Then followed twenty thousand dancing girls, attired in light drapery, with bare arms and legs. You saw, as they moved, among their tresses and round their necks, coruscations of precious stones, so bright you were compelled to shade your eyes. The bracelets that quivered on their wrists, the bangles that gleamed on their ankles, kept up a musical and enticing tinkling.
Shall I enumerate to you the multitude of female performers on the guitar, the tambourine, and the mandolin, and of the singers as well? Of what use is it to crowd the page with strings of numerals?
These houris were of no common origin. Mahomet had formed their bodies of musk, saffron, amber, and frankincense. Their faces were so radiant with beauty, that they diffused a gentle splendour in the night, like the moon when she mounts above the horizon amid the mists of earth. Their voices were so sweet, that every syllable which fell from their lips was precious.
After these beauties came the Prophet, attired in a green robe, and seated on a white palfrey. He was dressed with the greatest simplicity, and far from showily mounted, and yet one felt an inward inclination to bend the knee to him as he passed. On his right hand rode his grandsire, Abd el Motalleb; on his left his father, Abdallah; and he was surrounded by Ali, his cousin and most warm disciple; by Said, his adopted heir; by the four sages of Mecca—Waraca, Othman, Obaydallah, and Zaid; by the fiery Omar, the faithful Aboubeker, and thousands of others just as famous.
A hundred thousand horsemen brought up the rear of the cavalcade.
As the troops took up their positions, the scenery underwent a complete change, unobserved of Roland, who was absorbed in watching the procession. When he cast a look around him, he beheld himself surrounded by mountains whose summits were beyond his ken. These gigantic heights, which were composed of gneiss, mica, agate, onyx, trap, and porphyry were clothed halfway up by forests whose flora comprised the growths of all climes. The vast baobab spread its branches in close contiguity to an island of palms, which displayed their delicate foliage against the blue sky. The silvery mohonono contrasted well with the dark motsouri; the moupanda-panda of Central Africa, the jacquier of Malacca, the oak of Europe, mingled their boughs. Rivers, whose source was hidden in the clouds, bounded from rock to rock, flinging up at every obstacle crests of feathery spray, spanned by rainbows.
