So, then, of all that had worshipped Shagpat, only Kadza clung to him, and she departed with him into the realms of Rabesqurat, who reigned there, divided against herself by the stroke of the Sword.  The Queen is no longer mighty, for the widening of her power has weakened it, she being now the mistress of the single-thoughted, and them that follow one idea to the exclusion of a second.  The failure in the unveiling of her last-cherished Illusion was in the succumbing frailty of him that undertook the task, the world and its wise men having come to the belief that in thwackings there was ignominy to the soul of man, and a tarnish on the lustre of heroes.  On that score, hear the words of the poet, a vain protest: 

        Ye that nourish hopes of fame! 
        Ye who would be known in song! 
     Ponder old history, and duly frame
     Your souls to meek acceptance of the thong.

        Lo! of hundreds who aspire,
        Eighties perish-nineties tire! 
     They who bear up, in spite of wrecks and wracks,
     Were season ’d by celestial hail of thwacks.

        Fortune in this mortal race
        Builds on thwackings for its base;
     Thus the All-Wise doth make a flail a staff,
     And separates his heavenly corn from chaff.

        Think ye, had he never known
        Noorna a belabouring crone,
     Shibli Bagarag would have shaved Shagpat
     The unthwack’d lives in chronicle a rat!

       ’Tis the thwacking in this den
        Maketh lions of true men! 
     So are we nerved to break the clinging mesh
     Which tames the noblest efforts of poor flesh.

Feshnavat became the Master’s Vizier, and Abarak remained at the right hand of Shibli Bagarag, his slave in great adventure.  No other condition than bondage gave peace to Abarak.  He was of the class enumerated by the sage: 

     Who, with the strength of giants, are but tools,
     The weighty hands which serve selected fools.

Now, this was how it was in the case of Baba Mustapha, and the four Kings, and Feshnavat, and Abarak, and Ravaloke, and Kadza, together with Shagpat; but, in the case of Noorna bin Noorka, surely she was withering from a sting of the scorpion shot against her bosom, but the Seven Sons of Aklis gave her a pass into Aklis on the wings of Koorookh, and Gulrevaz, the daughter of Aklis, tended her, she that was alone capable of restoring her, and counteracting the malice of the scorpion by the hand of purity.  So Noorna, prospered; but Shibli Bagarag drooped in uncertainty of her state, and was as a reaper in a field of harvest, around whom lie the yellow sheaves, and the brown beam of autumn on his head, the blaze of plenty; yet is he joyless and stands musing, for one is away who should be there, and without whom the goblet of Success giveth an unsweetened draught, and there is nothing pleasant in life, and the flower on the summit of achievement is blighted.  At last, as he was listlessly dispensing justice in the Great Hall, seven days after the mastery of the Event, lo, Noorna, in air, borne by Gulrevaz, she fair and fresh in the revival of health and beauty, and the light of constant love.  Of her entry into the Great Hall, to the embrace of her betrothed, the poet exclaims, picturing her in a rapture: