Her mother died while she was yet an infant; she was now in the
sixteenth year of her age, and her name was ALMEIDA. She was beautiful
as the daughters of Paradise, and gentle as the breezes of the spring;
her mind was without stain, and her manners were without art.
She was lodged with her father in a palace that joined to the gardens of
the seraglio; and it happened that a lamp which had one night been left
burning in a lower apartment, by some accident set fire to the net-work
of cotton that surrounded a sopha, and the whole room was soon after in
a flame. ALMORAN, who had been passing the afternoon in riot and
debauchery, had been removed from his banquetting room asleep; but HAMET
was still in his closet, where he had been regulating some papers that
were to be used the next day. The windows of this room opened towards
the inner apartments of the house in which Abdallah resided; and HAMET,
having by accident looked that way, was alarmed by the appearance of an
unusual light, and starting up to see whence it proceeded, he discovered
what had happened.
Having hastily ordered the guard of the night to assist in quenching the
flame, and removing the furniture, he ran himself into the garden. As
soon as he was come up to the house, he was alarmed by the shrieks of a
female voice; and the next moment, ALMEIDA appeared at the window of an
apartment directly over that which was on fire.
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