But the Prince said to her, “Be of good cheer; I will endeavor to recover your husband and child for you: who knows but I may indeed be your son, beautiful lady?” And running home to the Ranee (his adopted mother), he said to her, “Are you really my mother? Tell me truly; for this I must know before the sun goes down.” “Why do you ask foolish questions?” she replied; “have I not always treated you as a son?” “Yes,” he said; “but tell me the very truth, am I your own child, or the child of some one else, adopted as yours? If you do not tell me, I will kill myself.” And so saying, he drew his sword. She replied, “Stay, stay, and I will tell you the whole truth: the day before you were born I had a little baby, but it died; and my servants took it to the bottom of the garden to bury it, and there they found a beautiful woman lying as dead, and beside her a living infant. You were that child. They brought you to the palace, and I adopted you as my son, and left my baby in your stead.” “What became of my mother?” he asked. “I cannot tell,” answered the Ranee; “for, two days afterward, when I sent to the same place, she and the baby had both disappeared, and I have never since heard of her.”
The young Prince, on hearing this, said, “There is in the head Malee’s house a beautiful lady, whom the Malee’s wife found in the jungle, fourteen years ago; that must be my mother. Let her be received here this very day with all honor, for that is the only reparation that can now be made to her.”
The Ranee consented, and the young Prince went down to the Malee’s house himself to fetch his mother to the palace.
With him he took a great retinue of people, and a beautiful palanquin for her to go in, covered with rich trappings; also costly things for her to wear, and many jewels and presents for the good Malee’s wife.
When Panch-Phul Ranee had put on her son’s gifts, and come out of the Malee’s poor cottage to meet him, all the people said there had never been so royal-looking a queen. As gold and clear crystal are lovely, as mother-of-pearl is exquisitely fair and delicate-looking, so beautiful, so fair, so delicate appeared Panch-Phul Ranee.
Her son conducted her with much pomp and state to the palace, and did all in his power to honor her; and there she lived long very happily, and beloved by all.
One day the young Prince begged her to tell him again, from the beginning, the story of her life, and as much as she knew of his father’s life; and so she did. And after that, he said to her, “Be no longer sad, dear mother, regarding my father’s fate; for I will send into all lands to gather tidings of him, and maybe in the end we shall find him.” And he sent people out to hunt for the Rajah all over the kingdom, and in all neighboring countries—to the north, to the south, to the east and to the west—but they found him not.
At last (after four years of unsuccessful search), when there seemed no hope of ever learning what had become of him, Panch-Phul Ranee’s son came to see her, and said, “Mother, I have sent into all lands seeking my father, but can hear no news of him. If there were only the slightest clue as to the direction in which he went, there would still be some chance of tracing him, but that, I fear, cannot be got. Do you not remember his having said anything of the way which he intended to go when he left you?” She answered, “When your father went away, his words to me were, ‘I will go to fetch food for us both, and fire to cook it with, and inquire what this country is, and seek out a place of shelter for you. Do not be afraid—I shall soon return.’ That was all he said, and then he went away, and I never saw him more.”
“In what direction did he go from the foot of the garden?” asked the Prince. “He went,” answered the Panch-Phul Ranee, “toward that village of conjurors close by. I thought he was intending to ask some of them to give us food. But had he done so, he would certainly have returned in a very short time.”
“Do you think you should know my father, mother darling, if you were to see him again?” asked the Prince. “Yes,” answered she, “I should know him again.” “What!” he said, “even though eighteen years have gone by since you saw him last? Even though age and sickness and want had done their utmost to change him?” “Yes!” she replied; “his every feature is so impressed on my heart that I should know him again anywhere or in any disguise.”