eart of Dakianos
engaged him to render it of the greatest severity. To that effect he
caused to be erected in the public square, upon the ashes of his
palace, a throne of iron; he commanded all his Court and all his
troops to be clothed in red,[4] and to be covered with black turbans.
He took care to put on the same habit, with a design of murdering in
one moment five or six hundred thousand souls, whom he resolved to
sacrifice to the safety of his throne, to the manes of his children,
to his lost honour, and to what affected him still more, the incessant
remorse and horror that gnawed his heart. But before he performed this
cruel execution, he resolved once more to visit the cavern, in hopes
that his weapons, the usual confidence of the wicked, might intimidate
those whom by prayers or by menaces he could obtain nothing from. When
he arrived there, he redoubled his usual blasphemies.

[Footnote 4: This colour in the East is a mark of the vengeance of
princes.]

"Tremble, thou wretch!" said Catnier then to him, without any emotion
or so much as raising his head, which lay upon his paws.

"Shall I tremble?" returned Dakianos: "Allah Himself cannot make me
tremble."

"But He can punish thee," pursued Catnier; "thou drawest near thy last
moment."

Dakianos, at that word, listening only to his resentment, took his
arrows and his bow.

"We shall see," said he, "whether I am not redoubtable--to thee at
least."

He then shot an arrow at him with the utmost strength of his arm; but
a supernatural power made it fall at the feet of him who shot it, and
at the same instant there sprang out of the cavern a serpent, which
was above twenty feet in length, and whose dreadful and inflamed look
made him tremble. Dakianos would have taken his flight; but the
serpent soon overtook him, grasped him round the body, and dragged him
through the whole city, that all his subjects might be witnesses of
his terror and of his punishment. He then conveyed him to the iron
throne which he had prepared for the scene of his vengeance. It was
there that, being devoured by degrees, Dakianos by his dreadful
sufferings gave a terrible example of the punishment due to
ingratitude and impiety. The serpent afterwards returned to his cavern
without having done the least hurt to any person, and all the
inhabitants of Ephesus loaded it with benedictions at its departure.

Several Kings succeeded Dakianos, and filled his throne during the
time of one