📔 The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night

Follow me and fear naught, for I know forty modes of magic by the least of which I could make this city a dashing sea, swollen with clashing billows, and ensorcel each damsel therein to a fish, and all before dawn.

Then he turned to me and said, "O mortal, we have it in our law that, when the wife committeth advowtry it is lawful for us to slay her."

Of a surety none murdered the damsel but I; take her wreak on me this moment; for, an thou do not thus, I will require it of thee before Almighty Allah.

I drew near and perceived that the light came from a precious stone as big as an ostrich egg, set at the upper end of the alcove upon a little chryselephantine couch of ivory and gold; and this jewel, blazing like the sun, cast its rays wide and side.

Then Miriam wept passing sore wherethan naught could be more, making sure of separation, and cried to the druggist's wife, “O my mother, said I not to thee that my lord Nur al-Din had been tricked into selling me? […]

[…] and kissed King Hasan's hands and did homage to him, and swore lealty to him.

Then she stood up; and, pronouncing some word to me unintelligible, she said: — By virtue of my egromancy become thou half stone and half man; whereupon I became what thou seest, unable to rise or sit, and neither dead nor alive.

And they began disputing about futtering her.

[…] and awakening, saw a serpent like a dragon, a seldseen sight.

So she brought him the China bowl saying in herself, “I shall know what to do when I find out if the words of my child concerning these jewels be soothfast or not”; […]