he earthen vessel fell from her head, and broke
on the marble steps. She burst into tears. The beautiful daughter of
the imperial palace wept over the worthless broken pitcher; with her
bare feet she stood there weeping, and dared not pull the string, the
bell-rope of the imperial palace!"

TWENTIETH EVENING.

It was more than a fortnight since the Moon had shone. Now he stood
once more, round and bright, above the clouds, moving slowly onward.
Hear what the Moon told me.

"From a town in Fezzan I followed a caravan. On the margin of the
sandy desert, in a salt plain, that shone like a frozen lake, and was
only covered in spots with light drifting sand, a halt was made. The
eldest of the company--the water gourd hung at his girdle, and on his
head was a little bag of unleavened bread--drew a square in the sand
with his staff, and wrote in it a few words out of the Koran, and then
the whole caravan passed over the consecrated spot. A young merchant,
a child of the East, as I could tell by his eye and his figure, rode
pensively forward on his white snorting steed. Was he thinking,
perchance, of his fair young wife? It was only two days ago that the
camel, adorned with furs and with costly shawls, had carried her, the
beauteous bride, round the walls of the city, while drums and cymbals
had sounded, the women sang, and festive shots, of which the
bridegroom fired the greatest number, resounded round the camel; and
now he was journeying with the caravan across the desert.

"For many nights I followed the train. I saw them rest by the
well-side among the stunted palms; they thrust the knife into the
breast of the camel that had fallen, and roasted its flesh by the
fire. My beams cooled the glowing sands, and showed them the black
rocks, dead islands in the immense ocean of sand. No hostile tribes
met them in their pathless route, no storms arose, no columns of sand
whirled destruction over the journeying caravan. At home the beautiful
wife prayed for her husband and her father. 'Are they dead?' she asked
of my golden crescent; 'Are they dead?' she cried to my full disc. Now
the desert lies behind them. This evening they sit beneath the lofty
palm trees, where the crane flutters round them with its long wings,
and the pelican watches them from the branches of the mimosa. The
luxuriant herbage is trampled down, crushed by the feet of elephants.
A troop of negroes are returning from a market in the interior of the
land: