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 her the satisfaction she required, and began thus: The king, half marble and 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 reduced it to the pond and desert field, which you may have seen: the fishes of four colours in the pond are the four sorts of people, of different religions, who 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 those 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 a hundred blows with an ox-pizzle, which makes me all over blood: and when she has done, covers me with a coarse stuff of goat’s hair, and throws over it this robe of brocade that you see, not to do me honour, but to mock me. After this part of the discourse, the young 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 eyes to heaven, cried out, “Mighty Creator of all things, I submit myself to thy judgments, and to the decrees of thy providence: I endure my calamities with patience, since it is thy will it should be so; but I hope thy 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 may be her unworthy gallant, 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 handsome 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 a 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.