Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/256

234 and to thee, and belike the people of the islands will hear of it, and we shall become a byword amongst them; wherefore it befits that thou return us an answer with speed.’

Then she delivered the letter to a courier and he carried it to the king, who, when he read it, was exceeding wroth with his daughter Menar es Sena and wrote to Nour el Huda, saying, ‘I commit her case to thee and give thee power over her life; so, if the thing be as thou sayest, put her to death, without consulting me.’ When the queen received her father’s letter, she sent for Menar es Sena and they brought her, drowned in her blood and pinioned with her hair, fettered with heavy shackles of iron and clad in hair-cloth; and she stood before her, abject and cast down. When she saw herself in this condition of humiliation and exceeding abasement, she called to mind her former high estate and wept sore and recited the following verses:

Then she wept, till she fell down in a swoon, and presently coming to herself, repeated the following verses:

And also these: