‘I will give you whatever you want.’
‘Will you give me what is dearest to you?’
‘I will.’
‘Let us make an agreement.’
They made one. God cast him into a deep sleep, and her as well, and God bore them home to his father’s, to his own bed, and left them there, and departed. And the child cried. The warders heard a child crying in the bedchamber. [[103]]They went and opened the door, and recognised him, the emperor’s son. And they went to the emperor and told him, ‘Your son has come, O emperor.’
‘Call him to me.’
They came to the emperor; they bowed themselves before him; they tarried there a year. The boy grew big, and was playing one day. The emperor and the empress went to church, and his nurse too went to the church. God came, disguised like a beggar. The emperor’s son said to the little lad, ‘Take a handful of money, and give it to the beggar.’
The beggar said, ‘I don’t want this money; it’s bad. Tell your father to give me what he vowed he would.’
The emperor’s son was angry, and he took his sword in his hand, and went to the old man to kill him. The old man took the sword into his own hand and said, ‘Give me what you swore to me—the child, you know—when you were weeping under the mountain.’
‘I will give you money, I will not give you the child.’