distressed, with sleeplessness delirious and drunken with
melancholy thought and excess of love-longing. And he repeated
the verses of the love-distraught poet,

"O thou who shamest sun in morning sheen * The branch
confounding, yet with nescience blest;
Would Heaven I wot an Time shall bring return * And quench the
fires which flame unmanifest,--
Bring us together in a close embrace, * Thy cheek upon my cheek,
thy breast abreast!
Who saith, In Love dwells sweetness? when in Love * Are bitterer
days than Alo‰s[FN#63] bitterest."

--And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her
permitted say.

When it was the Seven Hundred and Eighty-eighty Night,

She pursued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when
Hasan the goldsmith felt love redouble upon him, he recited those
lines; and, as he abode thus in the stress of his
love-distraction, alone and finding none to cheer him with
company, behold, there arose a dust-cloud from the desert,
wherefore he ran down and hid himself knowing that the Princesses
who owned the castle had returned. Before long, the troops
halted and dismounted round the palace and the seven damsels
alighted and entering, put off their arms and armour of war. As
for the youngest, she stayed not to doff her weapons and gear,
but went straight to Hasan's chamber, where finding him not, she
sought for him, till she lighted on him in one of the sleeping