instant in orisons for the king and in setting forth his virtues and excellent qualities.  He answered them with the most gracious of answers and bade carry the Magian outside the city and set him on a high scaffold which had been builded for him there; and he said to the folk, “Behold, I will torture him with torments of all kinds and fashions.”  Then he began telling them that which he had wrought of villainy with his cousin-wife and what he had caused her of severance between her and her husband and how he had required her person of her, but she had sought refuge for her chastity against him with Allah (to whom belong honour and glory) and chose abasement rather than obedience to him, despite stress of torture:  neither recked she aught of that which he lavished to her of monies and raiment, jewels and ornaments.  When the King had made an end of his story, he bade the bystanders spit in the Magian’s face and curse him; and they did this.  Then he bade cut out his tongue and on the next day he bade lop off his ears and nose and pluck out both his eyes.  On the third day he bade hew off his hands and on the fourth his feet; and they ceased not to dismember him, limb after limb, and each member they cast into the fire, after its amputation, before his face, till his soul departed, after he had endured torments of all kinds and fashions.  Then the King bade crucify his trunk on the city wall for three days; after which he gave orders to burn it and reduce its ashes to powder and scatter them abroad in air.  And when this was done, the King summoned the Kazi and the Witnesses and commanded them marry the old king’s daughter and her sister to his own sons; so the youths wedded them, after the King had made a bride-feast three days and displayed their brides to them from nightfall to day-dawn.  Then the two Princes went in unto their brides and abated their maidenheads and loved them and were vouchsafed issue by them.  As for the King their sire, he abode with his cousin-wife, their mother, what while Allah (to whom be honour and glory) willed, and they rejoiced in reunion each with other.  The kingship endured unto them and high degree and victory, and the sovran continued to rule with justice and equity, so that the lieges loved him and prayed for him and for his sons length of life and durance of days; and they lived the most delightsome of existences till there came to them the Destroyer of delights and Severer of societies, the Depopulator of palaces and Garnerer of graves; and this is all that hath come down to us of the story of the King and his Wife and Sons.  “Nor,” continued the Wazir, “if this story be a solace and a diversion, is it pleasanter or more diverting than the tale of the Youth of Khorasan and his mother and sister.”  When King Shah Bakht heard this story, it pleased him and he bade the Minister hie away to his own house.

The Twenty-seventh Night of the Month.

When evening came, the king Shah Bakht bade fetch the Wazir; so he presented himself before him and the King ordered him to tell the tale.  So he said, “Hearkening and obedience.  Give ear, O sovran, to