Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/392

358 beaten till he was well-nigh dead, to wring from him a confession that he had secreted property beyond the immense amount that the Khalif had confiscated, but to no avail. Fezl was healed of the frightful wounds caused by this horrible treatment by a doctor, to whom, on his recovery, he sent twenty thousand dirhems that he had borrowed from a friend; but the doctor, though poor and in great distress, with rare magnanimity refused the money, saying, “I cannot accept payment for curing the greatest of the generous.” In this wretched plight the two unfortunate survivors of the great Persian house displayed all the magnanimity for which they had been renowned in the days of their prosperity, supporting with high-souled patience and the noblest philosophy the miseries inflicted on them by the base rancour of the despot they had so faithfully served. The following touching anecdote will give some idea of the magnanimous spirit of the younger prisoner and Yehya yielded nothing to his son in the heroic long-suffering with which he bore his most unmerited woes. Fezl’s love for his father was extreme: when in prison in winter they could not get warm water, which was necessary for Yehya, an old man over seventy, Fezl would take the copper ewer and apply it to his own stomach, so as in some measure to take off the chill for his father’s use. He survived the latter three years and died in prison in