Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/81

63 thing! Let us take them and set them in a cage and keep them to look upon.’ But the vizier said, ‘These hath God created for their use; so do thou shoot one and I will shoot the other.’

Accordingly, they shot at them with arrows and killed them; after which they cut off a span’s length of their heads and tails and threw it away. Then they carried the rest to the king’s palace, where they called the cook and said to him, ‘Dress this meat daintily, with onion-sauce and spices, and ladle it out into two platters and bring them hither at such an hour, without fail.’ So the cook took the meat and went with it to the kitchen, where he cooked it and dressed it in skilful fashion with fine onion-sauce; after which he ladled it out into two platters and set them before the king and the vizier, who took each a dish and gave their wives to eat of the meat. Then they lay that night with them, and by the good pleasure of God (blessed and exalted be He!) and His will and ordinance, they both conceived forthright.

The king abode three months, troubled in mind and saying in himself, ‘I wonder whether this thing will prove true or not;’ till one day, as the queen was sitting, the child stirred in her belly and she felt a pain and her colour changed. So she knew that she was with child and calling the chief of her eunuchs, bade himhim, [sic] ‘Go to the king, wherever he may be, and say to him, “O king of the age, I bring thee the glad tidings that our lady’s pregnancy is become manifest, for the child stirs in her belly.”’ So the eunuch went out in haste, rejoicing, and finding the king alone, with his head on his hand, pondering this thing, kissed the earth before him and acquainted him with his wife’s pregnancy. When the king heard this, he sprang to his feet and in the excess of his joy, he kissed the