weet drinks to us, and I drank with her, and
became less wary, and she fondled me more, calling me tender names,
heaping endearments on me; and as the hour of the middle-night approached
I was losing all suspicion in deep languor, and sighed at the song of the
birds, the long love-song, and dozed awake with eyes half shut. I felt
her steal from me, and continued still motionless without alarm: so was I
mastered. What hour it was or what time had passed I cannot say, when a
bird that was chained on a perch before me--a very quaint bird, with a
topknot awry, and black, heavy bill, and ragged gorgeousness of
plumage--the only object between my lids and darkness, suddenly, in the
midst of the singing, let loose a hoarse laugh that was followed by peals
of laughter from the other birds. Thereat I started up, and beheld the
Princess standing over a brazier, and she seized a slipper from her foot
and flung it at the bird that had first laughed, and struck him off his
perch, and went to him and seized him and shook him, crying, 'Dare to
laugh again!' and he kept clearing his throat and trying to catch the
tune he had lost, pitching a high note and a low note; but the marvel of
this laughter of the bird wakened me thoroughly, and I thanked the bird
in my soul, and said to Goorelka, 'More wondrous than their singing, this
laughter, O Princess!'

She would not speak till she had beaten every bird in the aviary, and
then said in the words of the poet:

Shall they that deal in magic match degrees of wonder?
From the bosom of one cloud comes the lightning and the thunder.

Then said she, 'O Noorna! I'll tell thee truly my intent, which was to
enchant thee; but I find thee wise, so let us join our powers, and thou
shah become mighty as a sorceress.'

Now, Ravaloke had said to me, 'Her friendship is fire, her enmity frost;
so be cold to the former, to the latter hot,' and I dissembled and
replied, 'Teach me, O Princess!'

So she asked me what I could do. Could I plant a mountain in the sea and
people it? could I anchor a purple cloud under the sun and live there a
year with them I delighted in? could I fix the eyes of the world upon one
head and make the nations bow to it; change men to birds, fishes to men;
and so on--a hundred sorceries that I had never attempted and dreamed not
of my betrothed! I had never offended Allah by a misuse of my powers.
When I told her, she cried, 'Thou art then of a surety she that's fitted
for