through my weakness, which
I shall ever repent, and the temptations of an evil spirit, I opened
that fatal door! But before I had moved my foot to enter, a smell,
pleasant enough but too powerful for my senses, made me faint away.
However, I soon recovered; but instead of taking warning from this
incident to close the door and restrain my curiosity, I entered, and
found myself in a spacious vaulted apartment, illuminated by several
large tapers placed in candlesticks of solid gold.

Among the many objects that attracted my attention was a black horse,
of the most perfect symmetry and beauty. I approached in order the
better to observe him, and found he had on a saddle and bridle of
massive gold, curiously wrought. One part of his manger was filled
with clean barley, and the other with rose water. I laid hold of his
bridle, and led him out to view him by daylight. I mounted, and
endeavored to make him move; but finding he did not stir, I struck him
with a switch I had taken up in his magnificent stable. He had no
sooner felt the whip than he began to neigh in a most horrible manner,
and, extending wings, which I had not before perceived, flew up with
me into the air. My thoughts were fully occupied in keeping my seat;
and, considering the fear that had seized me, I sat well. At length he
directed his course toward the earth, and lighting upon the terrace of
a palace, without giving me time to dismount, he shook me out of the
saddle with such force as to throw me behind him, and with the end of
his tail he struck out my eye.

Thus it was I became blind of one eye. I then recollected the
predictions of the ten young gentlemen. The horse again took wing, and
soon disappeared. I got up, much vexed at the misfortune I had brought
upon myself. I walked upon the terrace, covering my eye with one of my
hands, for it pained me exceedingly, and then descended, and entered
into a hall. I soon discovered, by the ten sofas in a circle and the
eleventh in the middle, lower than the rest, that I was in the castle
whence I had been carried by the roc.

The ten young men seemed not at all surprised to see me, nor at the
loss of my eye; but said, "We are sorry that we cannot congratulate
you on your return, as we could wish; but we 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