Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 16.djvu/62

 to drink, and boiled meats; and thus she continued to do, morning and evening, until the expiration of the second year, while I patiently suffered her, till, one day, I entered her apartments unawares, and found her weeping, and slapping her face, and repeating these verses:

I have lost my existence among mankind since your absence; for my heart loveth none but you.

Take my body, then, in mercy, to the place where you are laid; and there bury me by your side:

And if, at my grave, you utter my name, the moaning of my bones shall answer to your call.

As soon as she had finished the recitation of these verses, I said to her, holding my drawn sword in my hand, This is the language of those faithless women who renounce the ties of affinity, and regard not lawful fellowship!and I was about to strike her with the sword, and had lifted up my arm to do so, when she rosefor she knew that it was I who had wounded the slaveand, standing before me, pronounced some words which I understood not, and said, May God, by means of my enchantment, make thee to be half of stone, and half of the substance of man!whereupon I became as thou seest, unable to move, neither dead nor alive; and when I had been reduced to this state, she enchanted the city and its markets and fields. The inhabitants of our city were of four classes; Muslims and Christians, and Jews and Magians; and she trans- formed them into fish: the white are the Muslims; the red, the Magians; the blue, the Christians; and the yellow, the Jews. She transformed, also, the four islands into four mountains, and placed them around the lake; and from that time she has continued every day to torture me, inflicting upon me a hundred lashes with a leathern whip, until the blood flows from my wounds; after which she puts on my upper half a vest of hair-cloth, beneath these garments.Having said thus, the young man wept, and ejaculated the following verses:

Give me patience, O Allah, to bear what Thou decreest! I will be patient, if so I may obtain thine approval.

I am straitened, indeed, by the calamity that hath befallen me: but the Family of the favoured Prophet shall intercede for me!