Look at her, with her slender shape and radiant beauty! this Is
she who is at once the sun and moon of palaces!
Thine eyes shall ne'er see grace combine so featly black and
white As in her visage and the locks that o'er her forehead
kiss.
She in whose cheeks the red flag waves, her beauty testifies Unto
her name, if that to paint her sweet seductions miss.
With swimming gait she walks: I laugh for wonder at her hips, But
weep to see her waist, that all too slight to bear them is.
When the porter saw her, his mind and heart were taken by storm, so that he well-nigh let fall the basket and exclaimed, 'Never in all my life saw I a more blessed day than this!' Then said the portress to the cateress, 'O my Sister, why tarriest thou? Come in from the gate and ease this poor man of his burden.' So the cateress entered, followed by the portress and the porter, and went on before them to a spacious saloon, elegantly built and handsomely decorated with all manner of colours and carvings and geometrical figures, with balconies and galleries and cupboards and benches and closets with curtains drawn before them. In the midst was a great basin of water, from which rose a fountain, and at the upper end stood a couch of juniper wood, inlaid with precious stones and surmounted by a canopy of red satin, looped up with pearls as big as hazel-nuts or bigger. Thereon sat a lady of radiant countenance and gentle and demure aspect, moonlike in face, with eyes of Babylonian witchcraft and arched eyebrows, sugared lips like cornelian and a shape like the letter I. The radiance of her countenance would have shamed the rising sun, and she resembled one of the chief stars of heaven or a pavilion of gold or a high-born Arabian bride on the night of her unveiling, even as says of her the poet:
Her teeth, when she smiles, like pearls in a cluster show, Or
shredded camomile-petals or flakes of snow:
Her ringlets seem, as it were, the fallen night, And her beauty
shames the dawn and its ruddy glow.
Then she rose and coming with a stately gait to meet her sisters in the middle of the saloon, said to them, 'Why stand ye still? Relieve this poor porter of his burden.' So the cateress came and stood before and the portress behind him and with the help of the third damsel, lifted the basket from his head and emptying it, laid everything in its place. Then they gave him two dinars, saying, 'Go, O porter!' But he stood, looking at the ladies and admiring, their beauty and pleasant manners, never had he seen goodlier, and wondering greatly at the profusion of wine and meat and fruits and flowers and so forth that they had provided and to see no man with them, and made no movement to go. So the eldest lady said to him, 'What ails thee that thou dost not go away? Belike, thou grudgest at thy pay?' And she turned to the cateress and said to her, 'Give him another dinar.' 'No, by Allah, O lady!' answered the porter. 'I do not indeed grudge at my pay, for my right hire is scarce two dirhems; but of a truth my heart and soul are taken up with you and how it is that ye are alone and have no man with you and no one to divert you, although ye know that women's sport is little worth without men, nor is an entertainment complete without four at the table, and ye have no fourth. What says the poet?
Dost thou not see that for pleasure four several things combine,
Instruments four, harp, hautboy and gittern and psaltery?
And unto these, four perfumes answer and correspond, Violets,
roses and myrtle and blood-red anemone.
Nor is our pleasure perfect, unless four things have we, Money
and wine and gardens and mistress fair and free.
And ye are three and need a fourth, who should be a man, witty, sensible and discreet, one who can keep counsel.' When they heard what he said, it amused them and they laughed at him and replied, 'What have we to do with that, we who are girls and fear to entrust our secrets to those who will not keep them? For we have read, in such and such a history, what says Ibn eth Thumam:
Tell not thy secrets: keep them with all thy might. A secret
revealed is a secret lost outright.
If thine own bosom cannot thy secrets hold, Why expect more
reserve from another wight?
Or, as well says Abou Nuwas on the same subject:
The fool, that to men doth his secrets avow, Deserves to be marked with a brand on the brow.'
'By your lives,' rejoined the porter, 'I am a man of sense and discretion, well read in books and chronicles. I make known what is fair and conceal what is foul, and as says the poet: