! Wullahy, it were a wonder!'

So she said, 'Consider how a poor youth of excellent proportions came to
a flourishing Court before one, a widowed Queen, and she cast eyes of
love on him, and gave him rule over her and all that was hers when he had
achieved a task, and they were wedded. Oh, the bliss of it! Knit together
with bond and a writing; and these were the dominions, I the Queen, woe's
me!--thou the youth!'

Now, he was roiled by the enchantments of the Queen, caught in the snare
of her beguilings; and he let her lead him to a seat beside her on the
throne, and sat there awhile in the midst of feastings, mazed, thinking,
'What life have I lived before this, if the matter be as I behold?'
thinking, ''Tis true I have had visions of a widowed queen, and I a poor
youth that came to her court, and espoused her, sitting in the vacant
seat beside her, ruling a realm; but it was a dream, a dream,--yet, wah!
here is she, here am I, yonder my dominions!' Then he thought, 'I will
solve it!' So, on a sudden he said to her beside him, 'O Queen, sovereign
of hearts! enlighten me as to a perplexity.'

She answered, 'The voice of my lord is music in the ear of the bride.'

Then said he, in the tone of one doubting realities, 'O fair Queen, is
there truly now such a one as Shagpat in the world?'

She laughed at his speech and the puzzled appearance of his visage,
replying, 'Surely there liveth one, Shagpat by name in the world; strange
is the history of him, his friends, and enemies; and it would bear
recital.'

Then he said, 'And one, the daughter of a Vizier, Vizier to the King in
the City of Shagpat?'

Thereat, she shook her head, saying, 'I know nought of that one.'

Now, Shibli Bagarag was mindful of his thwackings; and in this the wisdom
of Noorna, is manifest, that the sting of them yet chased away doubts of
illusion regarding their having been, as the poet says,

If thou wouldst fix remembrance--thwack!
'Tis that oblivion controls;
I care not if't be on the back,
Or on the soles.

He thought, 'Wah! yet feel I the thong, and the hiss of it as of the
serpent in the descent, and the smack of it as the mouth of satisfaction
in its contact with tender regions. This, wullahy! was no dream.'
Nevertheless, he was ashamed to allude thereto before the Queen, and he
said, 'O my mistress, another question, one only! This Shagpat--is he
shaved?'

She said, 'Clean shorn!'

Quoth he, astonished,