why did she send the merchant?” The king, enraged, went into the harem.  The queen saw from his countenance that the occurrence of the night before had become known to him, and she said:  “Be it not that I see the king angry.”  He said:  “How should I not be angry?  Thou, by craft, and trickery, and intrigue, and plotting, hast brought thy desire from Rome—­what wantonness is this that thou hast done?” Then he thought to slay her, but he forbore, because of his great love for her.  But he ordered the chamberlain to carry the youth to some obscure place, and straightway sever his head from his body.  When the poor mother saw this she well-nigh fell on her face, and her soul was near leaving her body.  But she knew that sorrow would not avail, and she restrained herself.

And when the chamberlain took the youth into his own house, he said to him:  “O youth, know you not that the harem of the king is the sanctuary of security?  What great treachery is this that thou hast perpetrated?” The youth replied:  “That queen is my mother, and I am her true son.  Because of her natural delicacy, she said not to the king that she had a son by another husband.  And when yearning came over her, she contrived to bring me here from Rome; and while the king was engaged in the chase maternal love stirred, and she called me to her and embraced me.”  On hearing this, the chamberlain said to himself:  “What is passing in his mother’s breast?  What I have not done I can yet do, and it were better that I preserve this youth some days, for such a rose may not be wounded through idle words, and such a bough may not be broken by a single breath.  For some day the truth of this matter will be disclosed, and it will become known to the king, when repentance may be of no avail.”  Another day he went before the king, and said:  “That which was commanded have I fulfilled.”  On hearing this the king’s wrath was to some extent removed, but his trust in the kaysar’s daughter was departed; while she, poor creature, was grieved and dazed at the loss of her son.

Now in the palace harem there was an old woman, who said to the queen:  “How is it that I find thee sorrowful?” And the queen told the whole story, concealing nothing.  The old woman was a heroine in the field of craft, and she answered:  “Keep thy mind at ease:  I will devise a stratagem by which the heart of the king will be pleased with thee, and every grief he has will vanish from his heart.”  The queen said, that if she did so she should be amply rewarded.  One day the old woman, seeing the king alone, said to him:  “Why is thy former aspect altered, and why are traces of care and anxiety visible on thy countenance?” The king then told her all.  The old woman said:  “I have an amulet of the charms of Solomon, in the Syriac language, in the the writing of the jinn [genii].  When the queen is asleep do thou place it on her breast, and, whatever it may be, she will tell all the truth of it.  But take care, fall thou not asleep, but listen well to what she says.”  The king wondered at this, and said:  “Give me that amulet, that the truth of this matter may be learned.”  So the old woman gave him the amulet, and then went to the queen and explained what she had done, and said:  “Do thou feign to be asleep, and relate the whole of the story faithfully.”