Page:Fairy tales from the Arabian nights.djvu/404

 After I had ended, the young gentlemen begged me to go with them into the castle. I accepted the offer, and we passed through a great many halls, antechambers, and bedchambers, very well furnished, and came at last into a spacious hall, where there were ten small blue sofas set round, separate from one another, upon which they sat by day, and slept by night. In the middle of this circle stood an eleventh sofa, not so high as the rest, but of the



same colour, upon which the old man before-mentioned, sat down and the young gentlemen made use of the other ten; but as each sofa could only contain one man, one of the young men said to me, 'Comrade, sit down upon that carpet in the middle of the room, and do not inquire into anything that concerns us, nor the reason why we are all blind of the right eye; be content with what you see, and let not your curiosity go any further.'

The old man, having sat a little while, rose up and went out; but he returned in a minute or two, brought in supper to the ten