Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/48

30 hand, he carried him to the door of the [inner] palace, where they found a black slave, splendidly arrayed, with a helmet on his head and on his right hand and his left bows and coats of mail. He rose and hastening to obey the King’s commandment, opened the door, and they went in, hand in hand, till they came to a low door, which the King opened himself and brought the hermit into a ruinous and neglected building and a chamber, wherein was nought but a prayer-carpet, an ewer for ablution and some mats of palm-leaves. Here the King put off his royal habit and donned a gown of coarse white wool and a tall cap of felt. Then he sat down and making the hermit sit, called out to his wife, who answered from within, saying, ‘Here am I.’ Quoth he, ‘Knowst thou who is our guest to-day?’ ‘Yes,’ replied she; ‘it is the lord of the cloud.’ And the King said, ‘Come in: it matters not for him.’ So there entered a woman, as she were a vision, with a face that glittered like the new moon; and she was clad in a gown and veil of coarse wool. Then said the King, ‘O my brother, dost thou desire to hear our story or that we should pray for thee and let thee go?’ ‘Nay,’ answered the hermit; ‘I wish to hear your story, for I long to know it.’

‘Know then,’ said the King, ‘that my forefathers handed down the throne, one to the other, and it descended from great one to great one, in unbroken succession, till it came to me. Now God had made this hateful to me, for I would fain have gone a-wandering, a pilgrim, over the earth and left the folk to govern themselves; but I feared lest they should fall into temptation and anarchy and swerve from the law of God, and the union of the Faith be broken up. Wherefore I took upon me the kingship and appointed to every head of them a set stipend and donned the royal robes and posted officers at the doors, as a terror to evil doers and for the defence of honest folk