to rule with justice and equity, so that the people loved him and
still invoked on him and on his sons length of days and durance;
and they lived the most delightsome of lives till there came to
them the Destroyer of Delights and Sunderer of Companies, He who
layeth waste the palaces and peopleth the tombs; and this is all
that hath come down to us of the story of the king and his wife
and children. Nor," added the vizier, "if this story be a solace
and a diversion, is it pleasanter or more diverting than that of
the young man of Khorassan and his mother and sister."

When King Shah Bekht heard this story, it pleased him and he bade
the vizier go away to his own house.

The Twenty-Seventh Night of the Month

When the evening came, the king bade fetch the vizier; so he
presented himself before him and the king bade him tell the
[promised] story. So he said, "Hearkening and obedience. Know, O
king (but God alone knoweth His secret purpose and is versed in
all that is past and was foredone among bygone peoples), that





STORY OF SELIM AND SELMA.



There was once, in the parts of Khorassan, a man of the affluent