Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/264

242 So he bade her farewell and donning the cap, went forth and entered the place where his wife was. He found her bound to the ladder by her hair, well-nigh lifeless, weeping-eyed and mourning-hearted, in the sorriest of plights, knowing no way to deliver herself. Her children were playing under the ladder, whilst she looked at them and wept for them and herself; and he heard her repeat the following verses:

When Hassan saw her in this state of torment and misery and abjection, he wept till he swooned away; and when he revived, he saw his children playing and their mother aswoon for excess of pain; so he took the cap from his head and the children saw him and cried out, saying, ‘O our father!’ Then he covered his head again and the princess came to herself, hearing their cry, but only saw her children weeping and crying out, ‘O our father!’ When she heard them name their father and weep, her heart was broken and her entrails rent in sunder and she said to them, ‘What makes you in mind of your father at this time?’ And she wept sore and cried out, from a bleeding heart and an aching bosom, ‘Where are ye and where is your father?’

Then she recalled the days of her union with Hassan and what had befallen her since her desertion of him and wept till her face was drowned in tears and her cheeks were furrowed with much weeping. Her tears ran down and wet the ground and she had not a hand loose to wipe them from her cheeks, whilst the flies fed their fill on her skin, and she found no helper but weeping and