Beauty woke to fall in love with the beauties of her form, ✿ Where combine with all her coyness her pride and pudency:
The full moon is her face[[263]] and the branchlet is her shape, ✿ And the musk-pod is her scent—what like her can there be?
‘Tis as though she were moulded from water of the pearl, ✿ And in every lovely limblet another moon we see!
And her name was Zumurrud—the Smaragdine. So when Ali Shar saw her, he marvelled at her beauty and grace and said, “By Allah, I will not stir hence till I see how much this girl fetcheth, and know who buyeth her!” So he took standing-place amongst the merchants, and they thought he had a mind to buy her, knowing the wealth he had inherited from his parents. Then the broker stood at the damsel’s head and said, “Ho, merchants! Ho, ye men of money! Who will open the gate of biddings for this damsel, the mistress of moons, the union pearl, Zumurrud the curtain-maker, the sought of the seeker and the delight of the desirous? Open the biddings’ door and on the opener be nor blame nor reproach for evermore.” Thereupon quoth one merchant, “Mine for five hundred dinars;” “and ten,” quoth another. “Six hundred,” cried an old man named Rashíd al-Din, blue of eye[[264]] and foul of face. “And ten,” cried another. “I bid a thousand,” rejoined Rashid al-Din; whereupon the rival merchants were tongue-tied, and held their peace and the broker took counsel with the girl’s owner, who said, “I have sworn not to sell her save to whom she shall choose: so consult her.” Thereupon the broker went up to Zumurrud and said to her, “O mistress of moons, this merchant hath a mind to buy thee.” She looked at Rashid al-Din and finding him as we have said, replied, “I will not be sold to a greybeard, whom decrepitude hath brought to such evil plight. Allah inspired his saying who saith:—
I craved of her a kiss one day; but soon as she beheld ✿ My hoary
hairs, though I my luxuries and wealth display’d;
She proudly turned away from me, showed shoulders, cried aloud:— ✿ ‘No! no! by Him, whose hest mankind from nothingness hath made,
For hoary head and grizzled chin I’ve no especial love: ✿ What! stuff my mouth with cotton[[265]] ere in sepulchre I’m laid?’”
Now when the broker heard her words he said, “By Allah, thou art excusable, and thy price is ten thousand gold pieces!” So he told her owner that she would not accept of old man Rashid al-Din, and he said, “Consult her concerning another.” Thereupon a second man came forward and said, “Be she mine for what price was offered by the oldster she would have none of;” but she looked at him and seeing that his beard was dyed, said “What be this fashion lewd and base and the blackening of the hoary face?” And she made a great show of wonderment and repeated these couplets:—
Showed me Sir Such-an-one a sight and what a frightful sight! ✿ A neck, by Allah, only made for slipper-sole to smite:[[266]]