“I own to you, prince,” said the grand vizier, as soon as he had liberty to speak, “that your suspicions are not unfounded; but you well know, that a minister is compelled to execute the orders of the king his master. If you will have the goodness to suffer me to go, I am ready to take any message to him with which you will entrust me.”--“I give you leave to go,” replied the prince. “Tell my father that I will marry the lady whom he sent, or brought me, and who slept with me last night. Be expeditious, and bring me the answer.” The grand vizier made a profound reverence on quitting him; but he could hardly be satisfied of his safety, till he was out of the tower, and had fastened the door after him. He presented himself before king Schahzaman with an air of sorrow which alarmed him. “Well,” said the monarch, “in what state did you find my son?”--
“Sire,” replied the vizier, “what the slave related to your majesty is but too true.” He then gave him an account of the conversation he had had with Camaralzaman, of the rage the prince had been in, when he attempted to convince him that the lady he spoke of could not possibly have slept with him, of the cruel treatment he had met with from him, and of the excuse by which he had escaped from his fury.
Schahzaman, who was the more grieved at this circumstance, as he had always loved the prince with the greatest tenderness, wished to investigate the truth of it himself: he repaired to the tower, and took the grand vizier with him. Prince Camaralzaman received his father with the greatest respect. The king sat down, and having made the prince sit next him, he asked him many questions, to which he replied with perfect good sense, and from time to time he looked at the vizier, as if to say, that the prince, his son, was not deranged in his intellects as he had asserted; but that he must himself be deficient in this respect.
At length the king mentioned the lady. “My son,” said he, “I beg you to tell me who this lady is, who they say slept with you last night.”--“Sire,” replied Camaralzaman, “I entreat your majesty not to add to the vexation I have already encountered on this subject; rather do me the favor to bestow her on me in marriage. Whatever aversion I may hitherto have evinced against women, this young and beautiful lady has so charmed me, that I feel no difficulty in avowing my weakness. I am ready to receive her from your hands, with the deepest sense of my obligation to you.”