When it was the Two Hundred and Twentieth Night,She said,It hath reached me,O auspicious King,that Queen Hayat alNufus told her husband,King Kamar alZaman,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 alZaman 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 inlaw,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 alZaman 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 deathagony,[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.'[363] And when Kamar alZaman heard his fatherinlaw'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 As'ad;bind their hands behind them with strong bonds,lay them in two chests and load them upon a mule. Then take horse thou and carry them into mid desert,where do thou kill them both and fill two vials with their blood and bring the same to me in haste.'Replied the treasurer,'I hear and I obey,'and he rose up hurriedly and went out forthright to seek the Princes;and,on his road,he met them coming out of the palacevestibule,for they had donned their best clothes and their richest;and they were on their way to salute their sire and give him joy of his safe return from his going forth to hunt.
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