Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 2 (of 6)
General
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 2 (of 6)
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
In the morning they were examined by the kází, and the thieves, seeing
it was useless to deny it, confessed their crime. The prince then told
the kází how he chanced to fall into company of the thieves, who
confirmed all he said, and he was set at liberty. Then the kází began to
question him as to how he had employed his time since he came to
Baghdád, to which he answered very frankly but concealed his rank. On
his mentioning the brief glance he had of the beautiful lady at the
window of the ex-governor’s house, the kází’s eyes sparkled with
apparent satisfaction, and he assured the prince that he should have the
lady for his bride; for, believing the prince to be a mere beggarly
adventurer, he resolved to foist him on Mouaffac as the son of a great
monarch. So, having sent the prince to the bath and provided him with
rich garments, the kází despatched a messenger to request Mouaffac to
come to him on important business. When the ex-governor arrived, the
kází told him blandly that there was now an excellent opportunity for
doing away the ill will that had so long existed between them. “It is
this,” continued he: “the prince of Basra, having fallen in love with
your daughter from report of her great beauty, has just come to Baghdád,
unknown to his father, and intends to demand her of you in marriage. He
is lodged in my house, and is most anxious that this affair should be
arranged by my interposition, which is the more agreeable to me, since
it will, I trust, be the means of reconciling our differences.” Mouaffac
expressed his surprise that the prince of Basra should think of marrying
his daughter, and especially that the proposal should come through the
kází, of all men. But the kází begged him to forget their former
animosity and consent to the immediate celebration of the nuptials.
While they were thus talking, the prince entered, in a magnificent
dress, and was not a little astonished to be presented to Mouaffac by
the treacherous kází as the prince of Basra, who had come as a suitor
for his daughter in marriage. The ex-governor saluted him with every
token of profound respect, and expressed his sense of the honour of such
an alliance: his daughter was unworthy to wait upon the meanest of the
prince’s slaves. In brief, the marriage is at once celebrated, and the
prince duly retires to the bridal chamber with the beauteous daughter of
Mouaffac. But in the morning, at an early hour, a servant of the kází
knocks at his door, and, on the prince opening it, says that he brings
him his rags of clothes and is required to take back the dress which the
kází had lent him yesterday to personate the prince of Basra. The
prince, having donned his tattered garments, said to his wife, “The kází
thinks he has married you to a wretched beggar, but I am no whit
inferior in rank to the prince of Basra—I am also a prince, being the
only son of the king of Mosel,” and then proceeded to recount all his
adventures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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