I was standing there lost in wonderment, the heart of lapis-lazuli in my palm, when the voice of Hassan disturbed my stupor. "Ah, my gentleman, I am sorry to be late but----" The voice ceased. I looked up. "Well?" I said. Then I, too, said no more. Hassan Abd-el-Kebîr was glaring at the ornament in my hand as though I had held, not a very choice example of native jewellery, but an adder or a scorpion! "What's the matter?" I asked, recovering from my surprise. "Do you know to whom this amulet belongs?" He muttered something in guttural Arabic ere replying to my question. Then: "It is the heart of lapis," he said, in a strange voice. "It is the heart of lapis!" "So much is evident," I cried, laughing. "But does it alarm you?" "Please," he said softly, and held out a brown hand--"I will see." I placed the thing in his open palm and he gazed at it as one might imagine an orchid hunter would gaze at a new species of _Odontoglossum_. "What do the figures mean?" I asked. "They form the word _alf_," he replied. "_Alf?_ Somebody's name!" I said, still laughing. "In Arab it mean ten hundred," he whispered. "A thousand?" "Yes--one thousand." "Well?" Hassan returned the ornament to me, and his expression was so strange that I began to grow really annoyed. He was looking at me with a mingling of envy and compassion which I found to be quite insufferable. "Hassan," I said sternly, "you will tell me all you know about this matter. One would imagine that you suspected me of stealing the thing!" "Ah, no, my gentleman!" he protested earnestly. "But I will tell you, yes, only you will not believe me." "Never mind. Tell me." Thereupon Hassan Abd-el-Kebîr told me the most improbable story to which I had ever listened. Since to reproduce it in his imperfect English, with my own frequent interjections, would be tedious, I will give it in brief. Some of the historical details, imperfectly related by Hassan as I learned later, I have corrected. In the reign of the Khalîf El-Mamûn--a son of Hárûn er-Rashîd and brother of the prototype of Beckford's _Vathek_--one Shâwar was Governor of Egypt, and the daughter of the Governor, Scheherazade, was famed throughout the domains of the Khalîf as the most beautiful maiden in the land. Wazîrs and princes sought her hand in vain. Her heart was given to a handsome young merchant of Cairo, Ahmad er-Mâdi, who was also the wealthiest man in the city. Shâwar, although an indulgent father, would not hear of such a union, however, but he hesitated to destroy his daughter's happiness by forcing her into an unwelcome marriage. Finally, passion conquered reason in the breasts of the lovers and they fled, Scheherazade escaping from the palace of her father by means of a rope-ladder smuggled into the _harêm_ apartments by a slave whom Ahmad's gold had tempted, and meeting Ahmad outside the gardens where he waited with a fleet horse.