Behold, I am clad in a robe of leaves green And a garment of
     honour of ultramarine. 
Though little, with beauty myself I’ve adorned; So the flowers
     are my subjects and I am their queen. 
If the rose be entitled the pride of the morn, Before me nor
     after she wins it, I ween.

The queen drank off her cup and bestowed on Tuhfeh a dress of cloth-of-pearl, fringed with red rubies, worth twenty thousand dinars, and a tray wherein were ten thousand dinars.

All this while Meimoun’s eye was upon her and presently he said to her, ‘Harkye, Tuhfeh!  Sing to me.’  But Queen Zelzeleh cried out at him and said, ’Desist, O Meimoun.  Thou sufferest not Tuhfeh to pay heed unto us.’  Quoth he, ’I will have her sing to me.’  And words waxed between them and Queen Zelzeleh cried out at him.  Then she shook and became like unto the Jinn and taking in her hand a mace of stone, said to him, ’Out on thee!  What art thou that thou shouldst bespeak us thus?  By Allah, but for the king’s worship and my fear of troubling the session and the festival and the mind of the Sheikh Iblis, I would assuredly beat the folly out of thy head!’ When Meimoun heard these her words, he rose, with the fire issuing from his eyes, and said, ’O daughter of Imlac, what art thou that thou shouldst outrage me with the like of this talk?’ ‘Out on thee, O dog of the Jinn,’ replied she, ‘knowest thou not thy place?’ So saying, she ran at him and offered to strike him with the mace, but the Sheikh Iblis arose and casting his turban on the ground, said, ’Out on thee, O Meimoun!  Thou still dost with us on this wise.  Wheresoever thou art present, thou troubleth our life!  Canst thou not hold thy peace till thou goest forth of the festival and this bride-feast[FN#222] be accomplished?  When the circumcision is at an end and ye all return to your dwelling-places, then do as thou wilt.  Out on thee, O Meimoun!  Knowest thou not that Imlac is of the chiefs of the Jinn?  But for my worship, thou shouldst have seen what would have betided thee of humiliation and punishment; but by reason of the festival none may speak.  Indeed thou exceedest:  knowest thou not that her sister Wekhimeh is doughtier than any of the Jinn?  Learn to know thyself:  hast thou no regard for thy life?’

Meimoun was silent and Iblis turned to Tuhfeh and said to her, ’Sing to the kings of the Jinn this day and to-night until the morrow, when the boy will be circumcised and each shall return to his own place.’  So she took the lute and Kemeriyeh said to her, (now she had in her hand a cedrat), ’O my sister, sing to me on this cedrat.’  ‘Hearkening and obedience,’ replied Tuhfeh, and improvising, sang the following verses: 

My fruit is a jewel all wroughten of gold, Whose beauty amazeth
     all those that behold. 
My juice among kings is still drunken for wine And a present am I
     betwixt friends, young and old.