| Share page |
|
48 THE ARABIAN NIGHTS |
||
|
THE STORY OF THE YOUNG KING OF THE BLACK ISLES
You must know, sire, that my father was Mahmoud, the king of this country, the Black Isles, so called from the four little mountains which were once islands, while the capital was the place where now the great lake lies. My story will tell you how these changes came about.
My father died when he was sixty-six, and I succeeded him. I married my cousin, whom I loved tenderly, and I thought she loved me too.
But one afternoon, when I was half asleep, and was being fanned by two of her maids, I heard one say to the other, ' What a pity it is that our mistress no longer loves our master! I believe she would like to kill him if she could, for she is an enchantress.'
I soon found by watching that they were right, and when I mortally wounded a favourite slave of hers for a great crime, she begged that she might build a palace in the garden, where she wept and bewailed him for two years.
At last I begged her to cease grieving for him, for although he could not speak or move, by her enchantments she just kept him alive. She turned upon me in a rage, and said over me some magic words, and I instantly became as you see me now, half man and half marble.
Then this wicked enchantress changed the capital, which was a very populous and flourishing city, into the lake and desert plain you saw. The fish of four |
||