HKB
I proposed to you last year about marrying? Will you still refuse me that pleasure I expect from your obedience, and suffer me to die without affording me that satisfaction?"
The prince seemed less disconcerted than before; and was not long answering his father to this effect: "Sir, I have not neglected to consider of your proposal; but after the maturest reflection find myself more confirmed in my resolution to continue in a state of celibacy. The infinite mischief which women have caused in the world, and which are on record in our histories, and the accounts I daily hear to their disadvantage, are the motives which powerfully influence me against having any thing to do with them; so that I hope your majesty will pardon me if I presume to tell you, it will be in vain to solicit me any further upon this subject." As soon as he had thus spoken, he quitted the sultan abruptly without waiting his answer.
Any monarch but Shaw Zummaun would have been angry at such freedom in a son, and would have made him repent; but he loved him, and preferred gentle methods before he proceeded to compulsion. He communicated this new cause of discontent to his prime minister. "I have followed your advice," said he, "but Kummir al Zummaun is farther than ever from complying with my desires. He delivered his determination in such free terms, that it required all my reason and moderation to keep my temper. Fathers who so earnestly desire children as I did this son are fools, who seek to deprive themselves of that rest which it is in their own power to enjoy without control. Tell me, I beseech you, how I shall reclaim a disposition so rebellious to my will?"
"Sir," answered the grand vizier, "patience brings many things about that before seemed impracticable; but it may be this affair is of a nature not likely to succeed that way. Your majesty will have no cause to reproach yourself for precipitation, if you would give the prince another year to consider your proposal. If in this interval he return to his duty, you will have the greater satisfaction, as you will have employed only paternal love to induce him; and if he still continue averse when this is expired, your majesty may in full council observe, that it is highly necessary for the good of the state that he should marry; and it is not likely he will refuse to comply before so grave an assembly, which you honour with your presence."
The sultan, who so anxiously desired to see his son married, thought this long delay an age; however, though with much difficulty, he yielded to his grand vizier's reasons, which he could not disapprove.
After the grand vizier was gone, the sultan went to the apartment of the mother of prince Kummir al Zummaun, to whom he had often expressed his desire to see the prince married. When he had told her, with much concern, how his son had a second time refused to comply with his wishes, and the indulgence which, by the advice of his grand vizier, he was inclined to shew him; he said, "I know he has more confidence in you than he has in me, and will be more likely to attend to your advice. I therefore desire you would take an opportunity to talk to him seriously, and urge upon him, that if he persists in his obstinacy, he will oblige me to have recourse to measures which would be disagreeable to me, and which would give him cause to repent having disobeyed me."