Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/85

67 KEMEREZZEMAN AND THE JEWELLER’S WIFE.

There was once, of old time, a merchant called Abdurrehman, whom God had blessed with a son and daughter, and for their much beauty and grace, he named the girl Kaukeb es Sebah and the boy Kemerezzeman. When he saw what God had vouchsafed them of beauty and grace and brightness and symmetry, he feared for them from the eyes of the beholders and the tongues of the envious and the craft of the crafty and the wiles of the profligate and shut them up from the folk in a house for the space of fourteen years, during which time none saw them save their parents and a slave-girl who waited on them. Now their father recited the Koran, even as God sent it down, as also did their mother, wherefore she taught her daughter to read and recite it and he his son, till they had both gotten it by heart. Moreover, they both learned from their parents writing and reckoning and all manner of knowledge and accomplishment and needed no master.

When Kemerezzeman came to years of manhood, his mother said to her husband, ‘How long wilt thou keep thy son Kemerezzeman sequestered from the eyes of the folk? Is he a boy or a girl?’ And he answered, ‘A boy.’ ‘If he be a boy,’ rejoined she, ‘why dost thou not carry him to the bazaar and seat him in thy shop, that he may know the folk and they him, to the intent that it may become notorious among them that he is thy son, and do thou teach him to buy and sell. Belike somewhat may betide thee; so shall the folk know him for thy son and he shall lay his hand on thy leavings. But, if thou die,