Do it then, said the sultan, you cannot do me a greater
pleasure; for I will have him to be my vizier, and he shall marry
you. Sir, said the princess, I am ready to obey you in all that
you shall be pleased to command me.
The princess, the lady of beauty, went into her apartment, from
whence she brought in a knife which had some Hebrew words
engraved on the blade: She made us all, viz. the sultan, the
master of the eunuchs, the little slave, and myself, to go down
into a private court adjoining to the palace, and there left us
under a gallery that went round it. She placed herself in the
middle of the court, where she made a great circle, and within it
she wrote several words in Arabian characters, some of them
ancient, and others of those which they call the character of
Cleopatra.
When she had finished and prepared the circle as she thought fit,
she placed herself in the centre of it, where she began
adjurations, and repeated verses out of the alcoran. The air grew
insensibly dark, as if it had been night, and the whole world
about to be dissolved. We found ourselves struck with a panic
fear, and this fear increased the more, when we saw the genie,
the son of the daughter of Eblis, appear all of a sudden in the
shape of a lion of a frightful size.
As soon as the princess perceived this monster, You dog, said
she, instead of creeping before me, dare you present yourself in
this shape, thinking to frighten me? And thou, replied the lion,
art thou not afraid to break the treaty which was solemnly made
and confirmed between us by oath, not to wrong or do one another
any hurt? Oh, thou cursed creature! replied the princess, I can
justly reproach thee with doing so.
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