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The roof was covered with tiles that glittered like the skin of the Arabian serpent, and was surmounted with a green dragon, which was painted of that imperial hue, because Haddad-Ben-Ahab was descended from the sacred progeny of Fatima, of whom green is the everlasting badge, as it is of nature. Time cannot change it, nor can it be impaired by the decrees of tyranny or of justice.
"Bother the laws of the Saara!" exclaimed Fatima, with a disdainful toss of her head, and a scornful turning up of her two protruding teeth; "all stuff and nonsense! There's no law in the Saara; and if there was, you know we're never coming into it again.
She verbally replied to it through Fatima; and stated, in her justification, that she was hurried from Benares to a town on the river, whence she was rapidly transported to the castle of Omrah, who had not long before lost his wife, and who was more than four times her age.
As soon as I perceived that my secret was discovered, I endeavoured to make a friend of Fatima, in which I was successful. After this our meetings were more frequent, and what was of greater importance, they were uninterrupted. In the first raptures of requited affection, what lover thinks of difficulties?
The princess granted his request, saying, "You may be as free here, good mother, as if you were in your own cell: I will order you a dinner, but remember I expect you as soon as you have finished your repast." After the princess had dined, and the false Fatima had been informed by one of the eunuchs that she was risen from table, he failed not to wait upon her.
"The princess does me too great an honour," replied the false Fatima; "I am ready to obey her command," and at the same time followed the eunuchs to the palace.
My brother Mustapha and my sister Fatima were almost of the same age; the former was at most but two years older. They loved each other fervently, and did in concert, all that could lighten, for our suffering father, the burden of his old age. On Fatima's seventeenth birthday, my brother prepared a festival.
After giving two krans to the shrine, I intended to buy a piece of silk for my wife, a horse and sword for my little boy Yusuf, and an Indian handkerchief and a pair of gold slippers for my little girl Fatima. And here you ask me two hundred krans for one piece of silk. How can I pay you and buy the other things?"
They were accompanied in their flight by Ayesha, the widow of the prophet, who cherished, to the last hour of her life, an implacable hatred against the husband and the posterity of Fatima.
Some considerable time after, Fatima thought she had met with a more favourable occasion, which gave her hopes of being heard upon the subject; she therefore accosted him with all the eagerness imaginable: Son, said she, I beg of you, if it be not very irksome to you, to tell me what reason you have for your so great aversion to marriage?
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