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One day, Ishac let bring all who were with him of slave-girls from the house of instruction and carried them up to Er Reshid’s palace, leaving none in his house save Tuhfeh and a cookmaid; for that he bethought him not of Tuhfeh, nor did she occur to his mind, and none of the damsels remembered him of her. When she saw that the house was empty of the slave-girls, she took the lute (now she was unique in her time in smiting upon the lute, nor had she her like in the world, no, not Ishac himself, nor any other) and sang thereto the following verses:
Whenas the soul desireth one other than its peer, It winneth not of fortune the wish it holdeth dear.
Him with my life I’d ransom whose rigours waste away My frame and cause me languish; yet, if he would but hear,
It rests with him to heal me; and I (a soul he hath Must suffer that which irks it), go saying, in my fear
Of spies, “How long, O scoffer, wilt mock at my despair, As ’twere God had created nought else whereat to jeer?”
Now Ishac had returned to his house upon an occasion that presented itself to him; and when he entered the vestibule, he heard a sound of singing, the like whereof he had never heard in the world, for that it was [soft] as the breeze and richer[1] than almond oil.[2] So the delight of it gat hold of him and joyance overcame him,
