When it was the Five Hundred and Eighty-sixth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the fourth Wazir had told his tale, the King turned from his purpose to slay his son; but, on the fifth day, the damsel came in to him hending a bowl of poison in hand, calling on Heaven for help and buffeting her cheeks and face, and said to him, “O King, either thou shalt do me justice and avenge me on thy son, or I will drink up this poison-cup and die, and the sin of my blood shall be on thy head at the Day of Doom.  These thy Ministers accuse me of malice and perfidy, but there be none in the world more perfidious than men.  Hast thou not heard the story of the Goldsmith and the Cashmere[FN#190] singing-girl?” “What befel the twain, O damsel?” asked the King; and she answered, saying, “There hath come to my knowledge, O august King, a tale of the

Goldsmith and the Cashmere Singing-Girl.

There lived once, in a city of Persia a goldsmith who delighted in women and in drinking wine.  One day, being in the house of one of his intimates, he saw painted on the wall the figure of a lutanist, a beautiful damsel, beholder never beheld a fairer or a more pleasant.  He looked at the picture again and again, marvelling at its beauty, and fell so desperately in love with it, that he sickened for passion and came near to die.  It chanced that one of his friends came to visit him and sitting down by his side, asked how he did and what ailed him, whereto the goldsmith answered, “O my brother, that which ails me is love, and it befel on this wise.  I saw a figure of a woman painted on the house-wall of my brother such an one and became enamoured of it.”  Hereupon the other fell to blaming him and said, “This was of thy lack of wit; how couldst thou fall in love with a painted figure on a wall, that can neither harm nor profit, that seeth not neither heareth, that neither taketh nor withholdeth.”  Said the sick man, “He who painted yonder picture never could have limned it save after the likeness of some beautiful woman.”  “Haply,” rejoined his friend, “he painted it from imagination.”  “In any case,” replied the goldsmith, “here am I dying for love of the picture, and if there live the original thereof in the world, I pray Allah Most High to protect my life till I see her.”  When those who were present went out, they asked for the painter of the picture and, finding that he had travelled to another town, wrote him a letter, complaining of their comrade’s case and enquiring whether he had drawn the figure of his own inventive talents or copied it from a living model; to which he replied, “I painted it after a certain singing-girl belonging to one of the Wazirs in the city of Cashmere in the land of Hind.”  When the goldsmith heard this, he left Persia for Cashmere-city, where he arrived after much travail.  He tarried awhile there till one day he went and clapped up an acquaintance with a certain of the citizens