suffer me to survive?" Now when it was the next night and that
was

The Three Hundred and Eighty-third Night,

Dunyazad said to her, "Allah upon thee, O my sister, an thou be
other than sleepy, finish for us thy tale that we may cut short
the watching of this our latter night!" She replied, "With love
and good will!" It hath reached me, O auspicious King, the
director, the right-guiding, lord of the rede which is benefiting
and of deeds fair-seeming and worthy celebrating, that the Sultan
of the city said:--In such a year I had a malady which none
availed to medicine until at last an old woman came to me bearing
a tasse of broth which when I drank caused health return to me.
So I bade her bring me a cupful every day and I drank it till,
after a time, I chanced to ask her who made that broth and she
answered that it was her daughter. And one day I assumed a
disguise and went to the ancient dame's house and there saw the
girl who was a model of beauty and loveliness, brilliancy,
symmetric stature and perfect grace, and seeing her I lost my
heart to her, and asked her to wife. She answered, "How can I
wed; I separated from my sisters and parents and all unknowing
what hath become of them?" Now when the father of the damsels
heard these words, tears rolled down his cheeks in rills and he
remembered his two lost girls and wept and moaned and complained,
the Sultan looking on in astonishment the while; and when he went
to his Queen he found her lying in a fainting fit. Hereupon he
cried out her name and seated her and she on coming to exclaimed,
"By Allah, he who wept before you is my very father: by Him who
created me I have no doubt thereof!" So the Sultan went down to