Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/254

232 she answered, ‘I hear and obey.’ Then she went forth and he with her and bade her farewell.

Now his words had sunken deep into her heart and she feared for her children; but it availeth not to fortify oneself by caretaking against the assaults of destiny. So she set out and fared on diligently three days, till she came to the river and pitched her tents on its banks. Then she crossed the stream, with some of her officers and attendants, and going up to the city and the palace, went in to Queen Nour el Huda, with whom she found her children, and they were weeping and crying out, ‘O our father!’ At this, the tears ran from her eyes and she wept and strained them to her bosom, saying, ‘What put you in mind of your father at this time? Would the hour had never been, in which I left him! If I knew him to be in the house of the world, I would carry you to him.’ Then she bemoaned herself and her husband and her children’s weeping and recited these verses:

When her sister saw her press her children to her bosom, saying, ‘It is I who have wrought thus with myself and my children and have ruined my own house!’ she saluted her not, but said to her, ‘O harlot, whence hadst thou these children? Hast thou married without thy father’s knowledge or hast thou committed fornication? If thou have played the whore, it behoves that thou be exemplarily punished; and if thou have married without our knowledge, why didst thou leave thy husband and sever thy children from their father and bring them hither? Thou hast hidden thy children from us. Thinkest