ishes!"

The dwarfs interrupted this delectable soliloquy by leaping instantly
upon her, and scratching her face with their utmost zeal. But Nerkes and
Cafour, betaking themselves to the succour of their mistress, pinched the
dwarfs so severely in return, that they both gave up the ghost, imploring
Mahomet to inflict his sorest vengeance upon this wicked woman and all
her household.

At the noise which this strange conflict occasioned in the valley,
Gulchenrouz awoke, and, bewildered with terror, sprung impetuously upon
an old figtree that rose against the acclivity of the rocks; from thence
gained their summits, and ran for two hours without once looking back.
At last, exhausted with fatigue, he fell as if dead into the arms of a
good old Genius, whose fondness for the company of children had made it
his sole occupation to protect them, and who, whilst performing his
wonted rounds through the air, happening on the cruel Giaour at the
instant of his growling in the horrible chasm, rescued the fifty little
victims which the impiety of Vathek had devoted to his maw; these the
Genius brought up in nests still higher than the clouds, and himself
fixed his abode in a nest more capacious than the rest, from which he had
expelled the possessors that had built it.

These inviolable asylums were defended against the Dives and the Afrits
by waving streamers, on which were inscribed, in characters of gold that
flashed like lightning, the names of Allah and the Prophet. It was there
that Gulchenrouz, who as yet remained undeceived with respect to his
pretended death, thought himself in the mansions of eternal peace, he
admitted without fear the congratulations of his little friends, who were
all assembled in the nest of the venerable Genius, and vied with each
other in kissing his serene forehead and beautiful eyelids. This he
found to be the state congenial to his soul; remote from the inquietudes
of earth, the impertinence of harems, the brutality of eunuchs, and the
lubricity of women: in this peacable society, his days, months, and years
glided on; nor was he less happy than the rest of his companions; for the
Genius, instead of burthening his pupils with perishable riches and the
vain sciences of the world, conferred upon them the boon of perpetual
childhood.

Carathis, unaccustomed to the loss of her prey, vented a thousand
execrations on her negresses for not seizing the child, instead of
amusing themselves with pinch