and the Fairy | | RF 99

can do things impracticable to men, he will touch Prince Ahmed’s
honour, and engage him, by means of the fairy, to procure certain
advantages. For example, every time your majesty takes the
field you are obliged to go to a great expense, not only in
pavilions and tents for yourself and army, but likewise in mules
and camels, and other beasts of. burden, to carry their baggage.
Might you not request him to use his interest with the fairy to
procure you a tent which might be carried in a man’s hand, and
which should be large enough to shelter your whole army ?

‘I need say no more to your majesty. If the prince brings |
such a tent, you may make a great many other demands of the —
same natore, so that at last he may sink under the difficulties and
the impossibility of executing them, however fertile in. invention
the fairy who has enticed him from you by her enchantments
may be; so that in time he will be ashamed to appear, and will
be forced to pass the rest of his life with his fairy, excluded
from any connection With this: world; and then your majesty will
-have nothing to fear, and cannot be reproached with so detestable
an action as the shedding of a son’s blood, or confining. him in a
prison for life.’ ;

When the magician had finished her speech, the sultan asked his
favourites if they had anything better to propose ; and finding them
all silent, determined to follow the magician’s advice, as the most
reasonable and the most suited to his mild manner of government.

The next day, when the prince came into his father’s presence
and had sat down by*him, after a conversation on different subjects,

the sultan said, ‘Son, when you came and dispelled those clouds
of melancholy which your long absence had brought upon me, you
made the place you had chosen for your retreat a mystery to me.
_ I was satisfied with seeing you again, and knowing that you were
‘content with your condition, without wishing to penetrate into your
‘secret, which I found you did not care I should, I know not what

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