obliged to leave him till the commencement of the new year. In the
mean time they give him for his amusement the keys of one hundred
apartments, all but one of which he is permitted to open. He is
delighted with the wonders of these apartments till the last day. On
that day he opens the forbidden room, where the rarity that most
strikes him is a black horse of admirable shape and appearance, with
a saddle and bridle of gold. He leads this horse into the open air,
and is tempted to mount him. The horse first stands still; but at
length, being touched with a switch, spreads a pair of wings which the
prince had not before perceived, and mounts to an amazing height in
the air. The horse finally descends on the terrace of a castle, where
he throws his rider, and leaves him, having first dashed out his right
eye with a sudden swing of his tail. The prince goes down into the
castle, and to his surprise finds himself in company with the ten
young men, blind of one eye, who had passed through the same adventure
as he had done, and all been betrayed by means of the same infirmity.
PERSIAN TALES.
These two stories are from the Arabian Nights: the two following are
from the Persian Tales.--Fadlallah, king of Mousel, contracted an
intimacy with a young dervise, a species of Turkish friar, who makes a
vow of perpetual poverty. The dervise, to ingratiate himself the more
with the prince, informed him of a secret he possessed, by means of a
certain incantation, of projecting his soul into the body of any dead
animal he thought proper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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