And Khipil feared the King, and went to the place where the chair should
be, and bent his body in a sitting posture, eyeing the King, and made
pretence to sit in the chair of Shahpesh, as in conspiracy to amuse his
master.

Then said Shahpesh, 'For a token that I approve thy execution of the
chair, thou shalt be honoured by remaining seated in it up to the hour of
noon; but move thou to the right or to the left, showing thy soul
insensible of the honour done thee, transfixed thou shah be with twenty
arrows and five.'

The King then left him with a guard of twenty-five of his body-guard; and
they stood around him with bent bows, so that Khipil dared not move from
his sitting posture. And the masons and the people crowded to see Khipil
sitting on his master's chair, for it became rumoured about. When they
beheld him sitting upon nothing, and he trembling to stir for fear of the
loosening of the arrows, they laughed so that they rolled upon the floor
of the hall, and the echoes of laughter were a thousand-fold. Surely the
arrows of the guards swayed with the laughter that shook them.

Now, when the time had expired for his sitting in the chair, Shahpesh
returned to him, and he was cramped, pitiable to see; and Shahpesh said,
'Thou hast been exalted above men, O Khipil! for that thou didst execute
for thy master has been found fitting for thee.'

Then he bade Khipil lead the way to the noble gardens of dalliance and
pleasure that he had planted and contrived. And Khipil went in that
state described by the poet, when we go draggingly, with remonstrating
members,