Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 1.djvu/226

204 naming him Agib. His day was as a month and his month as a year, and when seven years had passed over him, his grandfather sent him to school, bidding the master teach him to read the Koran and give him a good education; and he remained at the school four years, till he began to bully the little ones and beat them and abuse them, saying, “Which of you is like me? I am the son of the Vizier of Egypt.” At last the children came, in a body, to complain to the monitor of Agib’s behavior to them, and he said, “I will tell you how to do with him, so that he shall leave coming to the school and you shall never see him again. It is this: when he comes to-morrow, sit down round him and let one of you say to the others, ‘By Allah, none shall play at this game except he tell us the names of his father and mother; for he who knows not his parents’ names is a bastard and shall not play with us.’” So next day, when Agib came to the school, they all assembled round him, and one of them said, “We will play a game, in which no one shall join except he tell us the names of his father and mother.” And they all said, “By Allah, it is good.” Then said one of them, “My name is Majid, my mother’s name is Alawiyeh and my father’s Izeddin.” And the others said the like, till it came to Agib’s turn and he said, “My name is Agib, my mother is the Lady of Beauty and my father Shemseddin, Vizier of Egypt.” “By Allah,” cried they, “the Vizier is not thy father.” Said he, “He is indeed my father.” Then they all laughed and clapped their hands at him, saying, “He does not know his father! Arise and go out from us, for none shall play with us, except he know his father’s name.” Thereupon they dispersed from around him and laughed him to scorn, leaving him choked with tears and mortification. Then said the monitor to him, “O Agib, knowst thou not that the Vizier is thy mother’s father, thy grandfather and not thy father? As for thy