r
attention, and selected from their number the fifty whom he judged the
Giaour would prefer.

With an equal show of kindness as before, he proposed to celebrate a
festival on the plain for the entertainment of his young favourites, who
he said ought to rejoice still more than all at the restoration of his
health, on account of the favours he intended for them.

The Caliph's proposal was received with the greatest delight, and soon
published through Samarah; litters, camels, and horses were prepared.
Women and children, old men and young, every one placed himself in the
station he chose. The cavalcade set forward, attended by all the
confectioners in the city and its precincts; the populace following on
foot composed an amazing crowd, and occasioned no little noise; all was
joy, nor did any one call to mind what most of them had suffered when
they first travelled the road they were now passing so gaily.

The evening was serene, the air refreshing, the sky clear, and the
flowers exhaled their fragrance; the beams of the declining sun, whose
mild splendour reposed on the summit of the mountain, shed a glow of
ruddy light over its green declivity and the white flocks sporting upon
it; no sounds were audible save the murmurs of the Four Fountains, and
the reeds and voices of shepherds calling to each other from different
eminences.

The lovely innocents proceeding to the destined sacrifice added not a
little to the hilarity of the scene; they approached the plain full of
sportiveness, some coursing butterflies, others culling flowers, or
picking up the shining little pebbles that attracted their notice. At
intervals they nimbly started from each other, for the sake of being
caught again, and mutually imparting a thousand caresses.

The dreadful chasm at whose bottom the portal of ebony was placed began
to appear at a distance; it looked like a black streak that divided the
plain. Morakanabad and his companions took it for some work which the
Caliph had ordered; unhappy men! little did they surmise for what it was
destined.

Vathek, not liking they should examine it too nearly, stopped the
procession, and ordered a spacious circle to be formed on this side, at
some distance from the accursed chasm. The body-guard of eunuchs was
detached to measure out the lists intended for the games, and prepare
ringles for the lines to keep off the crowd. The fifty competitors were
soon stripped, and presented to the admiration