Dorani

Of course the hair was Dorani's, and soon the king summoned the perfume merchant, and told him that he wished for his daughter to be given in marriage to the prince. The father bowed his head three times to the ground and replied, "Your highness is our lord, and all that you bid us we will do. The maiden asks this only -- that if, after the wedding, she stays all day at the palace, that she may be allowed to return each night to her father's house."

The king thought this a very strange request but said to himself that it was, after all, his son's affair, and the girl would surely soon get tired of going to and fro. So he made no difficulty, and everything was speedily arranged and the wedding was celebrated with great rejoicing.

At first, the condition attaching to his wedding with the lovely Dorani troubled the prince very little, for he thought that he would at least see his bride during the day. But to his dismay, he found that she would do nothing but sit the whole time upon a stool with her head bowed forward upon her knees, and he could never persuade her to say a single word. Each evening she was carried back to her house on a covered platform that's carried on poles on the shoulders of four men, a transport called a palanquin. Each morning Dorani returned soon after daybreak; and yet never a sound passed her lips, nor did she show by any sign all day long that she saw, or heard, or heeded her husband.

Unhappy and troubled, the prince was wandering in an old and beautiful garden near the palace when he came upon the old gardener, who had served the prince's great grandfather. When the gardener saw the prince he came and bowed before him and said, "Child! Why do you look so sad -- is aught the matter?"

Then the prince replied, "I am sad, old friend, because I have married a wife as lovely as the stars, but she will not speak a single word to me, and I know not what to do. Night after night she leaves me for her father's house, and day after day she sits in mine as though turned to stone, and utters no word, whatever I may do or say.