Page:Fairy tales from the Arabian nights.djvu/211

 'Daughter,' said the sultan, 'I did not believe you to have understood so much.'

'Sir,' replied the princess, 'these things are curious and worth knowing, but I think I ought not to boast of them.'

'Since it is so,' said the sultan, 'you can dispel the prince's enchantment.'

'Yes, sir,' said the princess, 'I can restore him to his first shape again.'

'Do it, then,' said the sultan; 'you cannot do me a greater pleasure, for I will have him to be my vizier, and he shall marry you.'

'Sir,' said the princess, 'I am ready to obey you in all that you may be pleased to command me.'

The princess, the Lady of Beauty, went into her apartment, from whence she brought in a knife, which had some Hebrew words engraven on the blade; she made the sultan, the master of the chamberlains, the little slave, and myself, go down into a private court of the palace, and there left us under a gallery that went round it. She placed herself in the middle of the court, where she made a great circle, and within it she wrote several words in Arabic characters, some of them ancient, and others of those which they call the characters of Cleopatra.

When she had finished and prepared the circle as she thought fit, she placed herself in the centre of it, where she began spells, and repeated verses out of the Koran. The air grew insensibly dark, as if it had been night and the whole world about to be dissolved; we found ourselves struck with a panic, and this fear increased the more when we saw the genie, the son of the daughter of Eblis, appear on a sudden in the shape of a lion of a frightful size.

As soon as the princess perceived this monster, 'You dog,' said she, 'instead of creeping before me, dare you present yourself in this shape, thinking to frighten me?'

'And thou,' replied the lion, 'art thou not afraid to break the treaty which was solemnly made and confirmed between us by oath, not to wrong or to do one another any hurt?'

'Oh! thou cursed creature!' replied the princess, 'I can justly reproach thee with doing so.'