Now the
princess was the fairest and most graceful woman of her time, more
elegant than the tender gazelle, blander than the gentle zephyr
and brighter than the moon at her full, confounding the branch
and outdoing the gazelle in the flexile grace of her shape and
movements; and she was fairer and sweeter than her sisters. So,
when she saw her suitor, she went to her chamber and strewed dust
on her head and tore her clothes and fell to buffeting her face
and lamenting and weeping.
Now the prince her brother, who loved her with an exceeding
love, more than her sisters, was then newly returned from a
journey and hearing her weeping and crying, came in to her and
said, 'What ails thee? Tell me and conceal nought from me.' 'O
my brother and my dear one,' answered she, 'if the palace be
straitened upon thy father, I will go out; and if he be
resolved upon a foul thing, I will separate myself from him,
though he consent not to provide for me.' Quoth he, 'Tell me
what means this talk and what has straitened thy breast and
troubled thy humour.' 'O my brother and my dear one,' answered
the princess, 'know that my father hath given me in marriage to
a sorcerer, who brought him, as a gift, a horse of black wood,
and hath stricken him with his craft and his sorcery; but, as
for me, I will none of him, and would, because of him, I had
never come into this world!' Her brother soothed her and
comforted her, then betook himself to his father and said to
him, 'What is this sorcerer to whom thou hast given my youngest
sister in marriage, and what is this present that he hath
brought thee, so that thou hast caused my sister to [almost]
die of chagrin? It is not right that this should be.
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