accursed who cozeneth the servants of Allah Almighty!" Then, looking
at the lad, he exclaimed: "O my son,
verily yon tricksy Jew hath
cheated thee and laughed at thee, this
platter being pure silver and
virginal. I have weighed it and found it worth seventy dinars, and, if
thou please to take its value,-take it." Thereupon the Sheikh
counted out to him seventy gold pieces, which he accepted, and
presently thanked him for his kindness in exposing the Jew's
rascality.
And after this,
whenever the price of a
platter was expended, he
would bring another, and on such wise he and his mother were soon in
better circumstances. Yet they ceased not to live after their olden
fashion as
middle-class folk, without spending on diet overmuch or
squandering money. But Aladdin had now thrown off the ungraciousness
of his
boyhood. He shunned the society of scapegraces and he began
to
frequent good men and true, repairing daily to the market street of
the merchants and there companying with the great and small of them,
asking about matters of
merchandise and
learning the price of
investments and so forth. He
likewisefrequented the bazaars of the
goldsmiths and the
jewelers, where he would sit and
divert himself
by inspecting their precious stones and by noting how jewels were sold
and bought
therein. Accordingly, he
presently became ware that the
tree truits
wherewith he had filled his pockets what time he entered
the enchanged treasury were neither glass nor
crystal, but gems rich
and rare, and he understood that he had acquired
immensewealth such
as the kings never can possess. He then considered all the precious
stones which were in the
jewelers' quarter, but found that their
biggest was not worth his smallest.
On this wise he ceased not every day repairing to the bazaar and
making himself familiar with the folk and
winning their
loving will,
and inquiring anent selling and buying, giving and
taking, the dear
and the cheap, until one day of the days when, after rising at dawn
and donning his dress he went forth, as was his wont, to the
jewelers'
bazaar and as he passed along it he heard the crier crying as follows:
"By command of our
magnificent master, the King of the Time and the
Lord of the Age and the Tide, let all the folk lock up their shops and
stores and
retire within their houses, for that the Lady Badr
al-Budur, daughter of the Sultan, designeth to visit the hammam. And
whoso gainsayeth the order shall be punished with death
penalty, and
be his blood upon his own neck!" But when Aladdin heard the
proclamation, he longed to look upon the King's daughter and said in
his mind, "Indeed all the lieges talk of her beauty and loveliness,
and the end of my desires is to see her." Then Aladdin fell to
contriving some means w
hereby he might look upon the Princess Badr
al-Budur, and at last judged best to take his station behind the
hammam door,
whence he might see her face as she entered. Accordingly,
without stay or delay he repaired to the baths before she was expected
and stood a-rear of the entrance, a place
whereat none of the folk
happened to be looking.
Now when the Sultan's daughter had gone the rounds of the city and
its main streets and had solaced herself by sight-
seeing, she
finally reached the hammam, and
whilst entering she raised her veil
and Aladdin saw her favor, he said: "In very truth her fashion
magnifieth her Almighty Fashioner, and glory be to Him Who created her
and adorned her with this beauty and loveliness." His strength was
struck down from the moment he saw her and his thoughts were
distraught. His gaze was dazed, the love of her gat hold of the
whole of his heart, and when he returned home to his mother, he was as
one in
ecstasy. His parent addressed him, but he neither replied nor
denied, and, when she set before him the morning meal he continued
in like case, so quoth she: "O my son, what is't may have befallen
thee? Say me, doth aught ail thee? Let me know what ill hath betided
thee, for,
unlike thy custom, thou speakest not when I bespeak
thee." Thereupon Aladdin (who used to think that all women resembled
his mother and who,
albeit he had heard of the charms of Badr
al-Budur, daughter of the Sultan, yet knew not what "beauty" and
"loveliness" might signify) turned to his parent and exclaimed, "Let
me be!" However, she persisted in praying him to come forward and eat,
so he did her bidding, but hardly touched food. After which he lay
at full length on his bed all the night through in cogitation deep
until morning morrowed.
The same was his condition during the next day, when his mother
was perplexed for the case of her son and
unable to learn what had
happened to him. So, thinking that belike he might be ailing, she drew