As the merchant was devotedly attached to his wife, and the smoke of distress was beginning to ascend from the oven of his brain, he tore the collar of patience and hastened to make his complaint to the sultan, and, prostrating himself upon the carpet of supplication, he recited these verses:
“O exalted and happy monarch,
May felicity be the servant of your palace!
The Kází of the city has done me injustice
Greater than the blast of the tornado of the west.
If it be permitted, I will explain
The injustice of that mean-spirited wretch.”
The sultan replied: “Set forth your complaint, that I may become acquainted with it.” Then the merchant spoke as follows: “I am a native of Aderbaijan, and the fame of the justice and protection which the poor obtain at the hands of your majesty induced me to settle in this country, and I have dwelt for some years under the shadow of the sultan’s protection. I had a beautiful and modest wife, and, purposing to travel to Hindústán, I committed her a year ago to the charge of the Kází. Now I have returned from my journey, the Kází, led away by covetousness, refuses to give up to me my wife.” The sultan ordered the Kází to be brought before him. When he appeared, the sultan asked him what he had to say regarding the complaint which the merchant made against him. Said the Kází: “May the torch of your majesty’s welfare be luminous and the castle of opposition ruinous! This man entrusted his wife to me, and it is nearly three months since she quitted my house without giving notice, and up to this time she has not come back, and we have failed to discover any trace of her.” To this the merchant responded: “Such conduct is inconsistent with the character of my wife, and I do not believe it.” The sultan asked: “Where are the witnesses?” The Kází said that several neighbours and householders were acquainted with the fact, and wrote down the names of a number of rascals whom he had bribed to give evidence in his favour. At a sign from the sultan to the chamberlain they were brought in and confirmed the assertion of the Kází, upon which the sultan said to the merchant: “As the Kází has established his statement by witnesses, your complaint falls to the ground,” and the merchant retired disappointed.
Now the sultan was in the habit of walking about the bazárs and streets of the city occasionally in disguise, mixing among the people, in order to discover what they thought of him. That night he left his palace according to his wont, and as he walked about he chanced to pass near the door of a shop where a party of boys were playing at the game of “The King and his Vazír.” One of the boys was made king, and said to the others: “As I am king, you are all under my authority, and you must not seek to evade my commands.” Another boy said: “If you give unjust decisions like Sultan Mahmúd, we shall soon depose you.” The boy-king asked: “What injustice has Sultan Mahmúd done?” The other boy answered: “To-day the affair of the merchant came before the sultan. This merchant had confided his wife to the keeping of the Kází, and he hid her in his own house. The sultan called for witnesses, and the Kází gained the case by producing in court witnesses whom he had previously bribed. It is a great pity that people should have the administration of justice in their hands who are unable to distinguish between right and wrong. Had I been in the place of the sultan I should very soon have discovered the truth or falsehood of the Kází’s witnesses.”
When the sultan had heard the conversation of these boys he sighed, and returned to his palace in great agitation of mind; and next morning as soon as it was daylight he sent a servant to fetch the boy who had criticised his judgment of the merchant’s case. The boy was brought, and the sultan received him in a very friendly manner, saying: “This day you shall be my lieutenant from morning till evening, and I intend to allow you to sit in judgment and to act entirely according to your own will.” Then the sultan whispered to the chamberlain to invite the merchant to repeat his complaint against the Kází, and the merchant, having been brought into court, did so. The Kází and his witnesses were next summoned, and when the Kází was about to seat himself the boy said: “Ho, Master Kází, the leading-strings of justice and the power of tying and untying knotty points of law have been long in your hands—how then do you seem to be so ignorant of legal customs? You have been brought into this court as a party in a law suit, and not as an assessor. It is the rule that you should stand below, on an equality with your accuser, till the court breaks up, and then you should obey whatever its decision may be.” Then the Kází went and stood near the merchant, and again asserted that the woman had left his house three months ago. The boy asked: “Have you any witnesses?” The Kází pointed to his followers, saying: “These are the witnesses.” The boy called one of them to him, and asked him in a subdued voice whether he had seen the woman. He said: “Yes.” Then he asked what signs there were on her person, stature, or face. The man became embarrassed and said: “She had a mole on her forehead; one of her teeth is wanting; she is of fresh complexion; tall and slender.” The boy asked: “What hour of the day was it when she went away from the Kází’s house?” The man replied: “Morning.” “Remain in this place,” said the boy. Then he called another witness, who thus described the woman: “She is of low stature and is lean; her cheeks are white and red; she has a mole near her mouth; she left the house in the afternoon.” Having placed this man in another corner, the boy called for a third witness, whose evidence contradicted both the others; and gradually he examined them all and found they disagreed from each other in everything. The sultan was sitting by the side of the boy and heard all; and when the hearing of the witnesses was ended the boy said: “You God-forgetting wretches, why do you give false evidence? Let the instruments of torture be brought that we may find out the truth.” As soon as they heard the word torture they all offered to say the truth, and confessed themselves to be a set of poor fellows whom the Kází had bribed with a sum of money and instructed what to say, and that they knew nothing whatever about the woman. Then the boy called the Kází, and asked him what he had to say in this business. The Kází commenced to tremble and said: “The truth is as I have stated.” The boy said: “Our Kází is a bold man, and his haughtiness hinders him from confessing the truth: the instruments of torture ought to be employed.” When the Kází heard this, the fear of torture greatly distressed him, and he confessed the truth. On this the boy kissed the floor of good manners with the lips of obedience and said: “The rest of this affair is to be settled by the sultan.” The sultan was much pleased with the acuteness and intelligence of the boy, and ordered the Kází to be beheaded and all his property to be given to the merchant’s wife. The boy was treated kindly and educated, until by degrees he won the entire confidence of the sultan and became one of his greatest favourites.