Dunyazad said to her, “Allah upon thee, O my sister, an thou be other than sleepy, finish for us thy tale that we may cut short the watching of this our latter night!” She replied, “With love and good will!” It hath reached me, O auspicious King, the director, the right-guiding, lord of the rede which is benefiting and of deeds fair-seeming and worthy celebrating, that the man who was bespeaking the Sultan pursued to him, “Then I mounted him and rode him over the gravelly ground without the city when behold, he snorted and snarked and shook his crest and started at speed and galloped with me and bolted, swiftly as though he were a bird in the firmament of heaven.”  On this wise he fell to recounting all that had befallen in the cave between him and the Merchant’s daughter and what had betided him by decree of Allah; how he had left her for his own land and how had her sire come and carried her away; also in what manner she had been delivered of a son by him on the road and had left her babe-child in the tent hoping that someone might find him and take him and tend him; and, lastly, how he had married the child’s mother and what was the cause of his going forth and his coming to that place that he might seek his son.  Hereupon the Sultan turned to his adoptive father whom hitherto he had believed to be his real parent saying, “And thou, the other, dost thou know any tale like that told to us by thy comrade?” So the Shaykh recounted to him the whole history as hath before been set forth from incept to conclusion, nor hid from him aught thereof.  Then the Sultan declared himself to his true sire, saying, “Thou art my father and there befel such things and such,” after which said his adoptive parent, “Wall hi, O my son, verily none is thy father save this one from whose loins thou art sprung, for I only found thee in the pavilion and took thee and tended thee in my home.  But this is thy very parent in very deed.”  Hereat all the three fell upon one another’s necks and kissed one another and the Sultan cried, “Praise to Him who hath united us after disunion!” and the others related to him anent his maternal grandfather how he was a Merchant, and concerning his paternal grandsire how he was a Monarch.  Anon each of the two was ordered to revisit his own country and convey his consort and his children; and the twain disappeared for the space of a year and a month and at length returned to the young King.  Hereupon he set apart for them palaces and settled them therein and they tarried with him until such time as there came to them the Destroyer of delights and the Severer of societies.

Story of the Youth Who Would Futter His Father’s Wives.[FN#579]