if in that time I cannot restore it, I will offer my head to be disposed of at your pleasure.” To this the sultan consented.
Aladdin went out of the sultan’s palace in a condition of frantic despair. 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 the river, he fell down the bank with so much violence that he rubbed the ring which the magician had given him by holding on the rock to save himself. 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, who had quite forgotten the ring and its magic power, 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.” “Your command,” answered the genie, “is not in my power; I am only the slave of the ring, and not of the lamp.” “I command thee, then,” replied Aladdin, “by the power of the ring, to transport me to the spot where my palace stands, in what part of the world soever it may be.” These words
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