Now the rumour of all these things reached the ears of the World’s most beauteous Damsel, and she ordered the prince to be brought before her. The damsel dwelt in a little marble palace, and before the palace was a golden basin which was fed by the water of four streams. The courtyard of this palace also was a vast garden wherein were many great trees and fragrant flowers and singing-birds, and to the youth it seemed like the gate of Paradise.
Suddenly the door of the palace was opened, and the garden was so flooded with light that the eyes of
The World’s most Beauteous Damsel.—p. 159.
the youth were dazzled even to blindness. It was the World’s most beauteous Damsel who had appeared in the door of the palace, and the great light was the rosiness of her two radiant cheeks. She approached the prince and spoke to him, but scarcely did the youth perceive her than he fainted away before her eyes. When he came to himself again they brought him into the damsel’s palace, and there he rejoiced exceedingly in the World’s most beauteous Damsel, for her face was as the face of a Houri, and her presence was as a vision of Peris.
“Oh, prince!” began the damsel, “thou that art the son of Shah Suleiman, canst aid me in my deep distress. In the vast garden of the Demon of Autumn there is a bunch of singing-pomegranates: if thou canst get them for me I will be thine for ever and ever.”
Then the youth gave her his hand upon it, the hand of loyal friendship, and departed far far away. He went on and on without stopping, he went on, and for months and months he crossed deserts where man had never trod, and mountains over which there was no path. “Oh, my Creator,” he sighed, “wilt thou not show me the right way?” and he rose up again each morning from the place where he had sunk down exhausted the night before, and so he went on and on from day to day till the path led him right down to the roots of the mountains. There it seemed to him as if it were the Day of Judgment. Such a noise, such a hubbub, such a hurly-burly of sounds arose that all the hills and rocks around him trembled. The youth knew not whether it was friend or foe, man or spirit, and as he went on further, trembling with fear, the noise grew louder and the dust rose up round about him like smoke. He knew not where he was going, but he might have known from what he heard that the smaller garden of the Demon of Autumn was now but a six-months’ journey off, and all this great hubbub and clamour was the talisman of the gate of the garden.
And now he drew still nearer and could see the gate of the smaller garden, and could hear the roaring of the talismans in the gate, and could perceive the guardian of the gate also. Then he went up to him and told him of his trouble. “But art thou not afraid of this great commotion?” asked the guardian of the gate. “Is it not because of thee that all the talismans are so impatient? even I am afraid thereat!”
But the youth did nothing but inquire continually about the cluster of singing-pomegranates.