Page:Fairy tales from the Arabian nights.djvu/388

 'Unhappy wretch,' said the sultan, 'art thou worthy that I should answer thee? '

'Alas!' replied the queen, 'why do you reproach me thus?' 'The cries,' replied he, 'the groans and tears of thy husband, whom thou treatest every day with so much indignity and barbarity, hinder me from sleeping night and day. I should have been cured long ago. and have recovered the use of my speech, hadst thou disenchanted him. That is the cause of the silence which you complain of.'

'Very well,' said the enchantress; 'to pacify you, I am ready to do whatever you command me. Would you have me restore him as he was?'

'Yes,' replied the sultan, 'make haste and set him at liberty, that I be no more disturbed with his cries.'

The enchantress went immediately out of the Palace of Tears; she took a cup of water, and pronounced words over it, which caused it to boil, as if it had been on the fire. Then she went into the hall, to the young king her husband, and threw the water upon him, saying, 'If the Creator of all things did form thee so as thou art at present, or if He be angry with thee, do not change. But if thou art in that condition merely by virtue of my enchantments, resume thy natural shape, and become what thou wast before.'

She had scarcely spoken these words, when the prince, finding himself restored to his former condition, rose up freely, with all imaginable joy, and returned thanks to God.

Then the enchantress said to him, 'Get thee gone from this castle, and never return here on pain of death!'

The young king, yielding to necessity, went away from the enchantress, without replying a word, and retired to a remote place, where he patiently awaited the success of the plan which the sultan had so happily begun.

Meanwhile the enchantress returned to the Palace of Tears and, supposing that she still spoke to the black man, said, 'Dearest, I have done what you ordered.'

The sultan continued to counterfeit the language of the blacks. 'That which you have just now done,' said he, 'is not sufficient