' So the eunuch went out and returning
after a while, said to the King, 'O King of the age, when I went
to the lady Dunya and told her what I had heard, she was
exceeding wroth and made at me with a staff, meaning to break my
head; whereupon I fled from her, and she said to me, 'If my
father force me to marry, him whom I wed I will kill.' Then said
the King to the Vizier and Aziz, 'Salute the King your master and
tell him what ye have heard and that my daughter is averse from
men and hath no mind to marry.' So they returned, without having
accomplished the object of their journey, and fared on till they
rejoined the King and told him what had passed; whereupon he
commanded the chief to summon the troops for war. But the Vizier
said to him, 'O King, do not this, for the King is not at fault,
seeing that, when his daughter learnt our business, she sent to
say that, if her father forced her to marry, she would kill her
husband and herself after him: so the refusal comes from her.'
When the King heard this, he feared for Taj el Mulouk and said,
'If I make war on the King of the Camphor Islands and carry off
his daughter, she will kill herself and it will profit me
nothing.' So he told his son how the case stood, and he said, 'O
my father, I cannot live without her; so I will go to her and
cast about to get me access to her, though I die in the attempt.'
'How wilt thou go to her?' asked his father; and he answered, 'In
the disguise of a merchant.
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