The four hundred and twenty-fifth night,

Dunyazad said to her, "Allah upon thee, O my sister, an thou be
other than sleepy, finish for us thy tale that we may cut short
the watching of this our latter night!" She replied, "With love
and good will!" It hath reached me, O auspicious King, the
director, the right-guiding, lord of the rede which is benefiting
and of deeds fair-seeming and worthy celebrating, that the
prickle of the Fruiterer would not stand to the handmaid as was
the wont thereof, so he cried, "Verily this is a wondrous
business." Then the girl fell to rubbing it up and to toying
therewith, her object being to stablish an erection. But the
article in question grew not and remained limp, whereupon she
said, "O my lord, Allah increase the progress of thy pego!"
Thereupon she arose and opened a bag wherefrom she drew out
kerchiefs and dried aromatic herbs[FN#302] such as are scattered
upon corpses; and she also brought a gugglet of water. Presently
she fell to washing the prickle as it were a dead body, and after
bathing it she shrouded it with a kerchief: then she cried upon
her women and they all bewept the untimely fate of his yard which
was still clothed in the kerchief.[FN#303] And when morning
morrowed the Sultan sent after the man and summoned him and said
to him, "How passed thy night?" So he told him all that had
betided him, and concealed from him naught; and when the Sultan
heard this account from him he laughed at him on such wise that
from excess of merriment he well nigh fell upon his back and
cried, "By Allah, if there be such cleverness in that girl, she
becometh not any save myself." Accordingly he sent to fetch her
as she stood and left the furniture of the place wholly and
entirely to the owner of the fruit. And when this was done the