Page:Arabian Nights Entertainments (1728)-Vol. 2.djvu/54

marry you. Sir, ſaid the Princeſs, I am ready to obey you in all that you ſhall be pleas’d to command me.

Scheherazade, as ſhe ſpoke, ſpied Day, and broke off her Story of the ſecond Callender: And Schahriar judging the Sequel wou’d be as diverting as the former Part of it, reſolved to hear it next Day.

DInazade call’d upon the Sultaneſs at the uſual Hour, ſaying, Siſter, if you be not aſleep, pray do us the Favour to tell us how the Lady of Beauty reſtor’d the ſecond Callender to his former Shape. You ſhall hear it, ſaid Scheherazade; The Callender reſum’d his Diſcourſe thus.

The Princeſs, the Lady of Beauty, went into her Apartment, from whence the brought a knife, which had ſome Hebrew Words engraven on the Blade: She made us all viz. the Sultan, the Maſter of the Eunuchs, the little Slave and my ſelf, to go down into a private Court adjoining to the Palace, and there left us under a Gallery that went round it. She placed her ſelf 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 her ſelf in the Center 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 World about to be diſſolved: We found our ſelves ſtruck with a panick Fear, and this Fear encreaſed 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 your ſelf in this Shape, thinking to frighten me? And thou, reply’d the Lion, art thou not afraid to break the Treaty which was ſolemnly made and confirm’d between us by Oath, not to wrong or do one another any Hurt? Oh