nation
for another, you must drive it out and win her for yourself. Her mother
loves her so dearly that she has no ease but in her presence, and she
will give her to no one in marriage. Teach her to love you so that she
cannot exist without you. But if the matter becomes known to her mother
she will have you burned in the fire. Then you must beg, as a last
favour, that your body may be anointed with oil so that you may burn the
more quickly and be spared torture. If the peri-king allows this favour,
we two will manage to be your anointers, and we will put an oil on
you such that if you were a thousand years in the fire not a trace of
burning would remain."

'In the end the two peris took me to the girl's house. I saw her
sleeping daintily. She was most lovely, and I was so amazed at the
perfection of her beauty that I stood with senses lost, and did not
know if she were real or a dream. When at last I saw that she was a real
girl, I returned thanks that I, the runner, had come to my goal, and
that I, the seeker, had found my treasure.

'When the peri opened her eyes she asked in affright: "Who are you? Have
you come to steal? How did you get here? Be quick! save yourself from
this whirlpool of destruction, for the demons and peris. who guard me
will wake and seize you."

'But love's arrow had struck me deep, and the girl, too, looked kindly
on me. I could not go away. For some months I remained hidden in her
house. 'We did not dare to let her mother know of our love. Sometimes
the girl was very sad and fearful lest her mother should come to know.
One day her father said to her: "Sweetheart, for some time I have
noticed that your beauty is not what it was. How is this? Has sickness
touched you? Tell me that I may seek a cure." Alas! there was now no way
of concealing the mingled delight and anguish of our love; from secret
it became known. I was put in prison and the world grew dark to my rose,
bereft of her lover.

'The peri-king ordered me to be burnt, and said: "Why have you, a man,
done this perfidious thing in my house?" His demons and peris. collected
amber-wood and made a pile, and would have set me on it, when I
remembered the word of life which the two peris. I had rescued had
breathed into my ear, and I asked that my body might be rubbed with oil
to release me the sooner from torture. This was allowed, and those two
contrived to be the anointers. I was put into the fire and it was kept
up for seven days an