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for the King is not at fault, seeing that, when his daughter learnt our business, she sent to say that, if her father forced her to marry, she would kill her husband and herself after him: so the refusal comes from her.’ When the King heard this, he feared for Taj el Mulouk and said, ‘If I make war on the King of the Camphor Islands and carry off his daughter, she will kill herself and it will profit me nothing.’ So he told his son how the case stood, and he said, ‘O my father, I cannot live without her; so I will go to her and cast about to get me access to her, though I die in the attempt.’ ‘How wilt thou go to her?’ asked his father; and he answered, ‘In the disguise of a merchant.’ Then said the King, ‘If thou must go and there is no help for it, take with thee Aziz and the Vizier.’ He agreed to this, and the King took money from his treasuries and made ready for him merchandise, to the value of a hundred thousand dinars; and when the night came Taj el Mulouk went to Aziz’s lodging and passed the night there, heart-smitten and taking no delight in food nor sleep; for melancholy was heavy upon him and he was agitated with longing for his beloved. So he besought the Creator to unite him with her and wept and groaned and complained, repeating the following verses:
Shall union after estrangement betide us, perchance, some day? Shall I ever make moan of my passion to thee, I wonder, and say,
‘How oft have I called thee to mind, whilst the night in its trances slept! Thou hast made me waken, whilst all but I in oblivion lay.’
Then he wept sore and Aziz wept with him, for that he remembered his cousin; and they both ceased not to do thus till the morning, when Taj el Mulouk rose and went in to his mother in his travelling dress. She asked him of his case, and he told her what was to do; so she gave him fifty thousand dinars and bade him farewell, offering up prayers for his safety and for his union with his beloved. Then he left her and betaking himself to his
