I followed her advice, and my fears were so great that I forgot my hatchet and cords.  I was scarcely got to the stairs by which I came down, when the enchanted palace opened at once, and made a passage for the genie.  He asked the princess, in great anger, what has happened to you, and why did you call me?  A qualm at my stomach, said the princess, made me fetch this bottle which you see here, out of which I drank twice or thrice, and by mischance made a false step, and fell upon the talisman, which is broken, and that is all the matter.

At this answer the furious genie told her, You are a false woman and a liar.  How came that axe and those ropes there?  I never saw them till this moment, said the princess.  Your coming in such an impetuous manner has, it may be, forced them up in some place as you came along, and so brought them hither without your knowing it.

The genie made no other answer but what was accompanied with reproaches and blows, of which I heard the noise.  I could not endure to hear the pitiful cries and shouts of the princess so cruelly abused; I had already laid off the suit she made me put on, and taken my own, which I had laid on the stairs the day before, when I came out of the bagnio.  I made haste up stairs, being so much the more full of sorrow and compassion that I had been the cause of so great a misfortune; and that, by sacrificing the fairest princess on earth to the barbarity of a most merciless genie, I was become the most criminal and ungrateful of mankind.  It is true, said I, she has been a prisoner these twenty-five years; but, setting liberty aside, she wanted nothing that could make her happy.  My madness has put an end to her happiness, and brought upon her the cruelty of an unrelenting devil.  I let down the trap-door, covered it again with earth, and returned to the city with a burden of wood, which I bound up without knowing what I did, so great were my trouble and sorrow.

My landlord, the tailor, was very much rejoiced to see me.  Your absence, said he, has disquieted me very much, by reason you had intrusted in with the secret of your birth, and I knew not what to think.  I was afraid that somebody had known you; God be thanked for your return.  I thanked him for his zeal and affection, but never a word durst I say of what had passed, nor the reason why I came back without my hatchet and cords.

I retired to my chamber, where I reproached myself a thousand times for my excessive imprudence.  Nothing, said I, could have paralleled the princess’s good fortune and mine, had I foreborn to break the talisman.

While I was thus giving myself over to melancholy thoughts, the tailor came in and told me, An old man, said he, whom I do not know, brings me your hatchet and cords, which he found in his way, as he tells me, and understood, by your comrades that go along with you to the woods, that you lodge here.  Come out and speak to him, for he will deliver them to none but yourself.