“Until one thousand compassionate men, unasked and of their own free will, shall each have bestowed a kiss upon thee,” was the exact text of the curse. “Then thou shalt regain thy beauty, thy love—and death.”
Ahmad er-Mâdi staggered out from the cavern, blinded by a hundred emotions—already sick with remorse; and one night’s stage on his return journey dropped dead from his saddle ... stricken by the malignant will of the awful being whose power he had invoked! I will conclude this wild romance in the words of Hassan, the dragoman, as nearly as I can recall them.
“And so,” he said, his voice lowered in awe, “Scheherazade, who was stricken with age and ugliness in the very hour that the curse was spoken, went out into the world, my gentleman. She begged her way from place to place, and as the years passed by accumulated much wealth in that manner. Finally, it is said, she returned to Cairo, her native city, and there remained. To each man who bestowed a kiss upon her—and such men were rare—she caused a heart of lapis to be sent, and upon the heart was engraved in gold the number of the kiss! It is said that these gifts ensured to those upon whom they were bestowed the certain possession of their beloved! Once before, when I was a small child, I saw such an amulet, and the number upon it was nine hundred and ninety-nine.”
The thing was utterly incredible, of course; merely a picturesque example of Eastern imagination; but just to see what effect it would have upon him, I told Hassan about the old woman in the Mûski. I had to do so. Frankly, the coincidence was so extraordinary that it worried me. When I had finished:
“It was she—Scheherazade,” he said fearfully. “And it was the last kiss!”
“What then?” I asked.
“Nothing, my gentleman. I do not know!”
III
Throughout the expedition to Sakhâra on the following day I could not fail to note that Hassan was covertly watching me—and his expression annoyed me intensely. It was that compound of compassion and resignation which one might bestow upon a condemned man.
I charged him with it, but of course he denied any such sentiment. Nevertheless, I knew that he entertained it, and, what was worse, I began, in an uncomfortable degree, to share it with him! I cannot make myself clearer. But I simply felt the normal world to be slipping from under my feet, and, no longer experiencing a desire to clutch at modernity as I had done after my meeting with the old woman, I found myself to be reconciled to my fate!