hat is it in thy speech
affecteth me? Surely it infuseth the vigour of wine, old wine; and I
shiver with desire to shave Shagpat, and spin threads for the historian
to weave in order. I, wullahy! had but dry visions of the greatness
destined for me till now, my betrothed! Shall I master an Event in
shaving him, and be told of to future ages? By Allah and his Prophet
(praise be to that name!), this is greatness! Say, Noorna, hadst thou
foreknowledge of me and my coming to this city?'

So she said, 'I was on the roofs one night among the stars ere moonrise,
O my betrothed, and 'twas close on the rise of this very month's moon.
The star of our enemy, Shagpat, was large and red, mine as it were
menaced by its proximity, nigh swallowed in its haughty beams and the
steady overbearings of its effulgence. 'Twas so as it had long been, when
suddenly, lo! a star from the upper heaven that shot down between them
wildly, and my star took lustre from it; and the star of Shagpat trembled
like a ring on a tightened rope, and waved and flickered, and seemed to
come forward and to retire; and 'twas presently as a comet in the sky,
bright,--a tadpole, with large head and lengthy tail, in the assembly of
the planets. This I saw: and that the stranger star was stationed by my
star, shielding it, and that it drew nearer to my star, and entered its
circle, and that the two stars seemed mixing the splendour that was
theirs. Now, that sight amazed me, and my heart in its beating quickened
with the expectation of things approaching. Surely I rendered praise, and
pressed both hands on my bosom, and watched, and behold! the comet, the
illumined tadpole, was becoming restless beneath the joint rays of the
twain that were dominating him; and he diminished, and lashed his tail
uneasily, half madly, darting as do captured beasts from the fetters that
constrain them. Then went there from thy star--for I know now 'twas
thine--a momentary flash across the head of the tadpole, and again
another and another, rapidly, pertinaciously. And from thy star there
passed repeated flashes across the head of the tadpole, till his
brilliance was as 'twere severed from him, and he, like drossy silver, a
dead shape in the conspicuous heavens. And he became yellow as the
rolling eyes of sick wretches in pain, and shrank in his place like pale
parchment at the touch of flame; dull was he as an animal fascinated by
fear, and deprived of all power to make head against the