Page:The Perfumed Garden - Burton - 1886.djvu/227

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Conclusion
211

"The member of Abou el Heiloukh has remained erect
For thirty days without a break, because he did eat onions.
Abou el Heidja has deflowered[1] in one night
Once eighty virgins, and he did not eat nor drink between.
Because he'd surfeited himself first with chick-peas.
And had drunk camel's milk with honey mixed.
Mimoun, the negro, never ceased to spend his sperm, while he
For fifty days without a truce the game was working.
How proud he was to finish such a task!
For ten days more he worked it,[2] nor was he yet surfeited.
But all this time he ate but yolk of eggs and bread."[3]


The deeds of Abou el Heiloukh Abou el Heidja, and Mimoun, just cited, have been justly praised, and their history is truly marvelous. So I will make you acquainted with it, please God, and thus complete the signal services which this work is designed to render to humanity.


THE HISTORY OF ZOHRA

The Cheikh, the protector of religion (God, the Highest, be good to him!) records that there lived once in remote antiquity an illustrous King, who had numerous armies and immense riches.

This King had seven daughters remarkable for their beauty and perfections. These seven had been born one after another, without any male infant between them.

The Kings of the time wanted them in marriage, but

  1. The text says, Abou el Heidja deflowered eighty virgins straight, that is to say, from the front in the natural way.
    Observations in the autograph edition.—The texts, which we have consulted, say "entirely."
  2. "Depuys luy Aristoteles," etc. Rabelais, Book iii., chap. 27.
  3. Note in the autograph edition.—It is to be observed that in these verses, as similarly in all the other verses which appear in the work, the line is always broken at the hemistitch, and not at the verse, as the Arab language admits in the verse two quite distinct parts, which are, in theory, equal in rhythm.