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 second
youth said:--O my lord the Sultan, I am by calling a merchant man
and none of the guild was younger, I having just entered my
sixteenth year. Like my fellows I sold and bought in the Bazar
every day till, one day of the days, a damsel came up to me and
drew near and handed to me a paper which I opened; and behold, it
was full of verses and odes in praise of myself, and the end of
the letter contained the woman's name professing to be enamoured
of me. When I read it I came down from my shopboard, in my folly
and ignorance, and putting forth my hand seized the girl and beat
her till she swooned away.[FN#103] After this I let her loose and
she went her ways and then I fell into a brown study saying to
myself, "Would Heaven I wot whether the girl be without relations
or if she have kith and kin to whom she may complain and they
will come and bastinado me." And, O our lord the Sultan, I
repented of what I had done whenas repentance availed me naught
and this lasted me for twenty days. At the end of that time as I
was sitting in my shop according to my custom, behold, a young
lady entered and she was sumptuously clad and sweetly scented and
she was even as the moon in its fullness on the fourteenth night.
When I gazed upon her my wits fled and my sane senses and right
judgment forsook me and I was incapable of attending to aught
save herself. She then came up and said, "O youth, hast thou by
thee a variety of metal ornaments?" and said I, "O my lady, of
all kinds thou canst possibly require." Hereupon she wished to
see some anklets which I brought out for her, when she put forth
her feet to me and showing me the calves of her legs said, "O my
lord, try them on me." This I did. Then she asked for a