If his majesty has any confidence in
my advice, as genies and fairies can do things impracticable to
men, he will touch Prince Ahmed's honour, and engage him, by means
of the fairy, to procure certain advantages. For example, every
time your majesty takes the field you are obliged to go to a great
expense, not only in pavilions and tents for yourself and army, but
likewise in mules and camels, and other beasts of burden, to carry
their baggage. Might you not request him to use his interest with
the fairy to procure you a tent which might be carried in a man's
hand, and which should be large enough to shelter your whole army?
'I need say no more to your majesty. If the prince brings such a
tent, you may make a great many other demands of the same nature,
so that at last he may sink under the difficulties and the
impossibility of executing them, however fertile in invention the
fairy who has enticed him from you by her enchantments may be; so
that in time he will be ashamed to appear, and will be forced to
pass the rest of his life with his fairy, excluded from any
connection with this world; and then your majesty will have nothing
to fear, and cannot be reproached with so detestable an action as
the shedding of a son's blood, or confining him in a prison for
life.
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