former husband I had a son, and
when my father gave me to this king, I was ashamed to say I had a tall
son. When my yearning passed all bounds, I brought him here by an
artifice. One day that the king was gone to the chase, I called him into
the house, when, after the way of mothers, I took him in my arms and
kissed him. This reached the king's ears, and he unwittingly gave it
another construction, and cut off the head of that innocent boy, and
withdrew from me his own heart. Alike is my son lost to me and the king
angry." When the king heard these words he kissed her and exclaimed: "O
my life, what an error is this thou hast committed? Thou hast brought
calumny upon thyself, and hast given such a son to the winds, and hast
made me ashamed!" Straightway he called the chamberlain and said: "That
boy whom thou hast killed is the son of my beloved and the darling of my
beauty! Where is his grave, that we may make there a guest-house?" The
chamberlain said: "That youth is yet alive. When the king commanded his
death I was about to kill him, but he said: 'That queen is my mother;
through modesty before the king she revealed not the secret that she had
a tall son. Kill me not; it may be that some day the truth will become
known, and repentance profits not, and regret is useless.'" The king
commanded them to bring the youth, so they brought him straightway. And
when the mother saw the face of her son, she thanked God and praised the
Most High, and became one of the Muslims, and from the sect of
unbelievers came into the faith of Islam. And the king favoured the
chamberlain in the highest degree, and they passed the rest of their
lives in comfort and ease.

* * * * *

This tale is also found in the Persian _Bakhtyar Nama_ (or the Ten
Vazirs), the precise date of which has not been ascertained, but a MS.
Turki (Uygur) version of it, preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford,
bears to have been written in 1434; the Persian text must therefore have
been composed before that date. In the text translated by Sir William
Ouseley, in place of the daughter of the kaysar of Rome it is the
daughter of the king of Irak whom the king of Abyssinia marries, after
subduing the power of her father; and, so far from a present of jewels
to her being the occasion of her mentioning her son, in the condition of
a slave, it is said that one day the king behaved harshly to her, and
spoke disrespectfully of her father, u