He said no more, he believed every word I related, and for all that, he
was not taken aback. This disappointed me a little; I had expected to see
him utterly bewildered by my inventions.

I searched my brain for a couple of desperate lies, went the whole hog,
hinted that Happolati had been Minister of State for nine years in Persia.
"You perhaps have no conception of what it means to be Minister of State
in Persia?" I asked. It was more than king here, or about the same as
Sultan, if he knew what that meant, but Happolati had managed the whole
thing, and was never at a loss. And I related about his daughter Ylajali,
a fairy, a princess, who had three hundred slaves, and who reclined on a
couch of yellow roses. She was the loveliest creature I had ever seen; I
had, may the Lord strike me, never seen her match for looks in my life!

"So--o; was she so lovely?" remarked the old fellow, with an absent air,
as he gazed at the ground.

"Lovely? She was beauteous, she was sinfully fascinating. Eyes like raw
silk, arms of amber! Just one glance from her was as seductive as a kiss;
and when she called me, her voice darted like a wine-ray right into my
soul's phosphor. And why shouldn't she be so beautiful?" Did he imagine
she was a messenger or something in the fire brigade? She was simply a
Heaven's wonder, I could just inform him, a fairy tale.

"Yes, to be sure!" said he, not a little bewildered. His quiet bored me; I
was excited by the sound of my own voice and spoke in utter seriousness;
the stolen archives, treaties with some foreign power or other, no longer
occupied my thoughts; the little flat bundle of paper lay on the seat
between us, and I had no longer the smallest desire to examine it or see