off sheep and goats. So I hanged the two dogs as faithless traitors."
The King returned to the city and thought over this singular story. "It is a lesson
for me," he said, "a revelation. It is impossible not to see that my subjects are the
flock and I am the shepherd, while my minister has acted like the shepherd's
dogs, and the enemy who has my kingdom is the wolf. I must examine into the
conduct of my minister and see with what fidelity he has served me."
When he had returned to the palace he called his secretaries and bade them bring
the registers in which the accounts of the kingdom were kept. When these
registers were opened he saw that they mentioned only the name of the minister
Rassat Rouchin, and included such statements as: "Intercession of Rassat
Rouchin in favor of princes so and so, ministers such and such, and grandees this
and that, who ask pardon for their faults. Rassat Rouchin took their treasures and
granted them grace." There was nothing else in the registers. When the King saw
this he said:
"Who rests his faith upon a name goes often without bread,
While he who faithless proves for bread shall lose his soulinstead."
These words the King had engraved in letters of gold and fastened to the gate.
And at this gate he had the false minister hanged as the dogs were hanged at the
cabin-door.
A King of Persia, in a fit of anger against his wife for a certain fault which she
had committed, commanded his prime minister to put her to death, together with
her nursing infant. The minister, on account of the furious anger of the King, did
not dare to plead the Queen's cause, but took her to his mother's house. The
minister found another woman who had been condemned to death and had her
executed, telling the King that it was the Queen who was beheaded. The King's
child grew and nourished until he had become a handsome young man. But the
King grew more and more morose and melancholy, and shut himself up in the
palace. The minister, noticing this continual sadness of the King, said:
"O king of the world, what has come over the heart of your Majesty?
Pray tell me the cause of your sorrow."
And the King said: "O minister, how should I not be sad and disturbed? Here I
am getting old and I have no son to cause my name to live and protect my