me and they bury me alive with her. However, after a while, I
comforted myself, saying, "Haply I shall predecease her, or shall
have returned to my own land before she die, for none knoweth
which shall go first and which shall go last." Then I applied
myself to diverting my mind from this thought with various
occupations; but it was not long before my wife sickened and
complained and took to her pillow and fared after a few days to
the mercy of Allah; and the King and the rest of the folk came,
as was their wont, to condole with me and her family and to
console us for her loss and not less to condole with me for
myself. Then the women washed her and arraying her in her richest
raiment and golden ornaments, necklaces and jewellery, laid her
on the bier and bore her to the mountain aforesaid, where they
lifted the cover of the pit and cast her in; after which all my
intimates and acquaintances and my wife's kith and kin came round
me, to farewell me in my lifetime and console me for my own
death, whilst I cried out among them, saying, "Almighty Allah
never made it lawful to bury the quick with the dead! I am a
stranger, not one of your kind; and I cannot abear your custom,
and had I known it I never would have wedded among you!" They
heard me not and paid no heed to my words, but laying hold of me,
bound me by force and let me down into the cavern, with a large
gugglet of sweet water and seven cakes of bread, according to
their custom. When I came to the bottom, they called out to me to
cast myself loose from the cords, but I refused to do so; so they
threw them down on me and, closing the mouth of the pit with the
stones aforesaid, went their ways,--And Shahrazad perceived the
dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

When it was the Five Hundred and Fifty-fourth Night,