eyes were tear-stained and she was wailing over the loss of her daughter’s love-liesse.  Hereat the Princess awoke and she arose and opened the door when behold, she found her mother weeping so she asked her, “What caused thee shed tears, O Mother mine, whilst my enjoyment hath been the completest?” Asked she, “And what hath joyed you?” So the daughter led her to the middlemost of the apartment where she found the Basilisk (which was like the section of a palm-trunk) lying dead upon a huge tray and she saw her son-in-law sleeping upon the bedstead[FN#573] and he was like a fragment of the moon on the fourteenth night.  The mother bowed head towards him and kissed him upon the brow saying, “Verily and indeed thou deservest safety!” Then she went forth from him lullilooing aloud and bade all the handmaids raise the cry of joy[FN#574] and the Palace was turned topsy-turvy with gladness and delight.  When the Sultan heard this he arose and asked “What may be the news?  Are we in grief or in gladness;” and so saying he went forth when suddenly he was met by his wife in the highest delight who took him and led him to the apartment of her daughter.  There he also espied the Basilisk stretched dead upon the tray and the youth his son-in-law lying asleep upon the bedstead, whereat from the stress of his joyance he fell to the floor in a fainting-fit which lasted an hour or so.  But when he revived he cried, “Is this wake or rather is’t sleep?” after which he arose and bade the musicians of his band beat the kettledrums and blow the shawms and the trumps and he commanded adorn the city; and the citizens did all his bidding.  The decorations remained during seven days in honour of the safety of the Sultan’s son-in-law, and increased were their joys and fell from them all annoys, and the Sultan took to distributing and giving alms and largessing and making presents to the Fakirs and the miserable and he robed his nobles with honourable robes and fed the captives and the prisoners one and all;[FN#575] and the naked he clothed, and those anhungered he feasted in honour of his daughter.  Then said the Sultan, “By Allah, this youth deserveth naught save that I make him my partner and share with him my good, for he hath banished from us our dule and our dolours and eke on account of himself and his own sake.”  After this he made over to him half of his realm and his riches and the Sultan would rule one day and his son-in-law the other and their joys endured for the space of a full-told year.  Then the Sovran was seized of a sickness, so he bequeathed to his son-in-law all he had and everything he owned; and but a little time elapsed before his malady increased day by day until he fared to the ruth of Almighty Allah and the youth sat in his stead as Sovran and Sultan.  Such was his case; but as regards the matter of his sire, the King’s son of Al-’Irak, when he promised his wife that he would certainly go forth and travel and search for their son, he ceased not wending through the regions for a length of nights