The beautiful bride was agreeably surprised to find instead of
hump-back a handsome youth, who gracefully addressed her. "What!
my dear friend," said she, "by your being here at this time of
night you must be my husband's comrade?" "No, madam," said Buddir
ad Deen, "I am of another quality than that ugly hump-back."
"But," said she, "you do not consider that you speak degradingly
of my husband." "He your husband," replied he: "can you retain
those thoughts so long? Be convinced of your mistake, for so much
beauty must never be sacrificed to the most contemptible of
mankind. It is I that am the happy mortal for whom it is
reserved. The sultan had a mind to make himself merry, by putting
this trick upon the vizier your father, but he chose me to be
your real husband. You might have observed how the ladies, the
musicians, the dancers, your women, and all the servants of your
family, were pleased with this comedy. We have sent hump-back to
his stable again."
At this discourse the vizier's daughter (who was more like one
dead than alive when she came into the bride-chamber) put on a
gay air, which made her so handsome, that Buddir ad Deen was
charmed with her graces.
"I did not expect," said she, "to meet with so pleasing a
surprise; and I had condemned myself to live unhappy all my days.
But my good fortune is so much the greater, that I possess in you
a man worthy of my tenderest affection."
Buddir ad Deen, overjoyed to see himself possessor of so many
charms, retired with his bride, and laid his vesture aside, with
the bag that he had from the Jew; which, notwithstanding all the
money he had dispersed, was still full.
Towards morning, while the two lovers were asleep, the genie, who had
met again with the perie, said, "It is time to finish what we have so
successfully carried on; let us not be overtaken by day-light, which
will soon appear; go you and bring off the young man again without
awaking him."
The perie went into the bed-chamber where the two lovers were
fast asleep, took up Buddir ad Deen in his under vest and
drawers; and in company with the genie with wonderful swiftness
fled away with him to the gates of Damascus in Syria, where they
arrived just at the time when the officers of the mosques,
appointed for that end, were calling the people to prayers at
break of day. The perie laid Buddir ad Deen softly on the ground,
close by the gate, and departed with the genie.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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