Then he put off his trousers and the
rest of his clothes and lay down, in a shirt of fine waxed cloth
and a coif of blue stuff of Merv, upon a mattress of satin,
embroidered on both sides with gold and quilted with Irak silk,
having under his head a pillow stuffed with ostrich-down. In
this guise, he was like the full moon, when it rises on its
fourteenth night. Then, drawing over himself a coverlet of silk,
he fell asleep with the lantern burning at his feet and the
candle at his head, and woke not for a third part of the night,
being ignorant of that which lurked for him in the secret purpose
of God and what He who knoweth the hidden things had appointed
unto him. Now, as chance and destiny would have it, the tower in
question was old and had been many years deserted; and there was
therein a Roman well, inhabited by an Afriteh of the lineage of
Iblis the Accursed, by name Maimouneh, daughter of Ed Dimiryat, a
renowned King of the Jinn. In the middle of the night, Maimouneh
came up out of the well and made for heaven, thinking to listen
by stealth to the discourse of the angels; but, when she reached
the mouth of the well, she saw a light shining in the tower,
contrary to wont; whereat she was mightily amazed, having dwelt
there many years and never seen the like, and said to herself,
'Needs must there be some cause for this.
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