"
Aladdin did so, and being utterly amazed at the loss of his palace,
was speechless. At last recovering himself, he said, "It is true, I do
not see the palace. It is vanished; but I had no concern in its
removal. I beg you to give me forty days, and if in that time I cannot
restore it, I will offer my head to be disposed of at your pleasure."
"I give you the time you ask, but at the end of the forty days forget
not to present yourself before me."
Aladdin went out of the sultan's palace in a condition of exceeding
humiliation. The lords who had courted him in the days of his splendor
now declined to have any communication with him. For three days he
wandered about the city, exciting the wonder and compassion of the
multitude by asking everybody he met if they had seen his palace, or
could tell him anything of it. On the third day he wandered into the
country, and as he was approaching a river he fell down the bank with
so much violence that he rubbed the ring which the magician had given
him so hard, by holding on to the rock to save himself, that
immediately the same genie appeared whom he had seen in the cave where
the magician had left him.
"What wouldst thou have?" said the genie. "I am ready to obey thee as
thy slave, and the slave of all those that have that ring on their
finger; both I and the other slaves of the ring."
Aladdin, agreeably surprised at an offer of help so little expected,
replied, "Genie, show me where the palace I caused to be built now
stands, or transport it back where it first stood.
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