cursion an excuse for the removal of his
palace with the same suddenness with which it had been erected. He
induced the sultan to send a detachment of his guard, and to have
Aladdin seized as a prisoner of state. On his son-in-law being brought
before him, he would not hear a word from him, but ordered him to be put
to death. The decree caused so much discontent among the people, whose
affection Aladdin had secured by his largesses and charities, that the
sultan, fearful of an insurrection, was obliged to grant him his life.
When Aladdin found himself at liberty, he again addressed the sultan:
"Sire, I pray you to let me know the crime by which I have thus lost the
favour of thy countenance." "Your crime!" answered the sultan, "wretched
man! do you not know it? Follow me, and I will show you." The sultan
then took Aladdin into the apartment from whence he was wont to look at
and admire his palace, and said, "You ought to know where your palace
stood; look, mind, and tell me what has become of it." 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 splendour,
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 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