Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/369

335 how he had lost the ring, and they offered up prayers for his long life and advancement and withdrew. See then, O King,’ said the Vizier, ‘the malice of women and what they do unto men.’

The King hearkened to the Vizier’s counsel and again countermanded his order to slay his son. Next morning, it being the eighth day, as the King sat in his audience-chamber in the midst of his grandees and amirs and officers and men of learning, the prince entered, with his hand in that of his governor, Es Sindibad, and praised his father and his Viziers and grandees in the most eloquent words and thanked them; so that all who were present wondered at his eloquence and fluency and the excellence of his speech. His father rejoiced in him with an exceeding joy and calling him to him, kissed him between the eyes. Then he called Es Sindibad and asked him why his son had kept silence these seven days, to which he replied, ‘O my lord, it was I who enjoined him to this, in my fear for him of death; for, when I took his nativity, I found it written in the stars that, if he should speak during this period, he would surely die; but now the danger is over, by the King’s fortune.’

At this the King rejoiced and said to his Viziers, ‘If I had killed my son would the fault have fallen on me or the damsel or Es Sindibad?’ But they refrained from answering and Es Sindibad said to the prince, ‘Answer thou, O my son.’ Quoth he, ‘I have heard tell that certain guests once alighted at a merchant’s house, and he sent his slave-girl to the market, to buy a jar of milk. So she bought it and set out on her return; but, on her way home, there passed over her a kite, holding a serpent in its claws, and a drop of the serpent’s venom fell into the jar of milk, unknown of the girl. So, when she came back, the merchant took the milk from her and drank of it, he and his guests; but hardly had it settled in their