hell, below Christian
and Jew, magician and idolater, and condemned to eat the fruit of the
tree Yacoun, which is the heads of demons, to themselves, not to the
Soldan, shall their guilt and their punishment be attributed. Wherefore
wear, without doubt or scruple, the vesture prepared for you, since, if
you proceed to the camp of Saladin, your own native dress will expose
you to troublesome observation, and perhaps to insult."

"IF I go to the camp of Saladin?" said Sir Kenneth, repeating the words
of the Emir; "alas! am I a free agent, and rather must I NOT go wherever
your pleasure carries me?"

"Thine own will may guide thine own motions," said the Emir, "as freely
as the wind which moveth the dust of the desert in what direction it
chooseth. The noble enemy who met and well-nigh mastered my sword cannot
become my slave like him who has crouched beneath it. If wealth and
power would tempt thee to join our people, I could ensure thy possessing
them; but the man who refused the favours of the Soldan when the axe was
at his head, will not, I fear, now accept them, when I tell him he has
his free choice."

"Complete your generosity, noble Emir," said Sir Kenneth, "by forbearing
to show me a mode of requital which conscience forbids me to comply
with. Permit me rather to express, as bound in courtesy, my gratitude
for this most chivalrous bounty, this undeserved generosity."

"Say not undeserved," replied the Emir Ilderim. "Was it not through thy
conversation, and thy account of the beauties which grace the court
of the Melech Ric, that I ventured me thither in disguise, and thereby
procured a sight the most blessed that I have ever enjoyed--that I ever
shall enjoy, until the glories of Paradise beam on my eyes?"

"I understand you not," said Sir Kenneth, colouring alternately, and
turning pale, as one who felt that the conversation was taking a tone of
the most painful delicacy.

"Not understand me!" exclaimed the Emir. "If the sight I saw in the tent
of King Richard escaped thine observation, I will account it duller than
the edge of a buffoon's wooden falchion. True, thou wert under sentence
of death at the time; but, in my case, had my head been dropping from
the trunk, the last strained glances of my eyeballs had distinguished
with delight such a vision of loveliness, and the head would have rolled
itself towards the incomparable houris, to kiss with its quivering
lips the hem of their vestments. Yonder royalt