'Daughter,' replied the king, 'you need not be scandalized, it is only one of my emirs who is come to demand you in marriage.'
'It is not, I perceive, the person that you have already given me, and whose faith is plighted by the ring I wear,' replied the princess; 'be not offended that I will never marry any other.'
The emir expected the princess would have said or done some extravagant thing, and was not a little disappointed when he heard her talk so calmly and rationally; for then he understood what was really the matter. He dared not explain himself to the king, who would not have suffered the princess to give her hand to any other than the person to whom he wished to give her with his own hand. He therefore threw himself at his majesty's feet, and said, 'After what I have heard and observed, sir, it will be to no purpose for me to think of curing the princess, since I have no remedies suited to her malady, for which reason I humbly submit my life to your majesty's pleasure.' The king, enraged at his incapacity and the trouble he had given him, caused him immediately to be beheaded.
Some days afterwards, his majesty, unwilling to have it said that he had neglected his daughter's cure, put forth a proclamation in his capital, to the effect that if there were any physician, astrologer, or magician, who would undertake to restore the princess to her senses, he need only come, and he should be employed, on condition of losing his head if he miscarried. He had the same published in the other principal cities and towns of his dominions, and in the courts of the princes his neighbours.
The first that presented himself was an astrologer and magician, whom the king caused to be conducted to the princess's prison. The astrologer drew forth out of a bag he carried under his arm an astrolabe, a small sphere, a chafing dish, several sorts of drugs for fumigations, a brass pot, with many other things, and desired he might have a fire lighted.
The princess demanded what all these preparations were for.
'Madam,' answered the astrologer, 'they are to exorcise the evil spirit that possesses you, to shut him up in this pot, and throw him into the sea.'
'Foolish astrologer,' replied the princess, 'I have no occasion for any of your preparations, but am in my perfect senses, and you alone are mad. If your art can bring him I love to me, I shall be obliged to you; otherwise you may go about your business, for I have nothing to do with you.'
'Madam,' said the astrologer, 'if your case be so, I shall desist from all endeavours, believing that only the king your father can remedy your disaster.' So putting up his apparatus again, he marched away, very much concerned that he had so easily undertaken to cure an imaginary malady.
Coming to give an account to the king of what he had done, he began thus boldly: 'According to what your majesty published in your proclamation, and what you were pleased to confirm to me yourself, I thought the princess was distracted, and depended on being able to recover her by the secrets I have long been acquainted with, but I soon found that your majesty alone is the physician who can cure her, by giving her in marriage the person whom she desires.'