Towards the end of the night, Dinarzade cried, Sister, if I do not trespass too much upon your complaisance, I would pray you to finish the history of the king of the Black Islands.  Scheherazade, having awaked upon her sister’s call, prepared to give the satisfaction she required, and began thus: 

The king, half marble half man, continued his history to the sultan thus:  After this cruel magician, unworthy of the name of a queen, had metamorphosed me thus, and brought me into this hall by another enchantment, she destroyed my capital, which was very flourishing and full of people; she abolished the houses, the public places, and markets, and made a pond and desert field of it, which you may have seen; the fishes of four colours in the pond are the four sorts of people, of different religions, that inhabited the place.  The white are the Mussulmen; the red, the Persians, who worshipped the fire; the blue, the Christians; and the yellow, the Jews.  The four little hills were the four islands that gave name to this kingdom.  I learned all this from the magician, who, to add to my affliction, told me with her own mouth these effects of her rage.  But this is not all; her revenge was not satisfied with the destruction of my dominions, and the metamorphosis of my person; she comes every day, and gives me, over my naked shoulders, an hundred blows with ox pizzles, which makes me all over blood; and, when she has done so, covers me with a coarse stuff of goats hair, and throws over it this robe of brocade that you see, not to do me honour, but to mock me.

At this part of the discourse, the king could not withhold his tears; and the sultan’s heart was so pierced with the relation, that he could not speak one word to comfort him.  A little time after, the young king, lifting up his ryes to heaven, cried out, Mighty Creator of all things, I submit myself to your judgments, and to the decrees of your providence; I endure my calamities with patience, since it is your will it should be so; but I hope your infinite goodness will reward me for it.

The sultan, being much moved by the recital of so strange a story, and animated to avenge this unfortunate prince, says to him, Tell me whither this perfidious magician retires, and where her unworthy gallant may be, who is buried before his death?  My lord, replies the prince, her gallant, as I have already told you, is in the Palace of Tears, in a tomb in form of a dome, and that palace joins to this castle on the side of the gate.  As to the magician, I cannot precisely tell whither she retires; but every day at sun-rising she goes to see her gallant, after having executed her bloody vengeance upon me, as I have told you:  and you see I am not in a condition to defend myself against so great cruelty.  She carries him the drink with which she has hitherto prevented his dying, and always complains of his never speaking to her since he was wounded.

Oh, unfortunate prince, says the sultan, you can never enough be bewailed!  Nobody can be more sensibly touched with your condition than I am; never did such an extraordinary misfortune befal any man; and those who write your history will have the advantage to relate a passage that surpasses all that has ever yet been recorded.  There is nothing wanting but one thing, the revenge which is due to you, and I will omit nothing that can be done to procure it.