Prince Ahmed was happy for some while, and then he thought of his father, grieving for him, and at last obtained leave from the beautiful genie to go on a visit to his home.  At first his father was glad to see him, but afterwards jealousy of his son and the son’s secret place of dwelling, and suspicion that a son so rich and powerful might have designs on his throne, led his father to lay hard and cruel burdens on Prince Ahmed.

However, all that he commanded Ahmed performed by help of the genie, even things the most impossible.  He brought a tent which would cover the sultan’s army, and yet, folded up, lay in the hollow of a man’s hand.  This and many other wonderful things did Ahmed perform, till the sultan asked for a man one foot and a half in height, with a beard thirty feet long, who could carry a bar of iron weighing five hundredweight.

Such a man the genie found, and the sultan, beholding him, turned away in disgust; whereat the dwarf flew at him in a rage, and with his iron bar smote him to death.

Thus, too, did the little man treat all the wicked courtiers and sorcerers who had incensed the sultan against his son.  And Ahmed and the genie became sultan and sultana of all that world, while Ali and Nouronnihar reigned over a great province bestowed upon them by Prince Ahmed.

As for Houssain, he forsook not the life of a holy man living in the wilderness.

V.—­The Hunchback

There lived long ago a poor tailor with a pretty wife to whom he was tenderly attached.  One day there came to his door a hunchback, who played upon a musical instrument and sang to it so amusingly that the tailor straightway carried him to his wife.  So delighted by the hunchback’s singing was the tailor’s wife that she cooked a dish of fish and the three sat down to be merry.  But in the midst of the feast a bone stuck in the hunchback’s throat, and before a man could stare he was dead.  Afraid that they should be accused of murder, the tailor conspired with his wife what they should do.  “I have it,” said he, and getting a piece of money he sallied forth at dark with the hunchback’s body and arrived before the house of a doctor.

Here knocked he on the door, and giving the maid a piece of money, bade her hasten the doctor to his need.  So soon as the maid’s back was turned, he placed the hunchback on the top stair and fled.  Now the doctor, coming quickly, struck against the corpse so that it fell to the bottom of the stairs.  “Woe is me, for I have killed a patient!” said he, and fearing to be accused of murder, carried the body in to his wife.

Now they had a neighbour who was absent from home, and going to his room they placed the corpse against the fireplace.  This man, returning and crying out:  “So it is not the rats who plunder my larder!” began to belabour the hunchback, till the body rolled over and lay still.  Then in great fear of his deed, this Mussulman carried the corpse into the street, and placed it upright against a shop.