Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/109

91 country; but she and her daughter used to visit us every year and abide with us awhile. Wherefore, O Seif el Mulouk, if thou wert with me in my own country and Bediya and I were together as of wont, I would go about with her to bring thee to thy desire of her: but I am here and they know not what is become of me, else could they deliver me from this place; but the matter is in God’s hands (blessed and exalted be He!) and what can I do?’ ‘Come,’ said Seif, ‘let us flee and go whither God wills.’ But she answered, ‘We cannot do that: for, by Allah, though we fled hence a year’s journey, yonder accursed wretch would overtake us in an hour and make enan [sic] end of us.’

Then said the prince, ‘I will hide myself in his way, and when he passes, I will smite him with the sword and slay him.’ Quoth Dauleh Khatoun, ‘Thou canst not avail to slay him, except thou slay his soul.’ ‘And where is his soul?’ asked he. ‘Many a time have I questioned him thereof,’ answered she; ‘but he would not tell me, till one day I was instant with him and he waxed wroth with me and said to me, “How often wilt thou ask me of my soul? What hast thou to do with my soul?” “O Hatim,” answered I, “there remaineth none to me but thou, except God; and my life dependeth on thine, and whilst thou livest, all is well for me; so, except I care for thy soul and set it in the apple of mine eye, how shall I live in thine absence? If I knew where thy soul is, I would, never whilst I live, cease to hold it embraced and would keep it as my right eye.”

Whereupon he said to me, “When I was born, the astrologers predicted that I should lose my soul at the hands of the son of a king of mankind. So I took it and put it in the crop of a sparrow, which I shut up in a box. The box I set in a casket, and enclosing this in seven other caskets and seven chests, laid the whole in a