This is hard upon you, and ought to teach you to treat your
school-fellows with less haughtiness than you have done hitherto.
Little Agib, being nettled at this, ran hastily out of the
school, and went home crying. He came straight to his mother's
chamber, who, being alarmed to see him thus grieved, asked him
the reason. He could not answer for tears, and it was but now and
then he could speak plain enough to repeat what had been the
occasion of his sorrow. Having come to himself, Mother, said he,
for the love of God, be pleased to tell me who is my father. My
son, said she, Schemseddin Mohammed, that every day makes so much
of you, is your father. You do not tell me truth, said he; he is
your father, not mine; but whose son am I? At this question, the
lady of beauty, calling to mind her wedding-night, which had been
succeeded by a long widowhood, began to shed tears, repining
bitterly at the loss of so lovely a husband as Bedreddin. Whilst
she and Agib were weeping, the vizier entered, and demanded the
reason of their sorrow. The lady told him the shame Agib had
undergone at school, which did so much afflict the vizier, that
he joined his tears with theirs; and judging that the misfortune
that had happened to his daughter was the common discourse of the
town, he was quite out of patience. In this state he went to the
sultan's palace, and, falling at his feet, humbly prayed him to
give him leave to make a journey into the provinces of the
Levant, and particularly to Balsora, in search of his nephew
Bedreddin, as he could not bear that the people of the city
should believe a genius had got his daughter with child.
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