ved his Majesty, Haroun
reproached her bitterly.

"Woman," said he, "have I not loaded you with favours, and bestowed
upon you with unstinting hand all that your imagination could fancy or
your heart desire? Ungrateful, like all your race; faithless, like all
your sex; you have fawned upon me to my face, and betrayed me behind my
back. Say, is it not so?"

"My lord," she answered, "whoever has told you aught to my discredit
has foully lied. I have ever been faithful to your Majesty, and happy
is the man, be he prince or slave, who has a wife no less faithful than
I have been."

"Accursed woman!" retorted Haroun, fiercely, "notwithstanding this
confident tone on your part, I know you to be guilty; therefore tell me
at once who was that man whom you dared to receive in your garden
yesterday, or, by Allah! into the Tigris in a sack you shall go as
though you were but the meanest of my slaves."

Zobeideh, perceiving from these words that concealment was impossible,
and well knowing from the fiery temper of the Caliph that he was quite
capable of executing his threat to the letter, replied as follows:

"Since the Commander of the Faithful has discovered, I know not how,
that I gave audience to a man yesterday in the garden of my palace, I
will confess to the Commander of the Faithful, to whom all things are
revealed, the name of the man whom I saw. It was Hunoman, my
foster-brother. He is the son of my nurse, and we were brought up
together as young children, and loved each other as children love, the
sister the brother, and the brother the sister. At seven years of age,
his father having died, an uncle took him to India. Only two days
since he returned, and, learning this from the old nurse, his mother, I
became desirous to see once more the little playfellow of my childhood,
to behold the man I had always thought of as a brother, and hear from
his own lips an account of the countries and peoples he had visited,
the dangers he had encountered, and the manner in which he had
contrived to escape from them. I heard that he had brought some rare
and valuable presents for me. I determined that he should present them
in person. In this I did wrong, but, in the name of the most merciful
God, I appeal to the Caliph for mercy, both for my foster-brother, who
consented to see me only after much persuasion and with the utmost
unwillingness, and also for myself, who am guilty of no other sin than
the indulgence of curio