Страница 234 из 1116

Then she stood up; and, pronouncing some words to me

unintelligible, she said:- By virtue of my egromancy become thou

half stone and half man; whereupon I became what thou seest,

unable to rise or to sit, and neither dead nor alive. Moreover

she ensorcelled the city with all its streets and garths, and she

turned by her gramarye the four islands into four mountains

around the tarn whereof thou questionest me; and the citizens,

who were of four different faiths, Moslem, Nazarene, Jew and

Magian, she transformed by her enchantments into fishes; the

Moslems are the white, the Magians red, the Christians blue and

the Jews yellow.[FN#131] And every day she tortureth me and

scourgeth me with an hundred stripes, each of which draweth

floods of blood and cutteth the skin of my shoulders to strips;

and lastly she clotheth my upper half with a hair cloth and then

throweth over them these robes." Hereupon the young man again

shed tears and began reciting:-