sake.  Indeed the beauty of this young lady beguiled him and he could not avail to keep his covenant with me so strictly but [FN#139] that he desired her for his bride.  However, I know the frailty of human nature and withal I think greatly of him that he guarded her and kept her unsullied and withdrew himself from her; [FN#140] wherefore I accept this his constancy and bestow her on him as a bride.  She is the ninth image, which I promised him should be with him, and certes she is fairer than all these images of jewels, inasmuch as her like is rarely found in the world.”  Then the King of the Jinn turned to Zein ul Asnam and said to him, “O Prince Zein ul Asnam, this is thy bride; take her and go in to her, on condition that thou love her and take not unto her a second [wife]; and I warrant thee of the goodliness of her fidelity to-thee-ward.”  Therewithal he vanished from them and Zein ul Asnam went out, glad and rejoicing in the young lady; [FN#141] and of [the excess of] his love for her he went in to her that night and let celebrate the bridal and hold high festival in all the kingdom.  Then he abode upon the throne of his kingship, judging and commanding and forbidding, whilst his bride became queen of Bassora; and after a little his mother died.  So he made her funeral obsequies [FN#142] and mourned for her; after which he lived with his bride in all content till there came to them the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Societies.

Alaeddin and the enchanted lamp. [FN#143]

There [FN#144] was [once] in a city of the cities of China a man, a tailor and poor, and he had a son by name Alaeddin, who was perverse and graceless from his earliest childhood.  When he came to ten years of age, his father would fain have taught him his own craft, for that, because he was poor, he could not spend money upon him to have him taught [another] trade or art [FN#145] or the like; [FN#146] so he carried him to his shop, that he might teach him his craft of tailoring; but, forasmuch as the lad was perverse and wont still to play with the boys of the quarter, [FN#147] he would not sit one day in the shop; nay, he would watch his father till such time as he went forth the place to meet a customer [FN#147] or on some other occasion, when he would flee forth incontinent and go out to the gardens with the good-for-nothing lads like himself.  This, then, was his case, [FN#148] and he would not obey his parents, nor would he learn a craft.  His father sickened of his grief and chagrin for his son’s perversity and died, whilst A]aeddin abode on that his wise.  When his mother saw that her husband had departed this life [FN#149] and that her son was a scapegrace and a good-for-nought, she sold the shop and all she found therein and fell to spinning cotton and feeding herself and her graceless son Alaeddin with her toil.  The latter, seeing himself quit of his father’s danger, [FN#150] redoubled in his gracelessness and his perversity and would not abide in their house save eating-whiles; and his poor wretched mother supported him [FN#151] by the spinning of her hands till he came to fifteen years of age.