sweet and tasteful is thy tale, O sister mine, and how enjoyable
and delectable!" Quoth she, "And where is this compared with that
I would relate to you on the coming night an the King suffer me
to survive?" Now when it was the next night and that was,

The Four Hundred and Thirty-second 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 Prince
craved for the prayers of the Shaykh, who blessed him. Then he
went forth from him and bought of the lambs what he had been
charged to buy, and these he slaughtered and skinned and roasted
and he cut each and every into two halves. He waited until night
descended with its darkness and ceased the to-ing and fro-ing of
folk, when he arose and walked to the place pointed out and there
he found the Lion whose shape and size equaled the stature of a
full-grown bull. He threw to him half a lamb and the beast
allowed him to pass through that door, and it was the same with
the other entrances, all seven of them, until he reached the
eighth. Here he found the forty slaves who were bestrewn on the
ground bedrowned in sleep; so he went in with soft tread and
presently he came upon the Bird Philomelet in a cage encrusted
with pearls and precious stones and he saw the Princess who owned
him lying asleep upon a couch. Hereat he wrote upon the palm of
her hand, "I am Such-and-such, son to the King Such-and-such, of
such a city; and I have come in upon thee and beheld thee bared