I possess thee.’

Bhanavar trembled at the sight of the Jewel, and its redness was to her as the blood of Zurvan and Almeryl.  She stretched her hand out for it and cried, ‘This day, O my lord, make it mine.’

So the Vizier said, ’Nay, what I have spoken will I keep to; it has cost me much.’

Bhanavar looked at him, and uttered in a soft tone, ’Truly it has cost thee much.’