Page:Fairy tales from the Arabian nights.djvu/469

 Princess Badroulboudour, and waits to embrace you, and arrange your marriage; therefore lose no time in going to him.'

Aladdin, charmed with this news, made very little reply, but retired to his room. There, after he had rubbed his lamp, the obedient genie appeared. 'Genie,' said Aladdin, 'I want to bathe immediately, and you must afterwards provide me the richest and most magnificent robe ever worn by a monarch.' No sooner were the words out of his mouth, than the genie rendered him, as well as himself, invisible, and transported him into a bath of the finest marble of all sorts of colours; where he was undressed, without seeing by whom, in a neat and spacious hall. From the hall he was led to the bath, and there rubbed and washed with all sorts of scented water. After he had passed through several degrees of heat, he came out, quite a different man from what he was before. When he returned into the hall, he found, instead of his own clothes, a suit the magnificence of which very much surprised him. The genie helped him to dress, and when he had done, transported him back to his own room, where he asked him if he had any other commands. 'Yes,' answered Aladdin, 'I expect you to bring me, as soon as possible, a horse that surpasses in beauty and goodness the best in the sultan's stables, with a saddle, bridle, and harness worth a million of money. I want also twenty slaves, as richly clothed as those who carried the present to the sultan, to walk by my side and follow me, and twenty more to go before me in two ranks. Besides these, bring my mother six women-slaves to wait on her, as richly dressed at least as any of the Princess Badroulboudour's, each loaded with a complete suit fit for any sultaness. I want also ten thousand pieces of gold in ten purses. Go, and make haste.'

As soon as Aladdin had given these orders, the genie disappeared and presently returned with the horse, the forty slaves, ten of whom carried each a purse with one thousand pieces of gold, and six women-slaves, each carrying on her head a different dress for Aladdin's mother, wrapped up in a piece of silver stuff, and presented them all to Aladdin.

Of the ten purses Aladdin took but four, which he gave to his mother, telling her that those were to supply her with necessaries; the other six he left in the hands of the slaves who brought them,