AHMED AND PARI-BANOU. 477

that this good action will meet with a bad recompense.
It does not seem to me that this woman is so ill as she
wishes to appear; and unless I am very much deceived, she
is employed for the express purpose of affording you some great
mortification.”

This speech of the fairy did not in the least alarm Prince
Ahmed, and he took leave of the fairy, and again pursued his
journey, which had been interrupted by meeting with the en-
chantress, and soon arrived, with his attendants, at the court of
the sultan his father.

In the meantime, the two females, to whom Pari-Banou had
given her orders, conducted the enchantress into a very beautiful
apartment, richly furnished. They at first made her sit down
on a sofa, where, while she supported her head against a cushion
of gold brocade, they prepared a bed near her, on the same sofa,
the mattrasses of which were made of satin, richly embroidered,
the sheets were of the finest linen, and the counterpane of cloth
of gold. When they had assisted her in getting to bed—for the
enchantress still continued to pretend that the fever fit with
which she had been attacked tormented her so much that she
could not assist herself,—one of them went out of the room, and
came back soon with a basin of the finest porcelain in her hand,
containing a certain liquor. She presented it to the enchantress,
and while the other female assisted her in sitting up, “ Take this
liquor,” said she who brought it; “it is water from the fountain .
of lions, and is a sovereign remedy for fevers of every kind.
You will find the effects of it in less than an hour.”

In order to act her part the better, the enchantress suffered
them to entreat her for a long time, as if she had an insur-
mountable dislike to drink this liquor. She at last took the
basin, and swallowed its contents, shaking her head at the same
time, as if she did the greatest violence to her feelings. When
she had again laid down, the two females covered her all over.

As the enchantress had not undertaken this scheme for the
purpose of being confined a long time with a pretended illness,
but only with the view of discovering the retreat of Prince
Ahmed, she was desirous of going back and informing the
sultan of the fortunate accomplishment of the commission with
which she was charged; but as she was told that the efficacy
of the draught was not instantaneous. she was compelled, in