Alicaun accordingly made his appearance, when the calif, having taken his seat at the tribunal, thus addressed him: "I have been informed of the particulars of your late conversation; your having compared me to the noble lion, can have nothing in it that ought reasonably to offend me; but tell me sincerely, in which of these lights you considered the lion; as the generous monarch of the forest, or as the savage tyrant?"
Alicaun bowed down his head to the earth, and replied, "My sovereign, you have ordered me to speak sincerely: I will obey your orders, regardless of the consequences that may follow. When I lately took the liberty to compare you to the lion, I must own I had in my view the ferocity of that animal. I am sensible I deserve to die:—your decree will determine, whether you are the monarch of the forest, or the savage tyrant. Should you be graciously pleased to spare me, it will turn to your own advantage; because if you condemn me to die, my accusers will think I spoke truth; but pardon me, and they will be confounded."
"I forgive you, Alicaun," said the calif; "and I will tell you, and all present, my motive for doing so. You are not a stranger to the influence my favourite emir, Abdalla, has over me. Like many other monarchs, I became jealous of my favourite, on the unbounded acclamations he received on his return home from a war of no great consequence. I therefore resolved on putting him to death, but was at a loss in what manner I should accomplish that purpose.
"To attempt it by open violence would endanger my throne; I therefore resolved to do it by stratagem. At the bottom of my palace gardens, you all know, is a tremendous precipice, whose base is washed by the waters of the Tigris. Hither I resolved to take him, under the idea of consulting him on some important matters of state, and, when I found him off his guard, as he could not suspect my intentions, to shove him headlong over the precipice into the river.
"Thought I in myself, this is the last sun Abdalla shall ever behold; for, by this time, we had reached the fatal spot; when, on a sudden, by chance, let me say rather, by the will of Heaven, the ground trembled beneath my feet, and I perceived part of the rock on which I stood was parting from the main body. At this critical moment, Abdalla seized me by the arm, and forcibly pulled me to him, otherwise I should certainly have fallen down the horrible precipice into the foaming billows beneath, and thus have met with that fate I designed for another.
"Shame and gratitude for some moments struck me dumb and motionless: with shame, that a sovereign prince should stoop to such mean treachery; and with gratitude, that I should owe my life to that man, who saved mine at the very moment I was plotting his destruction!
"I instantly retired to the most secret chamber in my palace, and opened my soul in prayer and thanksgiving to the Eternal. In this dejected situation, I suffered several days and nights to pass away, bitterly reflecting on my folly, and reproaching myself for sinking so much beneath the real dignity of royalty. What, said I, is the life of a sovereign more than that of his meanest subject, since the one is no more secure from the arrows of death than the other!
"In a little time, by reasoning in this manner, I found all my tyranny and self-consequence humbled, and I wished in future to be considered only as a man. As the nights were long and tedious to me, in order to divert my mind from painful and disagreeable reflections, I resolved to take my rambles in disguise through the different parts of Ispahan.
"Among these rambles, chance carried me one night into a house of public entertainment. Here, while drinking the liquor I had ordered, I listened to the conversation of several parties round me.