that three days should be given to pleasant
hospitality and that then should follow what had to be said and done.
Then the prince went to his own quarters and was treated as became his
station.

King Quimus now sent for his daughter and for her mother, Gulrukh, [6]
and talked to them. He said to Mibrafruz: 'Listen to me, you cruel
flirt! Why do you persist in this folly? Now there has come to ask your
hand a prince of the east, so handsome that the very sun grows modest
before the splendour of his face; he is rich, and he has brought gold
and jewels, all for you, if you will marry him. A better husband you
will not find.'

But all the arguments of father and mother were wasted, for her only
answer was: 'O my father! I have sworn to myself that I will not marry,
even if a thousand years go by, unless someone answers my riddle, and
that I will give myself to that man only who does answer it.'

The three days passed; then the riddle was asked: 'What did the rose do
to the cypress?' The prince had an eloquent tongue, which could split a
hair, and without hesitation he replied to her with a verse: 'Only the
Omnipotent has knowledge of secrets; if any man says, "I know" do not
believe him.'

Then a servant fetched in the polluted, blue-eyed headsman, who asked:
'Whose sun of life has come near its setting?' took the prince by the
arm, placed him upon the cloth of execution, and then, all merciless
and stony hearted, cut his head from his body and hung it on the
battlements.

The news of the death of Prince Tahmasp plunged his father into despair
and stupefaction. He mourned for him in black raiment for forty days;
and then, a few days later, his second son, Prince Qamas, extracted from
him leave to go too; and he, also, was put to death. One son only now
remained, the brave, eloquent, happy-natured Prince Almas-ruh-bakhsh.
One day, when his father sat brooding over his lost children, Almas came
before him and said: 'O father mine! the daughter of King Quimus has
done my two brothers to death; I wish to avenge them upon her.' These
words brought his father to tears. 'O light of your father!' he cried,
'I have no one left but you, and now you ask me to let you go to your
death.'

'Dear father!' pleaded the prince, 'until I have lowered the pride of
that beauty, and have set her here before you, I cannot settle down or
indeed sit down off my feet.'

In the end he, too, got leave to go; but he went a without a following