are not the
cause of your misfortune." "I should do you wrong," I replied, "to lay
it to your charge; I have only myself to accuse." "If," said they, "it
be a subject of consolation to the afflicted to know that others share
their sufferings, you have in us this alleviation of your misfortune.
All that has happened to you we have also endured; we each of us tasted
the same pleasures during a year; and we had still continued to enjoy
them, had we not opened the golden door, when the princesses were
absent. You have been no wiser than we, and have incurred the same
punishment. We would gladly receive you into our company, to join with
us in the penance to which we are bound, and the duration of which we
know not. But we have already stated to you the reasons that render this
impossible: depart, therefore, and proceed to the court of Bagdad, where
you will meet with the person who is to decide your destiny." After they
had explained to me the road I was to travel, I departed from them, with
mournful heart and weeping eye, and, God having decreed me a safe
journey hither, I arrived at Bagdad, after I had shaved my beard, and
become a mendicant. Praise be to God, whose name be exalted, and whose
purposes concerning me are as yet hid in darkness.

THE STORY OF THE CITY OF BRASS

There was, in olden time, in Damascus of Syria, a king, named
Abd-El-Melik the son of Marwan; and he was sitting, one day, having with
him the great men of his empire, consisting of kings and sultans, when a
discussion took place among them, respecting the traditions of former
nations. They called to mind the stories of Solomon, son of David, and
the dominion which God had bestowed upon him over mankind, and the
genies, and the birds, and the wild beasts, and they said: "We have
heard from those who were before us, that God bestowed not upon any one
the power which He bestowed upon Solomon, so that he used to imprison
the genies and the devils in bottles of brass, and pour molten lead over
them, and seal a cover over them with his signet."

Then Talib, one of the sultans, related, that a man once embarked in a
ship with a company of others, and they voyaged to the island of Sicily
and ceased not in their course until there arose against them a wind
which bore them away to an unknown land. This happened during the black
darkness of night, and when the day shone forth, there came out to them,
from caves in that land, people of black complexio