At the noise which this strange conflict occasioned in the valley,
Gulchenrouz awoke, and, bewildered with terror, sprung impetuously upon
an old figtree that rose against the acclivity of the rocks; from thence
gained their summits, and ran for two hours without once looking back. At
last, exhausted with fatigue, he fell as if dead into the arms of a good
old Genius, whose fondness for the company of children had made it his
sole occupation to protect them, and who, whilst performing his wonted
rounds through the air, happening on the cruel Giaour at the instant of
his growling in the horrible chasm, rescued the fifty little victims
which the impiety of Vathek had devoted to his maw; these the Genius
brought up in nests still higher than the clouds, and himself fixed his
abode in a nest more capacious than the rest, from which he had expelled
the possessors that had built it.
These inviolable asylums were defended against the Dives and the Afrits
by waving streamers, on which were inscribed, in characters of gold that
flashed like lightning, the names of Allah and the Prophet. It was there
that Gulchenrouz, who as yet remained undeceived with respect to his
pretended death, thought himself in the mansions of eternal peace, he
admitted without fear the congratulations of his little friends, who were
all assembled in the nest of the venerable Genius, and vied with each
other in kissing his serene forehead and beautiful eyelids.
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