When it was the Seven Hundred and Ninety-fourth Night,
She resumed, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when Hasan had determined to visit the Princesses, he gave his mother the orders we have mentioned.[FN#85] Now, as Fate would have it, his wife heard what he said to his mother and neither of them knew it. Then Hasan went without the city and beat the kettle-drum, whereupon up came the dromedaries and he loaded twenty of them with rarities of Al-Irak; after which he returned to his mother and repeated his charge to her and took leave of her and his wife and children, one of whom was a yearling babe and the other two years old. Then he mounted and fared on, without stopping night or day, over hills and valleys and plains and wastes for a term of ten days till, on the eleventh, he reached the palace and went in to his sisters, with the gifts he had brought them. The Princesses rejoiced at his sight and gave him joy of his safety, whilst his sister decorated the palace within and without. Then they took the presents and, lodging him in a chamber as before, asked him of his mother and his wife, and he told them that she had borne him two sons. And the youngest Princess, seeing him well and in good case, joyed with exceeding joy and repeated this couplet,
"I ever ask for news of you from whatso breezes pass * And never any but yourselves can pass across my mind."