I went home very melancholy at this answer; for the fear of my wife’s dying first, and that I should be interred alive with her, occasioned me very mortifying reflections. But there was no remedy; I must have patience, and submit to the will of God. I trembled, however, at every little indisposition of my wife: but alas! in a little time my fears came upon me all at once, for she fell sick, and died in a few days. Scheherazade stopt here for that time, and resumed the thread of her story next night thus: EIGHTY-FIRST NIGHT. You may judge at my sorrow, continued Sindbad; to be interred alive, seemed to me as deplorable an end as to be devoured by cannibals. But I must submit; the king and all his court would honour the funeral with their presence, and the most considerable people of the city did the like. When all was ready for the ceremony, the corpse was put into a coffin, with all her jewels and magnificent apparel. The cavalcade began, and as second actor in this doleful tragedy, I went next the corpse, with my eyes full of tears, bewailing my deplorable fate. Before I came to the mountain, I made an essay on the minds of the spectators: I addressed myself to the king in the first place, and then to all those who were round me and bowing before them to the earth, to kiss the border of their garments, I prayed them to have compassion upon me. Consider, said I, that I am a stranger, and ought not to be subject to this rigorous law, and that I have another wife and children in my own country. [30] It was to no purpose for me to speak thus, no soul was moved at it; on the contrary, they made haste to let down my wife’s corpse into the pit, and put me down the next moment in an open coffin, with a vessel full of water, and seven loaves. In short, the fatal ceremony being performed, they covered up the mouth of the pit, notwithstanding the excess of my grief, and my lamentable cries.