Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 16.djvu/119

 snake whom thou savedst from the serpent; for I am a Jinniyeh, and the serpent was a Jinni at enmity with me; and none but thou delivered me from him: therefore, as soon as thou didst this, I flew to the ship from which thy sisters cast thee, and transported all that it contained to thy house; I then sunk it; but as to thy sisters, I transformed them by enchantment into two black bitches; for I knew all that they had done to thee: the young man, however, is drowned.Having thus said, she took me up, and placed me with the two black bitches on the roof of my house: and I found all the treasures that the ship had contained collected in the midst of my house: nothing was lost. She then said to me, I swear by that which was engraved upon the seal of Suleyman, that, if thou do not inflict three hundred lashes upon each of these bitches every day, I will come and transform thee in the like manner:so I replied, I hear and obey:and have continued ever since to inflict upon them these stripes, though pitying them while I do so.

The Khalifeh heard this story with astonishment, and then said to the second lady, And what occasioned the stripes of which thou bearest the marks? She answered as follows:

THE STORY OF THE SECOND OF THE THREE LADIES OF BAGHDAD

PRINCE OF THE FAITHFUL, my father, at his death, left considerable property; and soon after that event I married to one of the wealthiest men of the age, who, when I had lived with him a year, died, and I inherited from him eighty thousand pieces of gold, the portion that fell to me according to the law; with part of which I made for myself ten suits of clothing, each of the value of a thousand pieces of gold. And as I was sitting one day, there entered my apartment an old woman, disgustingly ugly, who saluted me, and said, I, have an orphan daughter whose marriage I am to celebrate this night, and I would have thee obtain a reward and recompense in heaven by thy being present at her nuptial festivity; for she is broken-hearted, having none to befriend her but God, whose name be exalted. She then wept, and kissed my feet; and, being moved with pity and com- passion, I assented, upon which she desired me to prepare myself, felling me that she would come at the hour of nightfall and take me; and so saying, she kissed my hand, and departed.