Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/106

84 me my life, I would not deny it to him.’ Then he went in forthright to his daughter and her mother and his kinsfolk and acquainting them with the King of Kabul’s demand, sought council of them, and they said, ‘Do what seemeth good to thee.’ So he returned straightway to Ain Zar and notified him his consent; and the Vizier abode with him two months, at the end of which time he said to him, ‘We beseech thee to bestow upon us that for which we came and that we may depart to our own country.’ ‘I her and I obey,’ answered the King and assembled his Viziers and officers and the grandees of his realm and the monks and priests. The latter performed the ceremony of marriage between his daughter and the King Teigmous [by proxy] and King Behrwan bade decorate the city after the goodliest fashion and spread the streets with carpets [in honour of the occasion]. Then he equipped his daughter for the journey and gave her all manner of presents and rarities and precious metals, and Ain Zar departed with the princess to his own country.

When the news of their approach reached King Teigmous, he bade celebrate the wedding festivities and decorate the city; after which he went in to the princess and did away her maidenhead; nor was it long before she conceived by him and accomplishing her months, bore a male child like the moon at its full. When King Teigmous knew that his wife had given birth to a goodly son, he rejoiced with an exceeding joy and calling the sages and astrologers and mathematicians, bade them draw the horoscope of the new-born child and tell him what would befall him in his lifetime. So they made their calculations and found that he would, in his fifteenth year, be exposed to great perils and hardships, which if he survived, he would be happy and fortunate during the rest of his life and become a greater and more powerful king than his father. The King rejoiced greatly in this