.'

I thought, 'That ring is known to me!' And he continued, 'Surely I cannot
assist thee in this work other than by revealing the means of
disenchantment, and it is to keep the birds laughing uninterruptedly an
hour; then are they men again, and take the forms of men that are
laughers--I know not why.'

So I cried, ''Tis well! carry me back to Oolb.'

Then the Genie lifted me into the air, and ceased not speeding rapidly
through it, till I was on the roof of the house of Ravaloke. O sweet
youth! moon of my soul! from that time to the disenchantment of
Feshnavat, I pored over my books, trying experiments in magic, dreadful
ones, hunting for talismans to countervail Goorelka; but her power was
great, and 'twas not in me to get her away from the birds one hour to
free them. On a certain occasion I had stolen to them, and kept them
laughing with stories of man to within an instant of the hour; and they
were laughing exultingly with the easy happy laugh of them that perceive
deliverance sure, when she burst in and beat them even to the door of
death. I saw too in her eyes, that glowed like the eyes of wild cats in
the dark, she suspected me, and I called Allah to aid the just cause
against the sinful, and prepared to war with her.

Now, my desire, which was to liberate my father and his fellows in
tribulation, I knew pure, and had no fear of the sequel, as is declared:

Fear nought so much as Fear itself; for arm'd with Fear the Foe
Finds passage to the vital part, and strikes a double blow.

So one day as I leaned from my casement looking on the garden seaward, I
saw a strange red and yellow-feathered bird that flew to the branch of a
citron-tree opposite, with a ring in its beak; and the bird was singing,
and with every note the ring dropped from its bill, and it descended
swiftly in an arrowy slant downward, and seized it ere it reached the
ground, and commenced singing afresh. When I had marked this to happen
many times, I thought, 'How like is this bird to an innocent soul
possessed of magic and using its powers! Lo, it seeketh still to sing as
one of the careless, and cannot relinquish the ring and be as the
careless, and between the two there is neither peace for it nor
pleasure.' Now, while my eyes were on the pretty bird, dwelling on it, I
saw it struck suddenly by an arrow beneath the left wing, and the bird
fluttered to my bosom and dropped in it the ring from its beak. Then it
sprang weakly, and soug