“The vezir answered, ‘Go to the prison and smite off the head of some man meriting death, and bring it; at this time the king has not his senses and will believe it.’ And he gave the headsman much gold. The headsman took the sequins and was glad, and went forthwith to the prison and smote off the head of a robber and brought it to the king. The king was pleased and gave the headsman a robe of honor. And the vezir took the boy and brought him to his own house and hid him there. When it was morning and the king’s senses returned, he asked for the boy, and they said, ‘This night thou didst command the executioner that he smote off the boy’s head.’ As soon as the king heard this he fell senseless and his understanding forsook him. After a while his understanding returned and he sat beating his knees and he fell a-weeping. Then the vezir, feigning not to know, came before the king and said, ‘O king, what plight is this?’ Quoth the king, ‘O vezir, where is that source of my life? where is that spring of my soul?’ The vezir said, ‘O king, whom meanest thou?’ The king replied, ‘Thy son, who was the joy of my heart.’ And he cried and wept beyond control, and the vezir rent his collar and wailed and lamented. “For two months the one business of the king was sighing and crying; during the nights he would not sleep till dawn for weeping, and he would say, ‘My God, shall I never behold his face? mayhap I shall behold it at the resurrection. To me henceforth life is not beseeming.’ Mad words like these would he utter. And he ceased from eating and drinking, and retired from the throne and sought a private house and wept ever, and it wanted little but he died. When the vezir saw this, he one day decked out the boy like a flower and took him and went to the private place where the king dwelt. He left the boy at the door and went in himself and saw that the king had bowed his head in adoration and was praying to God and weeping and thus saying, ‘My God, henceforth is life unlawful for me, do thou in thy mercy take my soul;’ and he was lamenting, recalling the darling fashions of the boy.