Though the caliph pronounced these words very distinctly, the three ladies heard him well enough, yet the vizier out of ceremony, repeated them.

Zobeide, after the caliph by his address had encouraged her, began thus: 

The Story of Zobeide.

Commander of the faithful, the relation which I am about to give your majesty is singularly extraordinary.  The two black bitches and myself are sisters by the same father and mother; and I shall acquaint you by what strange accident they came to be metamorphosed.  The two ladies who live with me, and are now here, are also my sisters by the father’s side, but by another mother:  she that has the scars upon her breast is named Amene; the name of the other is Safie, and my own Zobeide.

After our father’s death, the property that he left was equally divided among us, and as soon as these two sisters received their portions, they left me to live with their mother.  My other two sisters and myself stayed with our mother, who was then alive, and who when she afterwards died left each of us a thousand sequins.  As soon as we had received our portions, the two eldest (for I am the youngest) married, and left me alone.  Some time after, my eldest sister’s husband sold all that he had, and with that money and my sister’s portion they went both into Africa, where her husband, by riotous living and debauchery’ spent all; and finding himself reduced to poverty, found a pretext for divorcing my sister, and put her away.

She returned to this city, and having suffered incredible hardships by the way, came to me in so lamentable a condition that it would have moved the hardest heart to compassion to behold her.  I received her with every possible tenderness, and inquiring into the cause of her distress, she told me with tears how inhumanly her husband had behaved towards her.  Her misfortunes affected me:  and I mingled my tears with hers.  I took her to a bath, clothed her with my own apparel, and thus addressed her:  “Sister, you are the elder, and I esteem you as my mother:  during your absence, God has blest the portion that fell to my share, and the employment I follow of breeding silk-worms.  Assure yourself there is nothing I have but is at your service, and as much at your disposal as my own.”

We lived very comfortably together for some months.  As we were one day conversing about our third sister, and wondering we received no intelligence of her, she came in as bad a condition as the eldest:  her husband had treated her after the same manner; and I received her likewise with the same affection as I had done the former.