When the Queen beheld Farrukhzād, she wept for joy, embraced him, and kissed him with all the fondness of a mother. It happened that one of the servants was a witness, unperceived, of this interview. He immediately hastened to the King, and represented the transaction in such a manner as to excite all his jealousy and rage. However, he resolved to inquire into the matter; but Farrukhzād did not acknowledge that the Queen was his mother; and when he sent for her she answered his questions only by her tears. From these circumstances he concluded that they were guilty; and accordingly he ordered one of his attendants to take away the young man to a burying-ground without the city, and there to cut off his head.
The attendant led Farrukhzād away, and was preparing to put the King’s sentence into execution, but when he looked in the youth’s face, his heart was moved with compassion, and he said, “It must have been the woman’s fault, and not his crime;” and he resolved to save him. When he told Farrukhzād that he would conceal him in his own house, the boy was delighted, and promised that if ever it was in his power he would reward him for his kindness. Having taken him to his house, the man waited on the King, and told him that he had, in obedience to his orders, put Farrukhzād to death.
After this the King treated his wife with the utmost coldness; and she sat melancholy, lamenting the absence of her son. It happened that an old woman beheld the Queen as she sat alone, weeping, in her chamber. Pitying her situation, she approached, and humbly inquired the occasion of her grief. The Queen made no reply; but when the old woman promised, not only to observe the utmost secrecy, if entrusted with the story of her misfortunes, but to find a remedy for them, she related at length all that had happened, and disclosed the mystery of Farrukhzād’s birth.
The old woman desired the Queen to comfort herself, and said: “This night, before the King retires to rest, you must lay yourself down, and close your eyes, as if asleep; he will then place something, which I shall give him, on your bosom, and will command you, by the power of the writing contained in that, to reveal the truth. You must then begin to speak, and, without any apprehension, repeat all that you have now told me.”
The old woman, having then found that the King was alone in his summer-house, presented herself before him, and said: “O King, this solitary life occasions melancholy and sadness!” The King replied that it was not solitude which rendered him melancholy, but vexation on account of the Queen’s infidelity, and the ingratitude of Farrukhzād, on whom he had heaped so many favours, and whom he had adopted as his own son. “Yet,” added he, “I am not convinced of his guilt; and since the day that I caused him to be killed, I have not enjoyed repose, nor am I certain whether the fault was his or the Queen’s.”
“Let not the King be longer in suspense on this subject,” said the old woman, “I have a certain talisman, one of the talismans of Solomon, written in Grecian characters, and in the Syrian language; if your Majesty will watch an opportunity when the Queen shall be asleep, and lay it on her breast, and say: ‘O thou that sleepest! by virtue of the talisman, and of the name of God, which it contains, I conjure thee to speak to me, and to reveal all the secrets of thy heart,’ she will immediately begin to speak, and will declare everything that she knows, both true and false.”
The King, delighted at the hopes of discovering the truth by means of this talisman, desired the old woman to fetch it. She accordingly went home, and taking a piece of paper, scrawled on it some unmeaning characters, folded it up, and tied it with a cord, and sealed it with wax; then hastened to the King, and desired him to preserve it carefully till night should afford an opportunity of trying its efficacy.
When it was night, the King watched until he found that the Queen was in bed; then gently approaching, and believing her to be asleep, he laid the talisman on her breast, and repeated the words which the old woman had taught him. The Queen, who had also received her lesson, still affecting the appearance of one asleep, immediately began to speak, and related all the circumstances of her story.
On hearing this the King was much affected, and tenderly embraced the Queen, who started from her bed as if perfectly unconscious of having revealed the secrets of her breast. He then blamed her for not having candidly acknowledged the circumstance of Farrukhzād’s birth, who, he said, should have been considered as his own son.
All that night they passed in mutual condolence, and on the next morning the King sent for the person to whom he had delivered Farrukhzād, and desired him to point out the spot where his body lay, that he might perform the last duty to that unfortunate youth, and ask forgiveness from his departed spirit. The man replied: “It appears that your Majesty is ignorant of Farrukhzād’s situation: he is at present in a place of safety; for although you ordered me to kill him, I ventured to disobey, and have concealed him in my house, from whence, if you permit, I shall immediately bring him.” At this information the King was so delighted that he rewarded the man with a splendid robe, and sent with him several attendants to bring Farrukhzād to the palace.