The Arabian Nights Entertainments - Volume 01 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 770 pages of information about The Arabian Nights Entertainments.

The Arabian Nights Entertainments - Volume 01 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 770 pages of information about The Arabian Nights Entertainments.

The princess Badoura was charmed to see him again as lovely as she had often seen him, and that pleasure inspired her to speak the more warmly in his praise.  When she addressed herself to the council, having ordered the prince to take his seat among the emirs, she spoke to them thus; my lords, Camaralzaman, the man whom I have advanced to the same dignity with yourselves, is not unworthy of the honour that is done him.  I have known enough of him in my travels to answer for him; and I can assure you he will make his merit known to all of you, as well by his valour, as by a thousand other shining qualities which distinguish him from the rest of mankind.

Camaralzaman was extremely amazed to hear the king of the isle of Ebene, whom he was far from taking for a woman, much less for his dear princess, name him, and declare that he knew him, who, as he thought, was certain he had never seen him before.  He was much more surprised to hear himself praised so excessively.  However, those eulogiums, excessive as they were, did not confound him, though they came from the mouth of a king:  he received them with sueh modesty as showed that he deserved them, and did not grow vain upon it.  He porptrated himself before the throne of the king; and rising again, Sir, said he, I want words to express ny gratitude to your majesty for the honour you have done me:  I shall do all that lies in my power to render myself worthy of your royal favour.

From the council-board the prince was conducted to a palace which the princess Badoura ordered to be fitted up for him; where he found officers and domestics ready to receive and obey his commands, a stable full of fine horses, and every thing suitable to the quality of an emir.  When he was in his closet, the steward of his household brought a chest full of gold for his expenses.

The less he conceived how it came about that he met with so much good fortune, the more he wondered at it, never once imagining it was owing to the princess of China.

Two or three days after, the princess Badoura made him lord-treasurer, which office was then vacant, that he might be nearer her person.  He behaved himself in this new charge with much integrity, and was so obliging to every body, that he not only gained the friendship of the great, but also the affections of the people, by his uprightness and bounty.

Camaralzaman, being the reigning favourite of the king of the isle of Ebene, and in the esteem of all his subjects, would have been the happiest man in the world, if he had had his princess with him.  In the midst of his good fortune he never ceased lamenting her, and grieved that he could hear no tidings of her, especially in a country which she must necessarily have passed in her way to his father’s court, and have arrived long before, if she had not met with some ill accident by the way:  he would have doubted something, had the princess Badoura still gone by the name of Camaralzaman, which she took with his habit; but, on her accession to the throne, she changed it to that of Armanos, in honour of the old king her father-in-law.  There were very few courtiers who knew that she had ever been called Camaralzaman, which she assumed when she arrived at the court of the isle of Ebene; nor had Camaralzaman so much acquaintance with any of them as yet to inform himself further of her history.

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The Arabian Nights Entertainments - Volume 01 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.