The young people went from the inn where their mother was, running, the one after the other, till they had come under the windows of the apartment where the Vizier was at rest. They took possession of a little eminence on which a number of bales of goods were collected to keep them dry. The thoughtless youths went to play on the bales, trying which of the two could push down his brother. These playful lads, disputing with address and roguery, announced their victory or their defeat by such piercing shouts that they awoke the Vizier.
He lost his patience: he went to the window to check the noise, and, leaning over it, three diamonds, which the King had given him, fell from his fingers. The agitation of the sea had already stirred up the minister's choler; the habit of command rendered him incapable of forbearance; and, the island on which he was being within the jurisdiction of his government, he ordered these troublesome children to be taken into custody. He came down himself to search for his diamonds; but, amidst such confusion, this search was fruitless. Driven by degrees to indignation and fury, he accused the children, not only of being the cause of the loss of his diamonds, but even of having stolen them. Their innocence could not defend them against prejudice. He punished them with the bastinado, and then caused each of them to be tied to a board and cast into the sea. The innocent victims, expecting a cruel death, became the sport of the waves and billows.
Meanwhile night approached, and the spouse of Illage, not seeing her children return, uneasy, and bathed in tears, went out to seek them. The neighbours could tell her nothing of them. She ran from street to street, without meeting any person who could satisfy her well-founded impatience. This tender mother came at last to the harbour. There, from the description she gave of the three persons who were the object of her search and the cause of her uneasiness, a sailor replied to her,
"Madam, the young people whom you inquire after are the same whom a powerful man, lately arrived from India, hath punished by his slaves for a theft which he imputed to them. They gave them the bastinado, tied them to a plank, and, by his order, threw them into the sea."
At these words, the unhappy mother filled the air with her shrieks and groans: she rent her clothes and tore her hair. "O my children," said she, "where is the Vizier your father, to revenge me on the man who hath murdered my children?"
Her despair struck the ear of her husband, who was not far distant. He seemed to know the voice, and learned that it was that of the inconsolable mother whose children he had condemned to death. The cry of nature resounded in his heart, and he no longer doubted that the children he had punished were his own. He hastened to the unfortunate woman whose misery he had occasioned, and immediately knew her.
"Ah, barbarian that I am, I have been the murderer of our children! Fatal power with which I am invested! blinded by thee, I had not time allowed me to be just! I am the executioner of my own children!"
As he spoke these words, all the signs of the most violent despair were painted in his countenance, and manifested themselves by every sort of extravagance. His wife sank at his feet under the weight of her grief.
"Do not pardon me," added he: "I am a monster; and so much the more criminal as I am at this moment placed beyond the reach of the law. I must for ever be torn by my own remorse and loaded with your reproaches. I thought myself injured, and I hastened to revenge myself, without taking time to reflect. I saw a crime where there was none, and let fall the stroke upon innocence without thinking it would rebound upon myself."
"You see, sire," continued Aladin, "what cause this Vizier had to repent his believing these children guilty upon a deceitful appearance, and his having hurried on a severe punishment without reflecting on whom it was to fall. He forgot that a regard to futurity ought to regulate the present."