“For instance, what can you do for me?” said the young man.
“I can do whatsoever you ask me; I can make you rich.”
“You can make me rich?”
“Yes, I can make you richer than a king.”
“Then make me rich as soon as you can,” said Aben Hassen the Fool, “and that is all that I shall ask of you now.”
“It shall be done,” said the Demon; “spend all that thou canst spend, and thou shalt always have more. Has my lord any further commands for his slave?”
“No,” said the young man, “there is nothing more; you may go now.”
And thereupon the Demon vanished like a flash.
“And to think,” said the young man, as he came up out of the vault—“and to think that all this I should never have found if I had obeyed the Talisman.”
Such riches were never seen in that land as the young man now possessed. There was no end to the treasure that poured in upon him. He lived like an emperor. He built a palace more splendid than the palace of the king. He laid out vast gardens of the most exquisite beauty, in which there were fountains as white as snow, trees of rare fruit and flowers that filled all the air with their perfume, summer-houses of alabaster and ebony.