the officers of his household and overwhelmed them with favours
and bounties and was prodigal to the people of justice and
equitable dealings and goodly usance and polity. When he had
accomplished this much of his desire, he caused bring forth the
cook and his household to the divan, but spared the old woman who
had tended him, for that she had been the cause of his
deliverance. Then they assembled them all without the town and he
tormented the cook and those who were with him with all manner of
torments, after which he put him to death on the sorriest wise
and burning him with fire, scattered his ashes abroad in the air.

Selim abode in the governance, invested with the sultanate, and
ruled the people a whole year, after which he returned to El
Mensoureh and sojourned there another year. And he [and his wife]
ceased not to go from city to city and abide in this a year and
that a year, till he was vouchsafed children and they grew up,
whereupon he appointed him of his sons, who was found fitting, to
be his deputy in [one] kingdom [and abode himself in the other];
and he lived, he and his wife and children, what while God the
Most High willed. Nor," added the vizier, "O king of the age, is
this story rarer or more extraordinary than that of the king of
Hind and his wronged and envied vizier."

When the king heard this, his mind was occupied [with the story
he had heard and that which the vizier promised him], and he bade
the latter depart to his own house.

The Twenty-Eighth and Last Night of the Month

When the evening evened, the king summoned the vizier and bade