When she came home she told her son what she had heard. He said, ‘That will not be, because the daughter of the Sultan will have to marry me!’ but she only laughed at him. The next day he brought her three neat little baskets filled with the precious stones which he had gathered in the under-ground garden, and he said, ‘These you must take to the Sultan, and say I want to marry his daughter.’ But she was afraid and would not go; and when at last he made her go, she stood in a corner apart behind all the people, for there was a public audience, and came back and said she could not get at the Sultan; but he made her go again the next two days following, and she always did the same. The last day, however, the Sultan sent for her, saying, ‘Who is that old woman standing in the corner quite apart? bring her to me.’ So they brought her to him all trembling.
‘Don’t be afraid, old woman,’ said the Sultan. ‘What have you to say?’
‘My son, who must have lost his senses, sent me to say he wanted to marry the daughter of the Sultan,’ said the old woman, crying for very fear; ‘and he sends these baskets as a present.’
When the Sultan took the baskets and saw of what great value were the contents, he said, ‘Don’t be afraid, old woman; go back and tell your son I will give him an answer in a month.’
She went back and told her son; but at the end of a week the princess was married, nevertheless, to the son of the Grand Vizier.
‘There!’ said the mother, when she heard it; ‘I thought the Grand Sultan was only making game of you. Was it likely that the daughter of the Sultan should marry a beggar,[7] like you?’
‘Don’t be in too great a hurry, mother,’ replied the lad; ‘leave it to me, leave it to me.’[8]
With that he went and took out the old lantern, and rubbed it till One appeared asking his pleasure.
‘Go to-night, at three hours of night,’[9] was his reply, ‘and take the daughter of the Sultan and lay her in a poor wallet in the out-house here.’
At three hours of night he went into the out-house and found the princess on the poor wallet as he had commanded. Then he laid his sabre on the bed between them, and sat down and talked to her; but she was too frightened to answer him. This he did three nights running. The princess, however, went crying to her mother, and told her all that had happened. The Sultana could not imagine how it was. ‘But,’ she said, ‘something wrong there must be;’ and she went and told the Sultan, and he, too, said it was all wrong, and that the marriage must be annulled. Also the son of the Grand Vizier went to his father and complained, saying, ‘Every night my wife disappears just at bed-time, and, though the door is locked, I see nothing of her till the next morning.’