thought it of no great importance to you to be informed of such circumstances; and though I know not how this mystery has been revealed to you, I cannot deny but your information is correct.  I have married the fairy you speak of.  I love her, and am persuaded she loves me in return.  But I can say nothing as to the influence your majesty believes I have over her.  It is what I have not yet proved, nor thought of trying, but could wish you would dispense with my making the experiment, and let me enjoy the happiness of loving and being beloved, with all that disinterestedness I had proposed to myself.  However, the demand of a father is a command upon every child, who, like me, thinks it his duty to obey him in every thing.  And though it is with the greatest reluctance, I will not fail to ask my wife the favour your majesty desires, but cannot promise you to obtain it; and if I should not have the honour to come again to pay you my respecls, it will be the sign that I have not been able to succeed in my request:  but beforehand, I desire you to forgive me, and consider that you yourself have reduced me to this extremity.”

“Son,” replied the sultan of the Indies, “I should be sorry that what I ask should oblige you to deprive me of the gratification of seeing you as usual.  I find you do not know the power a husband has over a wife; and yours would shew that her love to you was very slight, if, with the power she possesses as a fairy, she should refuse so trifling a request as that I have begged you to make.  Lay aside your fears, which proceed from your believing yourself not to be loved so well as you love her.  Go; only ask her.  You will find the fairy loves you better than you imagine; and remember that people, for want of requesting, often lose great advantages.  Think with yourself, that as you love her, you could refuse her nothing; therefore, if she loves you, she will not deny your requests.”

All these representations of the sultan of the Indies could not satisfy prince Ahmed, who would rather he had asked anything else than, as he supposed, what must expose him to the hazard of displeasing his beloved Perie Banou; and so great was his vexation that he left the court two days sooner than he used to do.

When he returned, the fairy, to whom he always before had appeared with a gay countenance, asked him the cause of the alteration she perceived in his looks; and finding that instead of answering he inquired after her health, to avoid satisfying her, she said to him, “I will answer your question when you have answered mine.”  The prince declined a long time, protesting that nothing was the matter with him; but the more he denied the more she pressed him, and said, “I cannot bear to see you thus:  tell me what makes you uneasy, that I may remove the cause, whatever it may be; for it must be very extraordinary if it is out of my power, unless it be the death of the sultan your father; in that case, time, with all that I will contribute on my part, can alone comfort you.”