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Burton, Richard Francis

"The Arabian Nights"

From whom,
then, dost thou veil thy face?" She answered, "This whom thou
deemest an ape is a young man, a clever and polite, a wise and
learned, and the son of a king. But he is ensorceled, and the Ifrit
Jirjaris, who is of the seed of Iblis, cast a spell upon him, after
putting to death his own wife, the daughter of King Ifitamus lord of
the Islands of Abnus." The King marveled at his daughter's words
and, turning to me, said, "Is this true that she saith of thee?" and I
signed by a nod of my head the answer "Yea, verily," and wept sore.
Then he asked his daughter, "Whence knewest thou that he is
ensorceled?" and she answered: "O my dear Papa, there was with me in
my childhood an old woman, a wily one and a wise and a witch to
boot, and she taught me the theory of magic and its practice, and I
took notes in writing and therein waxed perfect, and have committed to
memory a hundred and seventy chapters of egromantic formulas, by the
least of which I could transport the stones of thy city behind the
Mountain Kaf and the Circumambient Main, or make its site an abyss
of the sea and its people fishes swimming in the midst of it.


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