they were
minutes, till the princess said that she could be no longer absent from
her father. Then Virgilius conducted her himself over the airy bridge,
and laid her gently down on her own bed, where she was found next
morning by her father.

She told him all that had happened to her, and he pretended to be very
much interested, and begged that the next time Virgilius came he might
be introduced to him.

Soon after, the sultan received a message from his daughter that the
stranger was there, and he commanded that a feast should be made ready,
and, sending for the princess delivered into her hands a cup, which he
said she was to present to Virgilius herself, in order to do him honour.

When they were all seated at the feast the princess rose and presented
the cup to Virgilius, who directly he had drunk fell into a deep sleep.

Then the sultan ordered his guards to bind him, and left him there till
the following day.

Directly the sultan was up he summoned his lords and nobles into his
great hall, and commanded that the cords which bound Virgilius should be
taken off, and the prisoner brought before him. The moment he appeared
the sultan's passion broke forth, and he accused his captive of the
crime of conveying the princess into distant lands without his leave.

Virgilius replied that if he had taken her away he had also brought her
back, when he might have kept her, and that if they would set him free
to return to his own land he would come hither no more.

'Not so!' cried the sultan, 'but a shameful death you shall die!' And
the princess fell on her knees, and begged she might die with him.

'You are out in your reckoning, Sir Sultan!' said Virgilius, whose
patience was at an end, and he cast a spell over the sultan and his
lords, so that they believed that the great river of Babylon was flowing
through the hall, and that they must swim for their lives. So, leaving
them to plunge and leap like frogs and fishes, Virgilius took the
princess in his arms, and carried her over the airy bridge back to Rome.

Now Virgilius did not think that either his palace, or even Rome itself,
was good enough to contain such a pearl as the princess, so he built her
a city whose foundations stood upon eggs, buried far away down in the
depths of the sea. And in the city was a square tower, and on the roof
of the tower was a rod of iron, and across the rod he laid a bottle, and
on the bottle he placed an egg, and from the egg there