Then they all began to pay him compliments, each one capping the other's remark.
'You have a face like the full moon, oh youth; your eyes are the eyes of the gazelle; your walk is like the gait of the mountain partridge; your chin is as an apple; your cheeks are pomegranates.'
But Amyntas interrupted them.
'For God's sake, madam,' he said, 'let us have no palavering, and if you love me give me some victuals!...'
Immediately female slaves came in with salvers laden with choice food, and the four maidens plied Amyntas with delicacies. At the end of the repast they sprinkled him with rose-water, and the eldest of them put a crown of roses on his hair. Amyntas thought that after all life was not an empty dream.
XIII
'And now, may it please you, oh stranger, to hear our story.
'Know then that our father was a Moor, one of the wealthiest of his people, and he dwelt with his fellows in Spain, honoured and beloved. Now, when Allah—whose name be exalted!—decreed that our nation should be driven from the country, he, unwilling to leave the land of his birth, built him, with the aid of magic arts, this palace. Here he brought us, his four daughters and all his riches; he peopled it with slaves and filled it with all necessary things, and here we lived in peace and prosperity for many years; but at last a great misfortune befell us, for our father, who was a very learned man and accustomed to busy himself with many abstruse matters, one day got lost in a metaphysical speculation—and has never been found again.'
Here she stopped, and they all sighed deeply.