Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 8.djvu/150

138 bosom expanded and I was glad for my deliverance from the bondage of the Muslims!’ ‘Thou liest, O shameless baggage!’ rejoined the king. ‘By the virtue of that which is revealed of prohibition and allowance in the manifest Evangel, I will assuredly slay thee after the foulest fashion and make of thee the vilest of examples! Did it not suffice thee to do as thou didst the first time and put off thy lies upon us, but thou must return upon us with thy falsehoods?’

Then he commanded to slay her and crucify her over the gate of the palace: but the one-eyed vizier, who had long been enamoured of the princess, came in to him and said, ‘Slay her not, but give her to me to wife, and I will watch over her with the utmost vigilance, nor will I go in to her, till I have built her a palace of solid stone, exceeding high of fashion, so no thieves may avail to climb up to its roof; and when I have made an end of building it, I will sacrifice thirty Muslims before the gate thereof, as an expiatory offering to the Messiah for her and for myself.’ The king granted his request and bade the priests and monks and patriarchs marry the princess to him; so they did his bidding, whereupon he gave commandment to set about building a strong and lofty palace, befitting her, and the workmen fell to work upon it.

To return to Noureddin. When he came back with the veils and what not else he had borrowed of the druggist’s wife, he ‘found the air empty and the place of visitation distant;’ whereupon his heart sank within him and he wept floods of tears and recited the following verses: