Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 3.djvu/328

300 art the son of the Amir Khalid, Chief of the Police.”’ And she answered, ‘I hear and obey.’ Then he circumcised the boy and reared him after the goodliest fashion, bringing him a tutor, who taught him to read and write; so he read (and commented) the Koran twice and learnt it by heart and grew up, calling the Amir father. Moreover, the latter used to go down with him to the tilting-ground and assemble horsemen and teach the lad warlike exercises and the use of arms, so that, by the time he was fourteen years old, he became a valiant and accomplished cavalier and gained the rank of Amir.

It chanced one day that he fell in with Ahmed Kemakim and clapping up an acquaintance with him, accompanied him to the tavern, where Ahmed took out the lantern he had stolen from the Khalif and fell to plying the wine-cup by its light, till he became drunken. Presently Aslan said to him, ‘O Captain, give me yonder lantern;’ but he replied, ‘I cannot give it thee.’ ‘Why not?’ asked Aslan. ‘Because,’ answered Ahmed, ‘lives have been lost for it.’ ‘Whose life?’ asked Aslan; and Ahmed said, ‘There came hither a man named Alaeddin Abou est Shamat, who was made Captain of the Sixty and lost his life through this lantern.’ Quoth Aslan, ‘And how was that?’ ‘Know,’ replied Ahmed Kemakim, ‘that thou hadst an elder brother by name Hebezlem Bezazeh, for whom, when he became apt for marriage, thy father would have bought a slave-girl named Jessamine.’ And he went on to tell him the whole story of Hebezlem’s illness and what befell Alaeddin, undeserved. When Aslan heard this, he said in himself, ‘Most like this slave-girl was my mother Jessamine and my father was no other than Alaeddin Abou esh Shamat.’ So he went out from him, sorrowful, and met Ahmed ed Denef, who exclaimed at sight of him, ‘Glory be to Him to whom none is like!’ ‘At what dost thou marvel, O my