"Allah be praised!" I said. "For if this porter, whose name be accursed, did but carry me a quinary further, my silence would become even more surprising than it is; for my affair would finish, and I should speak no more to any man!"
"Purchases of the lady Jullanar," said the girl, whom I recognized by her voice. "Permit the porter to carry it to her apartments."
"I must obey the orders of the Walî my master," replied the door-keeper. "The box must be opened."
I was bereft of the power to control myself, and seized with a colic from excess of fear; I almost died from the violent spasms of my limbs.
"O Es-Samit!" I said, "this is the reward of him whom love leads to the house of the Walî!"
I felt certain that my destruction approached. The intoxication of love now ceased in me, and reflection came in its place. I repented of what I had done, and prayed a happy solution of my dangerous case.
Whether as a result of my prayers, I know not, but some arrangement was come to, and the porter once more raised the chest, and, striking my head upon the end of it at each step, bore me up to the apartments of Jullanar, which I thus entered feet first.
He deposited the box, lid downward, upon the soft mattress of a _dîwan_, so that I found myself upon all fours, like a mule with my face between my hands! Ere I could break my habitual silence, he lifted some heavy piece of furniture--I know not what--and placed it on top of the box!
A voice sweeter than the songs of the Daood spoke:
"I _am_ thy slave!" spoke another voice, at the accursed sound whereof I almost died of spleen. "Knowest thou me not, my beloved? I have devised a new stratagem and come to thee in the guise of a porter! But lo! beneath my uncomely garments, I am Ahzab, thy lover!"
As a man who sleeps ill after a protracted feast, I heard her answer, saying:
"Is it true thou hast come to me, or is this a dream?"
"Verily, it is true!" answered the accursed, the vile, the unspeakable Ahzab, my brother--for it was he. "From the time when I first saw thee, neither sleep hath been sweet to me, nor hath wine possessed the slightest flavor! I have come to thee thus, fragrant bloom of the pomegranate, because I would not have thee see me in a posture so undignified as that of one crouched in a box! So that thy people might be compelled to give me access to thine apartments, I have put a mendicant in my place, rendering the chest heavy!"