he desert. The philosopher
was perturbed, and his eyes were too powerfully tempted to resist
wandering from these feet, which betokened so much, up to the bosom,
which was still more ravishingly fair; and soon the flame of his
admiring glance was mingled with the fire that sparkled in the pupils
of the young Asiatic. She asked again the name of the book in tones so
sweet that the philosopher yielded to the fascination, and replied:

"I am the author of the book; but the substance of it is not mine: it
contains an account of all the ruses and stratagems of women."

"What! Absolutely all?" said the daughter of the desert.

"Yes, all! And it has been only by a constant study of womankind that
I have come to regard them without fear."

"Ah!" said the young Arabian girl, lowering the long lashes of her
white eyelids.

Then, suddenly darting the keenest of her glances at the pretended
sage, she made him in one instant forget the book and all its
contents. And now our philosopher was changed to the most passionate
of men. Thinking he saw in the bearing of the young woman a faint
trace of coquetry, the stranger was emboldened to make an avowal. How
could he resist doing so? The sky was blue, the sand blazed in the
distance like a scimitar of gold, the wind of the desert breathed
love, and the woman of Arabia seemed to reflect all the fire with
which she was surrounded; her piercing eyes were suffused with a mist;
and by a slight nod of the head she seemed to make the luminous
atmosphere undulate, as she consented to listen to the stranger's
words of love. The sage was intoxicated with delirious hopes, when the
young woman, hearing in the distance the gallop of a horse which
seemed to fly, exclaimed:

"We are lost! My husband is sure to catch us. He is jealous as a
tiger, and more pitiless than one. In the name of the prophet, if you
love your life, conceal yourself in this chest!"

The author, frightened out of his wits, seeing no other way of getting
out of a terrible fix, jumped into the box, and crouched down there.
The woman closed down the lid, locked it, and took the key. She ran to
meet her husband, and after some caresses which put him into a good
humor, she said:

"I must relate to you a very singular adventure I have just had."

"I am listening, my gazelle," replied the Arab, who sat down on a rug
and crossed his feet after the Oriental manner.

"There arrived here to-day a kind of philosopher," she began,