When it was the Five Hundred and Eighty-sixth Night,
Quoth Dunyazad, “O sister mine, an thou be other than sleepy, do tell us some of thy pleasant tales,” whereupon Shahrazad replied, “With love and good will.”—It hath reached me, O King of the Age, that Alaeddin said to the Sultan, “O King of the Time, thou didst naught to me contrary to Holy Law, and I also sinned not against thee; but all the trouble came from that Maghrabi, the impure, the Magician.” Thereupon the Sultan bade the city be decorated and they obeyed him and held high feast and festivities. He also commanded the crier to cry about the streets saying, “This day is a mighty great fete, wherein public rejoicings must be held throughout the realm, for a full month of thirty days, in honour of the Lady Badr al-Budur and her husband Alaeddin’s return to their home.” On this wise befel it with Alaeddin and the Maghrabi; but withal the King’s son-in-law escaped not wholly from the Accursed, albeit the body had been burnt and the ashes scattered in air. For the villain had a brother yet more villainous than himself, and a greater adept in necromancy, geomancy and astromancy; and, even as the old saw saith “A bean and ’twas split;"[FN#210] so each one dwelt in his own quarter of the globe that he might fill it with his sorcery, his fraud and his treason.[FN#211] Now, one day of the days it fortuned that the Moorman’s brother would learn how it fared with him, so he brought out his sandboard and dotted it and produced the figures which, when he had considered and carefully studied them, gave him to know that the man he sought was dead and housed in the tomb. So he grieved and was certified of his decease, but he dotted a second time


