The genie obeyed Aladdin as faithfully and exactly as the day before: the grand vizier’s son passed the night as coldly and disagreeably as before, and the princess had the mortification again to have Aladdin for her bedfellow, with the sabre between them. The genie, according to Aladdin’s orders, came the next morning, and brought the bridegroom and laid him by his bride, and then carried the bed and new-married couple back again to the palace.
The sultan, after the reception the princess Badr-oul-boudour had given him that day, was very anxious to know how she passed the second night, and if she would give him the same reception, and therefore went into her chamber as early as the morning before. The grand vizier’s son, more ashamed and mortified with the ill success of this last night, no sooner heard him coming, but he jumped out of bed, and ran hastily into the wardrobe. The sultan went to the princess’s bed-side, and after the caresses he had given her the former morning, bid her good-morrow. “Well, daughter,” he said, “are you in a better humour than you were yesterday morning?” Still the princess was silent, and the sultan perceived her to be more troubled, in greater confusion than before, and doubted not but that something very extraordinary was the cause; but provoked that his daughter should conceal it, he said to her in a rage, with his sabre in his hand, “Daughter, tell me what is the matter, or I will cut off your head immediately.”
The princess, more frightened at the menaces and tone of the enraged sultan, than at the sight of the drawn sabre, at last broke silence, and said, with tears in her eyes, “My dear father and sultan, I ask your majesty’s pardon if I have offended you, and hope, that out of your goodness and clemency you will have compassion on me, when I have told you in what a miserable condition I have spent this last night and the night before.”
After this preamble, which appeased and affected the sultan, she told him what had happened to her in so moving a manner, that he, who loved her tenderly, was most sensibly grieved. She added, “If your majesty doubts the truth of this account, you may inform yourself from my husband, who, I am persuaded, will tell you the same thing.”