Vis and Ramin

100 VISKAMIANI
ness of thy youth is asleep; awaken it, let the valour 1
of high birth appear, fructify the branch of joy, take up thy
share of sovereignty and youth, let thy days be spent in
joy and repay 2 love. Fear God also. Such disobedience
to the supreme will 3 cannot be. By birth thou art neither
4
a Kadj nor an angel. Thou art one of us, of earth, always
desiring thy will and pleasure and always caught in the
112 net of pleasure. God created human beings in such a
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way that woman and man cannot love anything more than
each other, and if thou knewest the force of this thou
wouldst no longer threaten me so much ; and I swear to
thee that this my saying, when the end of this matter
comes, will not be proved false by thee."
Vis answered the nurse as follows :
"The beauty of Paradise is more pleasant than that
which thou offerest to me. If I were delivered from thee
and thy sorcery, it would be exceeding easy for me to for-
sake man. Thine insistence makes thinking hard for me ;
were it not for this it would be easy for me to suffer the
lack of Kamin. If I were not afraid to trouble thee, he
would meet many sorrows in his love for me. Though thy
Kamin had been a falcon he could not have reached me,
and if he had been the wind he could not have found my
dust. Now have a care of this that will be, that this our
secret be not made known. Thou thyself knowest how
great a sovereign is Moabad, how heavy is his wrath in the
hour of his anger ; when he looks on guilt he is keen as
a sword, relentless 5 and inflexible as a lion. If he once
discover our affair, certainly he will slaughter us all together,
and until the day of discovery we hold our lives on
sufferance."
1 Catzoba virility, 115.
2 Umukp'hen, 111, 121. K., 487, 1167, 1445.
3 Uzenaoba (?)
Uzenaro, 207, 210.
4 75, 213. E., 190, etc.