Then they all began to pay him compliments, each one capping the other's
remark.

'You have a face like the full moon, oh youth; your eyes are the eyes of
the gazelle; your walk is like the gait of the mountain partridge; your
chin is as an apple; your cheeks are pomegranates.'

But Amyntas interrupted them.

'For God's sake, madam,' he said, 'let us have no palavering, and if you
love me give me some victuals!...'

Immediately female slaves came in with salvers laden with choice food,
and the four maidens plied Amyntas with delicacies. At the end of the
repast they sprinkled him with rose-water, and the eldest of them put a
crown of roses on his hair. Amyntas thought that after all life was not
an empty dream.

XIII

'And now, may it please you, oh stranger, to hear our story.

'Know then that our father was a Moor, one of the wealthiest of his
people, and he dwelt with his fellows in Spain, honoured and beloved.
Now, when Allah--whose name be exalted!--decreed that our nation should
be driven from the country, he, unwilling to leave the land of his
birth, built him, with the aid of magic arts, this palace. Here he
brought us, his four daughters and all his riches; he peopled it with
slaves and filled it with all necessary things, and here we lived in
peace and prosperity for many years; but at last a great misfortune
befell us, for our father, who was a very learned man and accustomed to
busy himself with many abstruse matters, one day got lost in a
metaphysical speculation--and has never been found again.'

Here she stopped, and they all sighed deeply.

'We searched high and low, but in vain, and he has not been found to
this day. So we took his will, and having broken the seal, read the
following,--"My daughters, I know by my wisdom that the time will come
when I shall be lost to you; then you will live alone enjoying the
riches and the pleasures which I have put at your disposal; but I
foresee that at the end of many years a youth will find his way to this
your palace. And though my magic arts have been able to build this
paradise for your habitation, though they have endowed you with
perpetual youth and loveliness, and, greatest deed of all, have banished
hence the dark shadow of Death, yet have they not the power to make four
maidens live in happiness and unity with but one man! Therefore, I have
given unto each of you certain gifts, and of you four the youth shall
choose one to be his love; and to