When he had made an end of repeating these verses he laid his head on his pillow and his eyes closed and he slept. In his sleep he saw one who said to him, "Rejoice for thy son shall fill the lands with justice and have the mastery over them and men shall obey him." Then he awoke gladdened by this happy omen that he had seen, and after a few days, death smote him, whereat great grief fell on the people of Baghdad, and gentle and simple mourned for him. But time passed over him, as if he had never been, and Kanmakan's estate was changed; for the people of Baghdad set him aside and put him and his family in a place apart. When his mother saw this, she fell into the sorriest of plights and said, "Needs must I go to the Grand Chamberlain, and I hope for the favour of the Subtle, the All-Wise One!" Then she betook herself to the house of the Chamberlain, who was now become Sultan, and found him sitting upon his couch. So she went in to his wife Nuzhet ez Zeman and wept sore and said, "Verily, the dead have no friends. May God never bring you to need and may you cease not to rule justly over rich and poor many days and years! Thine ears have heard and thine eyes have seen all that was ours aforetime of kingship and honour and dignity and wealth and goodliness of life and condition; and now fortune hath turned upon us, and fate and the time have played us false and wrought hostilely with us; wherefore I come to thee, craving thy bounties, I that have been used to confer favours; for when a man dies, women and girls are brought low after him." And she repeated the following verses: Let it suffice thee that Death is the worker of wonders and know That the lives which are gone from our sight will never return to us mo'. The days of the life of mankind are nothing but journeys, I wot, whose watering-places for aye are mixed with misfortune and woe. Yet nothing afflicteth my heart like the loss of the good and the great, Whom the stresses of adverse events have compassed about and laid low.