e rapidly than I could have conceived
possible, and the following morning the princesses were to return to
the castle. But alas! I had explored every corner, save only the room
that was shut in by the Golden Door, and I had no longer anything to
amuse myself with. I stood before the forbidden place for some time,
gazing at its beauty; then a happy inspiration struck me, that because
I unlocked the door it was not necessary that I should enter the
chamber. It would be enough for me to stand outside and view whatever
hidden wonders might be therein.

Thus arguing against my own conscience, I turned the key, when a smell
rushed out that, pleasant though it was, overcame me completely, and I
fell fainting across the threshold. Instead of being warned by this
accident, directly I came to myself I went for a few moments into the
air to shake of the effects of the perfume, and then entered boldly. I
found myself in a large, vaulted room, lighted by tapers, scented with
aloes and ambergris, standing in golden candle-sticks, whilst gold and
silver lamps hung from the ceiling.

Though objects of rare workmanship lay heaped around me, I paid them
scant attention, so much was I struck by a great black horse which
stood in one corner, the handsomest and best-shaped animal I had ever
seen. His saddle and bridle were of massive gold, curiously wrought;
one side of his trough was filled with clean barley and sesame, and the
other with rose water. I led the animal into the open air, and then
jumped on his back, shaking the reins as I did so, but as he never
stirred, I touched him lightly with a switch I had picked up in his
stable. No sooner did he feel the stroke, than he spread his wings
(which I had not perceived before), and flew up with me straight into
the sky. When he had reached a prodigious height, he next darted back
to earth, and alighted on the terrace belonging to a castle, shaking me
violently out of the saddle as he did so, and giving me such a blow
with his tail, that he knocked out my right eye.

Half-stunned as I was with all that had happened to me, I rose to my
feet, thinking as I did so of what had befallen the ten young men, and
watching the horse which was soaring into the clouds. I left the
terrace and wandered on till I came to a hall, which I knew to have
been the one from which the roc had taken me, by the ten blue sofas
against the wall.

The ten young men were not present when I first entered,