behaviour; the virgin you have brought me is beautiful and
chaste, and I am pleased with the restraint you have put upon
yourself to be as good as your promise to me. Return to your
dominions, and when you shall enter the subterraneous room, where
the eight statues are, you shall find the ninth which I promised
you. I will make my genii carry it thither." Zeyn thanked the
sultan, and returned to Cairo with Mobarec, but did not stay long
in Egypt, for his impatience to see the ninth statue made him
hasten his departure. However, he could not but often think
regretfully of the young virgin he had married; and blaming
himself for having deceived her, he looked upon himself as the
cause and instrument of her misfortune. "Alas!" said he to
himself, "I have taken her from a tender father, to sacrifice her
to a genie. O incomparable beauty! you deserve a better fate."

Sultan Zeyn, disturbed with these thoughts, at length reached
Bussorah, where his subjects made extraordinary rejoicings for
his return. He went directly to give an account of his journey
to his mother, who was in a rapture to hear that he had obtained
the ninth statue. "Let us go, my son," said she, "let us go and
see it, for it is certainly in the subterraneous chamber, since
the sultan of the genii told you you should find it there." The
young sultan and his mother, being both impatient to see the
wonderful statue, went down into the room of the statues; but how
great was their surprise, when, instead of a statue of diamonds,
they beheld on the ninth pedestal a most beautiful virgin, whom
the prince knew to be the same whom he had conducted into the
island of the genii! "Prince," said the young maid, "you are
surprised to see me here; you expected to have found something
more precious than me, and I question not but that you now repent