Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 3.djvu/156

136 ears and who shall deliver us from his hand?’ ‘I tell thee,’ rejoined Budour, ‘there lay a youth with me last night, one of the fairest-faced of men.’ ‘God preserve thy reason!’ exclaimed the nurse. ‘Indeed, no one lay with thee last night.’ The princess looked at her hand and seeing her own ring gone and Kemerezzeman’s ring on her finger in its stead, said to the nurse, ‘Out on thee, thou accursed traitress, wilt thou lie to me and tell me that none lay with me last night and forswear thyself to me?’ ‘By Allah,’ replied the nurse, ‘I do not lie to thee nor have I sworn falsely!’ Her words incensed the princess and drawing a sword she had by her, she smote the old woman with it and slew her; whereupon the eunuch and the waiting-women cried out at her and running to her father, acquainted him with her case. So he went to her forthright and said to her, ‘O my daughter, what ails thee?’ ‘O my father,’ answered she, ‘where is the young man that lay with me last night?’ Then her reason left her and she cast her eyes right and left and rent her dress even to the skirt. When the King saw this, he bade the women lay hands on her; so they seized and bound her, then putting a chain of iron about her neck, made her fast to the window and there left her. As for her father, the world was straitened upon him, when he saw what had befallen her, for that he loved her and her case was not a little thing to him. So he summoned the doctors and astrologers and magicians and said to them, ‘Whoso cureth my daughter of her disorder, I will marry him to her and give him half my kingdom; but whoso cometh to her and cureth her not, I will strike off his head and hang it over her palace-gate.’ Accordingly, all who went in to her, but failed to cure her, he beheaded and hung their heads over her palace-gate, till he had beheaded forty physicians and crucified as many astrologers on her account; wherefore all the folk held aloof from her, for all the physicians