Let the gentle shadows of night descend which guard them that sleep from the eyes of evil spectres! Let the weary errant bee rest in the fragrant chalice of the closed flower. Everything sleeps, all is quiet, only the stars and burning hearts are still awake.
What a gentle, mystical song resounds from among the willows, as of a nightingale endowed with a human voice in order to sing to the listening night in coherent rhymes the song of his love and his melancholy rapture. It is the poet Hariri whom, sword in hand, they call Feriz Beg, "The Lion of Combat," but who, when evening descends, and the noise and tumult of the camp are still, discards his coat of mail, puts on a light grey burnush, and, lute in hand, strolls through the listening groves and by the side of the murmuring streams and calls forth languishing songs from the depths of his heart and the strings of his lute, uninterrupted by the awakening appeals of the trumpet.
Many a pale maid opens her window to the night at the sound of these magic songs—and becomes all the paler from listening to them.
The eunuchs steal softly along the banks of the Margaret Island with their long muskets, and stop still and watch for any suspicious skiff drawing near to the island; and the most wakeful of them is old Majmun, who, even when he is asleep, has one eye open, and in happier times was the guardian of the harem. He sits down on a hillock, and even a carrier-pigeon with a letter under its wings could not have eluded his vigilance. He has only just arrived on the island, having previously accompanied Yffim Beg into Transylvania, and therefore has only seen Azrael once.
His eyes roam constantly around, and his sharp ears detect even the flight of a moth or a beetle, yet suddenly he feels—some one tapping him on the shoulder.
He turns terrified, and behold Azrael standing behind him.
"Accursed be that singing over yonder. I was listening to it, so did not hear thee approach. What dost thou want? Why dost thou come hither in the darkness of night? How didst thou escape from the harem?"
"I prythee be quiet!" said the odalisk. "This evening I went a-boating with my master, and a gold ring dropped from my finger into the water; it was a present from him, and if to-morrow he asks: 'Where is that ornament?' and I cannot show it him, he will slay me. Oh, let me seek for it here in the water."
"Foolish damsel, the water here is deep; it will go over thy head, and thou wilt perish."
"I care not; I must look for it. I must find the ring, or lose my life for it."