Part 23 (2/2)
”Alas!” he cried, calling his second son, ”would that I had listened to you when you insisted that it was you and not your brother who actually did the deed! Unhappily I listened to your brother! See now the awful result of this mistake! Go you now to this heartless Princess whom men call Flower o' the World or else our poor defenseless city will have to pay the penalty.”
So the second prince was taken to the tent of the Warrior Maiden and she put to him the same questions and he fared even worse than his brother had fared. So his head, too, was sent to the Sultan with this message:
”_Send me no more liars and cowards but the son who actually did steal from me my glorious Nightingale Gisar._”
In despair the Sultan went to the mosque to pray. As he bowed his head he heard the Nightingale burst forth in song. Then when he looked up he saw a beggar youth standing near the fountain.
When his prayers were finished the Sultan went outside to the Dervish and said to him:
”The Warrior Princess, Flower o' the World, demands that I send her another son. I know not where my Third Son is. What shall I do?”
Without looking at the Sultan the Dervish answered in his sing-song voice:
”Send her the son for whom the Nightingale sings.”
The Sultan turned away in disappointment, not understanding what the Dervish meant, but one of his attendants plucked his sleeve and whispered:
”The Nightingale sings for yonder beggar youth. Perhaps it is he the Dervish means. Why not ask him if he will go to Flower o' the World in place of your Youngest Son?”
[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Flower o' the World Asleep_]
The Sultan nodded, so the attendant called the beggar youth and the Sultan asked him would he go to the Warrior Princess as the Youngest Prince.
”Allah alone knows where my Youngest Son is,” the Sultan said, ”but he is just about your age and if you were washed and anointed and dressed in fitting garments you would not be unlike him.”
The beggar youth said he would go but he insisted on going just as he was. The Sultan begged him to go dressed as a prince or the Flower o'
the World might not receive him.
”No,” said the youth, ”I shall go as a beggar or not at all. It is for the Flower o' the World to know me whether or not I am the Sultan's Youngest Son and the man who stole from her the Nightingale Gisar.”
So he went as he was to the tent of the Flower o' the World and her warriors when they saw him coming said to the Princess:
”This Sultan mocks you and sends you a beggar when you demand his Third Son.”
But the Flower o' the World ordered them all out and bade the beggar enter alone. She looked at him long and steadily and she saw through his rags that he was indeed a n.o.ble youth with a body made strong and beautiful through exercise and toil and she thought to herself:
”It were not a hard fate to marry this youth!”
Then she questioned him:
”Are you the Sultan's Third Son?”
”I am.”
”Then why are you dressed as a beggar?”
”Because I was set upon at the crossroads and beaten insensible and my clothes torn to rags. I was coming home with the Nightingale Gisar in my hands and I lay down at the roadside to rest while I awaited the coming of my brothers. When I awoke to consciousness the Nightingale and its golden cage were gone. I came home to my father's city as a beggar and there they told me that my brothers had come just before me bringing with them the Nightingale and boasting of the perils they had been through and the dangers they had faced. But the Nightingale, they told me, hanging in its golden cage beside the fountain, was silent. Yet when I went to the mosque it always sang.”
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