Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 3.djvu/218

198 themselves,’ asked the King, ‘and did they give thee any charge?’ ‘I found them patient and resigned to their fate,’ answered the treasurer; ‘and they said to me, “Verily, our father is excusable; bear him our salutation and say to him, ‘Thou art quit of our blood;’ and repeat to him the following verses:

When the King heard this, he bowed his head a long while and knew this to mean that they had wrongfully been put to death. Then he bethought himself of the perfidy of women and the calamities brought about by them, and opening the two parcels fell to turning over his sons’ clothes and weeping. Presently, he found in the pocket of his son Asaad’s clothes a letter in Queen Budour’s hand, enclosing the tresses of her hair, and reading it, knew that the prince had been falsely accused. Then he searched Amjed’s clothes and found in his pocket a letter in the handwriting of Queen Heyat en Nufous, enclosing the tresses of her hair; so he opened and read it and knew that Amjed also had been wronged; whereupon he beat hand upon hand and exclaimed, ‘There is no power and no virtue but in God! I have slain my sons unjustly.’ And he buffeted his face, crying out, ‘Alas, my sons! Alas, my long grief!’ Then he bade build two tombs in one house, which he styled ‘House of Lamentations,’ and let grave thereon his sons’ names; and he threw himself on Amjed’s tomb, weeping and groaning and lamenting, and repeated these verses:

O moon, that hast set beneath the earth for aye, For whose loss weep the shining stars of the sky, O wand, after whom no more shall the flexile grace Of the willow-like bending shape enchant the eye,