Pagina 377 di 1116

Moreover the King bade build over his daughter's ashes a vast

vaulted tomb, and burn therein wax tapers and sepulchral lamps:

but as for the Ifrit's ashes they scattered them on the winds,

speeding them to the curse of Allah. Then the Sultan fell sick of

a sickness that well nigh brought him to his death for a month's

space; and, when health returned to him and his beard grew again

and he had been converted by the mercy of Allah to al-Islam, he

sent for me and said, "O youth, Fate had decreed for us the

happiest of lives, safe from all the chances and changes of Time,

till thou camest to us, when troubles fell upon us. Would to

Heaven we had never seen thee and the foul face of thee! For we

took pity on thee and thereby we have lost our all. I have on thy

account first lost my daughter who to me was well worth an

hundred men, secondly I have suffered that which befel me by

reason of the fire and the loss of my teeth, and my Eunuch also

was slain.