avenue as white as snow, and
thousands of lights lit up everything as light as day. Upon either side
of the avenue stood a row of black slaves, clad in garments of white
silk, and with jewelled turbans upon their heads. Each held a flaming
torch of sandal-wood. Behind the slaves stood a double row of armed men,
and behind them a great crowd of other slaves and attendants, dressed
each as magnificently as a prince, blazing and flaming with innumerable
jewels and ornaments of gold.

But of all these things the young man thought nothing and saw nothing;
for at the end of the marble avenue there arose a palace, the like of
which was not in the four quarters of the earth--a palace of marble and
gold and carmine and ultramarine--rising into the purple starry sky,
and shining in the moonlight like a vision of Paradise. The palace was
illuminated from top to bottom and from end to end; the windows shone
like crystal, and from it came sounds of music and rejoicing.

When the crowd that stood waiting saw the young man appear, they
shouted: "Welcome! Welcome! To the master who has come again! To Aben
Hassen the Fool!"

The young man walked up the avenue of marble to the palace, surrounded
by the armed attendants in their dresses of jewels and gold, and
preceded by dancing-girls as beautiful as houris, who danced and sung
before him. He was dizzy with joy. "All--all this," he exulted, "belongs
to me. And to think that if I had listened to the Talisman of Solomon I
would have had none of it."

That was the way he came back to the treasure of the ancient kings of
Egypt, and to the palace of enchantment that his father had quitted.

For seven months he lived a life of joy and delight, surrounded by
crowds of courtiers as though they were a king, and going from pleasure
to pleasure without end. Nor had he any fear of an end coming to it, for
he knew that his treasure was inexhaustible. He made friends with the
princes and nobles of the land. From far and wide people came to visit
him, and the renown of his magnificence filled all the world. When
men would praise any one they would say, "He is as rich," or as
"magnificent," or as "generous, as Aben Hassen the Fool."

So for seven months he lived a life of joy and delight; then one morning
he awakened and found everything changed to grief and mourning. Where
the day before had been laughter, to-day was crying. Where the day
before had been mirth, to-day was lamentation. All the cit