TWILIGHT LAND

flaming torch of sandal-wood. Behind the slaves stood
a double row of armed men, and behind them a great
crowd of other slaves and attendants, dressed each as.
magnificently as a prince, blazing and flaming with in-
numerable jewels and ornaments of gold.

But of all these things the young man thought nothing
and saw nothing; for at the end of the marble avenue
there arose a palace, the like of which was not in the
four quarters of the earth—a palace of marble and gold
and carmine and ultramarine—rising into the purple
starry sky, and shining in the moonlight like a vision of
Paradise. The palace was illuminated from top to bottom
and from end to end; the windows shone like crystal,
and from it came sounds of music and rejoicing.

When the crowd that stood waiting saw the young
man appear, they shouted: ‘Welcome! welcome! to
the master who has come again! To Aben Hassen the
Fool !”

The young man walked up the avenue of marble to:
the palace, surrounded by the armed attendants in their
dresses of jewels and gold, and preceded by dancing-
girls as beautiful as houris, who danced and sung before
him. He was dizzy with joy. “All—all this,” he
exulted, “belongs to me. And to think that if I had
listened to the Talisman of Solomon I would have had
none of it.”

That was the way he came back to the treasure of the
ancient kings of Egypt, and to the palace of enchantment
that his father had quitted.

For seven months he lived a life of joy and delight,
surrounded by crowds of courtiers as though he were a.
king, and going from pleasure to pleasure without end.

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