heaping endearments on me; and as the hour of the middle-night approached
I was losing all suspicion in deep languor, and sighed at the song of the
birds, the long love-song, and dozed awake with eyes half shut. I felt
her steal from me, and continued still motionless without alarm: so was I
mastered. What hour it was or what time had passed I cannot say, when a
bird that was chained on a perch before me--a very quaint bird, with a
topknot awry, and black, heavy bill, and ragged gorgeousness of plumage--
the only object between my lids and darkness, suddenly, in the midst of
the singing, let loose a hoarse laugh that was followed by peals of
laughter from the other birds. Thereat I started up, and beheld the
Princess standing over a brazier, and she seized a slipper from her foot
and flung it at the bird that had first laughed, and struck him off his
perch, and went to him and seized him and shook him, crying, 'Dare to
laugh again!' and he kept clearing his throat and trying to catch the
tune he had lost, pitching a high note and a low note; but the marvel of
this laughter of the bird wakened me thoroughly, and I thanked the bird
in my soul, and said to Goorelka, 'More wondrous than their singing, this
laughter, O Princess!'

She would not speak till she had beaten every bird in the aviary, and
then said in the words of the poet:

Shall they that deal in magic match degrees of wonder?
From the bosom of one cloud comes the lightning and the thunder.

Then said she, 'O Noorna! I'll tell thee truly my intent, which was to
enchant thee; but I find thee wise, so let us join our powers, and thou
shah become mighty as a sorceress.'

Now, Ravaloke had said to me, 'Her friendship is fire, her enmity frost;