replied the queen, "why do you reproach me thus?" "The cries,"
returned the sultan, "the groans and tears of thy husband, whom thou
treatest every day with so much indignity and barbarity, prevent my
sleeping night or day. Hadst thou disenchanted him, I should long since
have been cured, and have recovered the use of my speech. This is the
cause of my silence, of which you complain." "Well," said the
enchantress, "to pacify you, I am ready to execute your commands; would
you have me restore him?" "Yes," replied the sultan; "make haste to set
him at liberty, that I be no longer disturbed by his lamentations." The
enchantress went immediately out of the Palace of Tears; she took a cup
of water, and pronounced some words over it, which caused it to boil, as
if it had been on the fire. She afterward proceeded to the young king,
and threw the water upon him, saying: "If the Creator of all things did
form thee as thou art at present, or if He be angry with thee, do not
change; but if thou art in that condition merely by virtue of my
enchantments, resume thy natural shape, and become what thou wast
before." She had scarcely spoken these words when the prince, finding
himself restored to his former condition, rose up and returned thanks to
God. The enchantress then said to him, "Get thee from this castle, and
never return on pain of death." The young king, yielding to necessity,
went away without replying a word, and retired to a remote place, where
he patiently awaited the event of the design which the sultan had so
happily begun. Meanwhile the enchantress returned to the Palace of
Tears, and supposing that she still spoke to the black, said, "Dear
love, I have done what you required; nothing now prevents your rising
and giving me the satisfaction of which I have so long been deprived."

The sultan, still counterfeiting the pronunciation of the black, said:
"What you have now done is by no means sufficient for my cure; you have
only removed a part of the evil; you must cut it up by the root." "My
lovely black," resumed the queen, "what do you mean by the root?"
"Wretched woman," replied the sultan, "understand you not that I allude
to the town and its inhabitants, and the four islands, destroyed by thy
enchantments? The fish every night at midnight raise their heads out of
the lake, and cry for vengeance against thee and me. This is the true
cause of the delay of my cure. Go speedily, restore things to their
former state, and