I went a second time to the Palace of Tears, while she was there.  I concealed myself again, and heard her thus address her lover:  “It is now three years since you spoke one word to me; you answer not the proofs I give you of my love by my sighs and lamentations.  Is it from insensibility, or contempt?  O tomb! hast thou destroyed that excess of affection which he bare me?  Hast thou closed those eyes that evinced so much love, and were all my delight?  No, no, this I cannot think.  Tell me rather, by what miracle thou becamest the depositary of the rarest treasure the world ever contained.”

I must confess, my lord, I was enraged at these expressions; for, in truth, this beloved, this adored mortal, was by no means what you would imagine him to have been.  He was a black Indian, one of the original natives of this country.  I was so enraged at the language addressed to him, that I discovered myself, and apostrophising the tomb in my turn; I cried, “O tomb! why dost not thou swallow up that monster so revolting to human nature, or rather why dost not thou swallow up both the lover and his mistress?”

I had scarcely uttered these words, when the queen, who sat by the black, rose up like a fury.  “Miscreant!” said she “thou art the cause of my grief; do not think I am ignorant of this, I have dissembled too long.  It was thy barbarous hand that brought the objets of my fondness into this lamentable condition; and thou hast the cruelty to come and insult a despairing lover.”  “Yes,” said I, in a rage, “it was I that chastised that monster, according to his desert; I ought to have treated thee in the same manner; I now repent that I did not; thou hast too long abused my goodness.”  As I spoke these words, I drew out my cimeter, and lifted up my hand to punish her; but regarding me stedfastly, she said with a jeering smile, “Moderate thy anger.”  At the same time, she pronounced words I did not understand; and afterwards added, “By virtue of my enchantments, I command thee to become half marble and half man.”  Immediately, my lord, I became what you see, a dead man among the living, and a living man among the dead.

After the cruel sorceress, unworthy of the name of queen, had metamorphosed me thus, and brought me into this hall, by another enchantment she destroyed my capital, which was very flourishing and populous; she annihilated the houses, the public places and markets, and reduced the site of the whole to the lake and desert plain you have seen; the fishes of four colours in the lake are the four kinds of inhabitants of different religions, which the city contained.  The white are the Moosulmauns; the red, the Persians, who worship 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 enchantress, who, to add to my affliction, related to me these effects of her rage.  But this is not all; her revenge not being satisfied with the destruction of my dominions, and the metamorphosis of my person, she comes every day, and gives me over my naked shoulders a hundred lashes with a whip until I am covered with blood.  When she has finished this part of my punishment, she throws over me a coarse stuff of goat’s hair, and over that this robe of brocade, not to honour, but to mock me.