committed the child to the nurse, and he drank milk two years,
after which they weaned him and he grew up and throve and walked
upon the floor. When he came to seven years old, they put him in
a chamber under a trap-door, for fear of the evil eye, and his
father said, "He shall not come out, till his beard grow." So he
gave him in charge to a handmaid and a blackamoor; the girl
dressed him his meals and the slave carried them to him. Then his
father circumcised him and made him a great feast; after which he
brought him a doctor of the law, who taught him to write and read
and repeat the Koran, and other arts and sciences, till he became
a good scholar and an accomplished. One day it so came to pass
that the slave, after bringing him the tray of food went away and
left the trap door open: so Ala al-Din came forth from the vault
and went in to his mother, with whom was a company of women of
rank. As they sat talking, behold, in came upon them the youth as
he were a white slave drunken[FN#31] for the excess of his
beauty; and when they saw him, they veiled their faces and said
to his mother, "Allah requite thee, O such an one! How canst thou
let this strange Mameluke in upon us? Knowest thou not that
modesty is a point of the Faith?" She replied, "Pronounce Allah's
name[FN#32] and cry Bismillah! this is my son, the fruit of my
vitals and the heir of Consul Shams al-Din, the child of the
nurse and the collar and the crust and the crumb."[FN#33] Quoth
they, "Never in our days knew we that thou hadst a son"; and
quoth she, "Verily his father feared for him the evil eye and
reared him in an under-ground chamber;"--And Shahrazad perceived
the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.

When it was the Two Hundred and Fifty-first Night,