sultana and the unworthy accomplice of her guilt; and not content with this, he bound himself by a solemn vow, that to prevent the possibility of such misconduct in future, he would marry a new wife every night, and command her to be strangled in the morning. Having imposed this cruel law upon himself, he swore to observe it immediately on the departure of the king his brother, who soon after had a solemn audience of leave, and returned to his own kingdom, laden with the most magnificent presents.
When Schah-zenan was gone, the Sultan began to put into execution his terrible oath. He married every night the daughter of some one of his subjects, who, the next morning, was ordered out to execution, and thus every evening was a maiden married and every morning a wife sacrificed. However repugnant these commands were to the benevolent grand vizier, he was obliged to submit at the peril of the loss of his own head. The report of this unexampled inhumanity spread a panic of universal consternation through the city. In one place a wretched father was in tears for the loss of his daughter; in another, the air resounded with the groans of tender mothers, who dreaded lest the same fate should attend their offspring. And, instead of the praises and blessings with which his subjects had loaded their monarch, they now poured out imprecations on his head.
The grand vizier, who, as has been mentioned, was the unwilling agent of this horrid injustice, had a daughter called
23
