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asked she. ‘Go, look at the upper end of the estrade,’ replied the princess, ‘and tell me what thou seest there.’
So she went up and came down, wondering, and said, ‘By Allah, O my lady, here is depicted the garden and the fowler and his net and the birds and all thou sawest in thy dream; and verily, nothing but urgent necessity withheld the male pigeon from returning to free his mate; for I see him in the talons of a hawk, which has slaughtered him and is drinking his blood and rending his flesh and eating it; and this, O my lady, accounts for his tarrying to return and rescue her from the net. But the wonder is how thy dream came to be thus depicted, for, wert thou minded to set it forth in portraiture, thou hadst not availed thereto. By Allah, this is a wonder that should be recorded in history! Surely, O my lady, the angels, to whom are committed the care of the sons of Adam, knew that the male pigeon was wronged of us, whenas we blamed him for deserting his mate; so they embraced his cause and made manifest his excuse.’ ‘O my nurse,’ said the princess, ‘verily, fate and fore-ordained fortune had course against this bird, and we wronged him.’ ‘O my lady,’ rejoined the nurse, ‘adversaries shall meet before God the Most High: but, O my lady, verily, the truth hath been made manifest and the male pigeon’s excuse certified to us; for, except the hawk had seized him and killed him, he had not held aloof from his mate, but had returned to her and set her free; but against death there is no recourse, nor, O my lady, is there aught in the world more tenderly solicitous than the male for the female, among all creatures that God the Most High hath created, and especially is it thus with man; for he starves himself to feed his wife, strips himself to clothe her, angers his family to please her and disobeys and denies his parents to give to her. She knoweth his secrets and concealeth them and cannot endure from him an hour. If he be absent from her one night, her eyes
