صفحة 406 من 1116

there remained for this youth but one day of the forty dangerous

days which the astrologers and the learned had foretold for him;

and the predestined death of this beautiful one was to be at my

hand. Would Heaven I had not tried to cut the watermelon. What

dire misfortune is this I must bear lief or loath? What a

disaster! What an affliction! O Allah mine, I implore thy pardon

and declare to Thee my innocence of his death. But what God

willeth let that come to pass."[FN#276]-And Shahrazad perceived

the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

When it was the Sixteenth Night,