Perhaps of the beautiful Christ-child,dressed in gold and silver, which was down below in the chapel,where the silver candlesticks gleamed so bright, and where herlittle friends sung the hymns in which she also could join? I knownot. Presently she moved again- she stumbled: the earthen vesselfell from her head, and broke on the marble steps. She burst intotears. The beautiful daughter of the imperial palace wept over theworthless broken pitcher; with her bare feet she stood thereweeping; and dared not pull the string, the bell-rope of theimperial palace!"
  TWENTIETH EVENING
  It was more than a fortnight since the Moon had shone. Now hestood once more, round and bright, above the clouds, moving slowlyonward. Hear what the Moon told me.
  "From a town in Fezzan I followed a caravan. On the margin ofthe sandy desert, in a salt plain, that shone like a frozen lake,and was only covered in spots with light drifting sand, a halt wasmade. The eldest of the company- the water gourd hung at his girdle,and on his head was a little bag of unleavened bread- drew a square inthe sand with his staff, and wrote in it a few words out of the Koran,and then the whole caravan passed over the consecrated spot. A youngmerchant, a child of the East, as I could tell by his eye and hisfigure, rode pensively forward on his white snorting steed. Was hethinking, perchance, of his fair young wife? It was only two daysago that the camel, adorned with furs and with costly shawls, hadcarried her, the beauteous bride, round the walls of the city, whiledrums and cymbals had sounded, the women sang, and festive shots, ofwhich the bridegroom fired the greatest number, resounded round thecamel; and now he was journeying with the caravan across the desert.
  "For many nights I followed the train. I saw them rest by thewellside among the stunted palms; they thrust the knife into thebreast of the camel that had fallen, and roasted its flesh by thefire. My beams cooled the glowing sands, and showed them the blackrocks, dead islands in the immense ocean of sand. No hostile tribesmet them in their pathless route, no storms arose, no columns ofsand whirled destruction over the journeying caravan. At home thebeautiful wife prayed for her husband and her father. 'Are they dead?'she asked of my golden crescent; 'Are they dead?' she cried to my fulldisc. Now the desert lies behind them. This evening they sit beneaththe lofty palm trees, where the crane flutters round them with itslong wings, and the pelican watches them from the branches of themimosa. The luxuriant herbage is trampled down, crushed by the feet ofelephants. A troop of negroes are returning from a market in theinterior of the land: the women, with copper buttons in their blackhair, and decked out in clothes dyed with indigo, drive theheavily-laden oxen, on whose backs slumber the naked black children. Anegro leads a young lion which he has brought, by a string. Theyapproach the caravan; the young merchant sits pensive andmotionless, thinking of his beautiful wife, dreaming, in the land ofthe blacks, of his white lily beyond the desert. He raises his head,and- " But at this moment a cloud passed before the Moon, and thenanother. I heard nothing more from him this evening.
  TWENTY-FIRST EVENING
  "I saw a little girl weeping," said the Moon; "she was weepingover the depravity of the world. She had received a most beautifuldoll as a present. Oh, that was a glorious doll, so fair and delicate!She did not seem created for the sorrows of this world. But thebrothers of the little girl, those great naughty boys, had set thedoll high up in the branches of a tree and had run away.
  "The little girl could not reach up to the doll, and could nothelp her down, and that is why she was crying. The doll must certainlyhave been crying too, for she stretched out her arms among the greenbranches, and looked quite mournful. Yes, these are the troubles oflife of which the little girl had often heard tell. Alas, poor doll!