sending me letters and messages to solicit me to lewdness and adultery while I still forbade him from this, but he would not be forbidden; and, when thou wentest forth to hunt, he rushed in on me, drunk and with a drawn sword in his hand, and smiting my eunuch, slew him. Then he mounted on my breast, still holding the sword, and I feared lest he should slay me, if I gainsaid him, even as he had slain my eunuch; so he took his wicked will of me by force. And now if thou do me not justice on him, O King, I will slay myself with my own hand, for I have no need of life in the world after this foul deed." And Queen Hayat al-Nufus, choking with tears, told him respecting Prince Amjad a story like that of her sister-wife.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say. When it was the Two Hundred and Twentieth Night, She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Queen Hayat al-Nufus told her husband, King Kamar al-Zaman, a story like that of her sister in wedlock, Budur, and, quoth she, "The same thing befel me with thy son Amjad;" after which she took to weeping and wailing and said, "Except thou do me justice on him I will tell my father, King Armanus." Then both women wept with sore weeping before King Kamar al-Zaman who, when he saw their tears and heard their words, concluded that their story was true and, waxing wroth beyond measure of wrath, went forth thinking to fall upon his two sons and put them to death. On his way he met his father- in-law, King Armanus who, hearing of his return from the chase, had come to salute him at that very hour and, seeing him with naked brand in hand and blood dripping from his nostrils, for excess of rage, asked what ailed him. So Kamar al-Zaman told him all that his sons Amjad and As'ad had done and added, "And here I am now going in to them to slay them in the foulest way and make of them the most shameful of examples." Quoth King Armanus (and indeed he too was wroth with them), "Thou dost well, O my son, and may Allah not bless them nor any sons that do such deed against their father's honour. But, O my son, the sayer of the old saw saith, 'Whoso looketh not to the end hath not Fortune to friend.' In any case, they are thy sons, and it befitteth not that thou kill them with shine own hand, lest thou drink of their death-agony,[FN#362] and anon repent of having slain them whenas repentance availeth thee naught. Rather do thou send them with one of thy Mamelukes into the desert and let him kill them there out of thy sight, for, as saith the adage, 'Out of sight of my friend is better and pleasanter.'[FN#363] And when Kamar al-Zaman heard his father-in-law's words, he knew them to be just; so he sheathed his sword and turning back, sat down upon the throne of his realm. There he summoned his treasurer, a very old man, versed in affairs and in fortune's vicissitudes, to whom he said, "Go in to my sons, Amjad and