After enjoying the cordial reception which the king vouchsafed to him, Meher said: “I have a right to speak to thee now, for no other duty intervenes. I come before thee as the heir of the Persian throne, and come to ask the hand of the beautiful princess in marriage. Having discharged the most sacred duties of friendship, I ask thee to give me also the blessings of love.”
The king replied that the man who could be so loyal in his friendship could not be unworthy the hand of even the princess Nahīd, and their betrothal was formally sealed.
A message was sent to the apartments of Nahīd to inform the happy princess of her betrothal to the man she loved, and thus it happened that in an Eastern court a woman’s heart was given with her hand. She was not allowed to see her lover, even the stolen interview in the garden being looked upon as criminal; but she told the story to the bulbul in the rose-tree, and the bulbul sang a sweet new tune as he looked down into the sheltered nest where three blue eggs were waiting the touch of life.
The princess told her story to the lotus blossoms, and they breathed a sweeter fragrance; she told the pomegranate tree that had witnessed their first betrothal, and the rich flowers grew more vivid and seemed to tremble with a new happiness; the sunbirds flew more joyously through the branches of the trees, and even the skies were of rose and pearl.
THE SENTENCE.
There came a day when Behrām was brought forth from his dark cell to receive his sentence, and there beside the throne stood Meher and Mūshteri, while Bader was only a little way in the background.
The face of the culprit was dark with shame and the poison of defeated malice, as he stood in the presence of those whose lives he had so nearly wrecked. There was a cloud even upon the face of the prince, for he remembered the suffering which this man had brought upon the friend of his boyhood, and, more than all, upon his gentle mother in her loneliness and grief.
The list of his crimes was formally read to the prisoner, and then his sentence was pronounced by the king, and the executioner was ordered to lead him away.
Mūshteri looked upon the guilty wretch before him, and remembered the years of malice with which this man had followed him. He remembered the faithful father who but for him might still be living, and he felt that the sentence was just, but was not mercy the better part of valor? Could another death bring back the dead or aid in any way the living? Surely not; and stepping forward with the grace of one who was accustomed to the presence of royalty, he besought the king to forgive this relentless foe and let him go back in peace to his aged father. Keiwan looked in astonishment upon this gallant youth who could plead for so relentless a foe, almost as soon as he was released from his power, and he hesitated to grant the strange request.
Mūshteri then knelt before the king and continued his plea, while the officers of the court looked on in wonder. At last, however, the king yielded, and told Mūshteri that he might loosen the bonds of the prisoner. There was no reproach in the kind eyes of the victor as he came forward and unfastened with his own hands the fetters of Behrām. The prisoner looked amazed and humiliated; he had nerved himself to meet the executioner with a sullen courage; but freedom, and that, too, from the man whom he had so grievously and persistently wronged, he was unprepared for, and he broke down in a flood of tears.