226 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



they carry them through the midnight sky and lay the 

 two side by side to judge. On the morrow, the youth 

 longs for the girl and the girl for the youth. Of their 

 dreams, the King, the father of the youth, says : " Prob- 

 ably it was a confused dream that thou sawest in sleep," 

 and the father of the girl chains her up as mad. But in 

 the end, after many wanderings and impediments, they 

 transcend the separation of space and are married. 

 Noblest of all, perhaps, is one of the short " Anecdotes " 

 about the discovery of a terrestrial paradise. 



Abd-allah went out to seek a straying camel, and 

 chanced upon a superb and high-walled city lying silent 

 in the desert. And when the Caliph inquired about that 

 city, a learned man told him that it was built by Sheddad, 

 the King. This prince was fond of ancient books, and 

 took delight in nothing so much as in descriptions of 

 Paradise, so that his heart enticed him to make one like 

 it on the earth. Under him were a hundred thousand 

 kings, and under each of them were a hundred thousand 

 soldiers, and he furnished them with the measurements 

 and set them to collect the materials of gold and silver 

 and ruby and pearl and chrysolite. For twenty years 

 they collected. Then he sought a fit place among rivers 

 on a vast open plain. In twenty years they built the 

 city and finished its impregnable fortifications. For 

 twenty years he laboured in equipping himself, his 

 viziers, his harem and his troops for the occupation of 

 this Paradise. Then when he was rejoicing on his way, 

 "God sent down upon him and upon the obstinate 

 infidels who accompanied him a loud cry from the heaven 

 of his power, and it destroyed them all by the vehemence 

 of its sound. Neither Sheddad nor any of those who 



