Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/266

232 Then he commanded to decorate the city and sent to fetch the vizier from the prison. [So they brought him], and as he passed by the troops, they cursed him and reviled him and upbraided him, till he came to the king, who commanded to put him to the vilest of deaths. So they slew him and after burned his body, and he went to Hell, after the sorriest of fashions; and right well quoth one of him:

The king made Marouf his Vizier of the Right and the times were pleasant to them and their joys untroubled. They abode thus five years, till, in the sixth year, the king died and the princess made Marouf Sultan in her father’s stead, but gave him not the ring. During this time she had conceived by him and borne him a boy of surpassing loveliness, excelling in beauty and perfection, who was reared in the laps of the nurses till he reached the age of five, when his mother fell ill of a mortal sickness and calling her husband to her, said to him, ‘I am ill.’ Quoth he, ‘May God preserve thee, O beloved of my heart!’ ‘Belike,’ said she, ‘I shall die and thou needest not that I commend thy son to thy care: wherefore I charge thee but be careful of the ring, for thine own and the boy’s sake.’ And he answered, ‘No harm shall befall him whom God preserveth!’ Then she pulled off the ring and gave it to him, and on the morrow she was admitted to the mercy of God the Most High, whilst Marouf abode in possession of the kingship and applied himself to the governance.

One day, he shook the handkerchief and [dismissed the divan, whereupon] the troops withdrew to their places and he betook himself to the sitting-chamber, where he sat till the day departed and the night came with the