the younger in a palace overhanging the pleasure garden; and,
after a time, seeing his condition still unchanged, he attributed
it to his separation from his country and kingdom. So he let him
wend his own ways and asked no questions of him till one day when
he again said, "O my brother, I see thou art grown weaker of
body and yellower of colour." "O my brother," replied Shah Zaman
"I have an internal wound:"[FN#6] still he would not tell him
what he had witnessed in his wife. Thereupon Shahryar summoned
doctors and surgeons and bade them treat his brother according
to the rules of art, which they did for a whole month; but their
sherbets and potions naught availed, for he would dwell upon the
deed of his wife, and despondency, instead of diminishing,
prevailed, and leach craft treatment utterly failed. One day his
elder brother said to him, "I am going forth to hunt and course
and to take my pleasure and pastime; maybe this would lighten thy
heart." Shah Zaman, however, refused, saying, "O my brother, my
soul yearneth for naught of this sort and I entreat thy favour to
suffer me tarry quietly in this place, being wholly taken up
with my malady." So King Shah Zaman passed his night in the
palace and, next morning, when his brother had fared forth, he
removed from his room and sat him down at one of the lattice
windows overlooking the pleasure grounds; and there he abode
thinking with saddest thought over his wife's betrayal and
burning sighs issued from his tortured breast. And as he
continued in this case lo! a pastern of the palace, which was
carefully kept private, swung open and out of it came twenty
slave girls surrounding his bother's wife who was wondrous fair,
a model of beauty and comeliness and symmetry and perfect
loveliness and who paced with the grace of a gazelle which
panteth for the cooling stream. Thereupon Shah Zaman drew back