of the King, if I paid him, as I did out of the gold in your purse
which I carried. Moreover he earned his hire, for when the King grew
dull, wine not yet having taken a hold on him, it was he who brought
me to his mind as one who might amuse him, being so ugly and different
from others, if only for a few minutes, after the women dancers had
failed to do so."

"And what happened then, Bes?"

"Then I was fetched and did my juggling tricks with that snake I
caught and tamed, which is in my pouch now. You should not hate it any
more, Master, for it played your game well. After this the King began
to talk to me and I saw that his mind was ill at ease about you whom
he knew that he had wronged. So I told him that story of an elephant
that my father killed to save a king--it grew up in my mind like a
toadstool in the night, Master, did this story of an ungrateful king
and what befell him. Then the King became still more unquiet in his
heart about you and asked the eunuch, Houman, where you were, to which
he answered that by his order you were sleeping in a boat and might
not be disturbed. So that arrow of mine missed its mark because the
King did not like to eat his own words and cause you to be brought
from out the boat, whither he had sent you. Now when everything seemed
lost, some god, or perhaps the holy Tanofir who is ever present with
me to see that I have not forgotten him, put it into the King's mouth
to begin to talk about women and to ask me if I had ever seen any
fairer than those dancers whom I met going out as I came in. I
answered that I had not noticed them much because they were so ugly,
as indeed all women had seemed to me since once upon the banks of Nile
I had looked upon one who was as Hathor herself for beauty. The King
asked me who this might be and I answered that I did not know since I