Then finishing his verses he bared his brand and coming up to his mother, said to her, "Except thou tell me the truth of the case, I will strike off thy head and kill myself." She replied, "O my son, do not such deed: put up thy sword and sit down, till I tell thee what hath passed." So he sheathed his scymitar and sat by her side, whilst she recounted to him all that had happened in his absence from first to last, adding, "O my son, but that I saw her weep in her longing for the bath and feared that she would go and complain to thee on thy return, and thou wouldst be wroth with me, I had never carried her thither; and were it not that the Lady Zubaydah was wroth with me and took the key from me by force, I had never brought out the feather-dress, though I died for it. But thou knowest, O my son, that no hand may measure length with that of the Caliphate. When they brought her the dress, she took it and turned it over, fancying that somewhat might be lost thereof, but she found it uninjured; wherefore she rejoiced and making her children fast to her waist, donned the feather-vest, after the Lady Zubaydah had pulled off to her all that was upon herself and clad her therein, in honour of her and because of her beauty. No sooner had she donned the dress than she shook and becoming a bird, promenaded about the palace, whilst all who were present gazed at her and marvelled at her beauty and loveliness. Then she flew up to the palace roof and perching thereon, looked at me and said: 'Whenas thy son cometh to thee and the nights of separation upon him longsome shall be and he craveth reunion and meeting to see and whenas the breezes of love and longing shake him dolefully let him leave his native land and journey to the Islands of Wak and seek me.' This, then, is her story and what befel in thine absence."—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say. When it was the Seven Hundred and Ninety-eighth Night, She pursued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that as soon as Hasan's mother had made an end of her story, he gave a great cry and fell down in a fainting fit which continued till the end of day, when he revived and fell to buffeting his face and writhing on the floor like a scotched snake. His mother sat weeping by his head until midnight, when he came to himself and wept sore and recited these couplets',[FN#101] "Pause ye and see his sorry state since when ye fain withdrew; * Haply, when wrought your cruelty, you'll have the grace to rue: For an ye look on him, you'll doubt of him by sickness-stress * As though, by Allah, he were one before ye never knew. He dies for nothing save for love of you, and he would be * Numbered amid the dead did not he moan and groan for you. And deem not pangs of severance sit all lightly on his soul; * 'Tis heavy load on lover-wight; 'twere lighter an ye slew."