Then the cateress crowned a cup and gave it to the portress, who took it from her hand and thanked her and drank. Thereupon she poured again and passed to the eldest lady who sat on the couch, and filled yet another and handed it to the Porter. He kissed the ground before them; and, after drinking and thanking them, he again began to recite : "Here! Here! by Allah, here! * Cups of the sweet, the dear' Fill me a brimming bowl * The Fount o' Life I speer Then the Porter stood up before the mistress of the house and said, "O lady, I am thy slave, thy Mameluke, thy white thrall, thy very bondsman;" and he began reciting:— "A slave of slaves there standeth at thy door * Lauding thy generous boons and gifts galore Beauty! may he come in awhile to 'joy * Thy charms? for Love and I part nevermore!" She said to him, "Drink; and health and happiness attend thy drink." So he took the cup and kissed her hand and recited these lines in sing song: "I gave her brave old wine that like her cheeks * Blushed red or flame from furnace flaring up: She bussed the brim and said with many a smile * How durst thou deal folk's cheek for folk to sup? "Drink!" (said I) "these are tears of mine whose tinct * Is heart blood sighs have boiled in the cup." She answered him in the following couplet:— "An tears of blood for me, friend, thou hast shed * Suffer me sup them, by thy head and eyes!" Then the lady took the cup, and drank it off to her sisters' health, and they ceased not drinking (the Porter being in the midst of them), and dancing and laughing and reciting verses and singing ballads and ritornellos. All this time the Porter was carrying on with them, kissing, toying, biting, handling, groping, fingering; whilst one thrust a dainty morsel in his mouth, and another slapped him; and this cuffed his cheeks, and that threw sweet flowers at him; and he was in the very paradise of pleasure, as though he were sitting in the seventh sphere among the Houris[FN#157] of Heaven. They ceased not doing after this fashion until the wine played tricks in their heads and worsted their wits; and, when the drink got the better of them, the portress stood up and doffed her clothes till she was mother naked. However, she let down her hair about her body by way of shift, and throwing herself into the basin disported herself and dived like a duck and swam up and down, and took water in her mouth, and spurted it all over the Porter, and washed her limbs, and between her breasts, and inside her thighs and all around her navel. Then she came up out of the cistern and throwing herself on the Porter's lap said, "O my lord, O my love, what callest thou this article?" pointing to her slit, her solution of continuity. "I call that thy cleft," quoth the Porter, and she rejoined, Wah! wah, art thou not ashamed to use such a word?" and she caught him by the collar and soundly cuffed him. Said he again, Thy womb, thy vulva;" and she struck him a second slap crying, "O fie, O