Page:Tales from the Arabic, Vol 2.djvu/92

72 the customs dues and gave dresses of honour and bestowed gifts and largesse and conferred favours on the amirs and viziers and dignitaries, and the chamberlains and deputies presented themselves before him and did him homage. So the people of the city rejoiced in him and said, ‘Indeed this is none other than a king of the greatest of the kings.’

Moreover, he assembled the sages and the theologians and the sons of the kings and devised with them and asked them questions and problems and examined with them into many things of all fashions that might direct him to well-doing in the kingly office; and he questioned them also of subtleties and religious obligations and of the laws of the kingdom and the fashions of administration and of that which it behoveth the king to do of looking into the affairs of the people and repelling the enemy [from the realm] and fending off his malice with war; wherefore the people’s contentment redoubled and their joy in that which God the Most High had vouchsafed them of his elevation to the kingship over them. So he upheld the ordinance of the realm and the affairs thereof abode established upon the accepted customs.

Now the late king had left a wife and a daughter, and the people would fain have married the latter to the new king, to the intent that the kingship might not pass out of the old royal family. So they proposed to him that he should take her to wife, and he promised them this, but put them off from him, of his respect for the covenant