Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 6.djvu/349

319 the washing of thy hands.’ She thanked him and kissed his hands, after which she returned to the palace and gave the letter to the princess who read it and throwing it from her hand, sprang to her feet, whilst the vein of anger started out between her eyes. Then she walked, shod as she was with pattens of gold, set with pearls and jewels, till she came to her father’s palace, and none dared ask her how it was with her. When she reached the palace, she asked for the King, and the slave-girls said to her, ‘O my lady, he is gone forth a-hunting.’ So she returned, as she were a raging lioness, and spoke to none for the space of three hours, at the end of which time her wrath subsided and her brow cleared.

When the old woman saw that her anger was past, she went up to her and kissing the earth before her, said to her, ‘O my lady, whither went those noble steps?’ ‘To the palace of the King my father,’ answered Heyat en Nufous. ‘And could no one do thine errand?’ asked the nurse. ‘No,’ replied the princess; ‘for I went to acquaint him with that which hath befallen me with yonder dog of a merchant, that he might lay hands on him and on all the merchants of the bazaar and crucify them over their shops and suffer no foreign merchant to abide in our town.’ Quoth the old woman, ‘And was this thine only reason for going to thy father?’ ‘Yes,’ answered Heyat en Nufous; ‘but I found him absent a-hunting and await his return.’ ‘I take refuge with God the All-hearing and knowing!’ exclaimed the old woman, ‘Praised be He! O my lady, thou art the most sensible of women and how couldst thou think of telling the King these wild words, which it behoveth none to publish?’ ‘And why so?’ asked the princess. ‘Suppose,’ said the nurse, ‘thou hadst found the King in his palace and told him all this and he had sent after the merchants and commanded to hang them over their shops, the folk would have seen them