In the meantime the First Vizier expected with impatience the account of Aladin's execution, and when he heard that it was delayed, he assembled his associates, and thus addressed the Second Vizier:
"The favourite has found means to suspend the execution of his sentence. I have done my duty in determining the King to an act of justice. It now belongs to you to do yours by representing to him the wrong which he does in forgetting the duties of the throne, and in withholding so long the punishment of a crime that has been proved. Make your remonstrances to his Majesty, and give them that force which both his personal safety and ours requires."
The next morning, as soon as access could be had to Bohetzad, Baharon (for that was the name of the Second Vizier) was introduced to the King.
"Sire," said this minister to him, "I heard in the retirement of my closet, and amid the important business with which I am entrusted, of the insult your Majesty has received. Excuse the zeal by which I am animated if I offer your Majesty all the service which can arise from my experience and attachment to you to stop the progress of this evil."
The King thought Baharon might really be ignorant of the event which had happened within the palace, and told him the crime of which Aladin was guilty.
The Vizier seemed to shake as he listened to this report.
"Sire," said he to the King, as soon as he had done speaking, "if the son of a chief of villains, brought up and nourished amidst guilt, could have been capable of virtuous sentiments, this phenomenon would have contradicted experience, and even proved it deceitful. I will here venture to recall to your Majesty a fable of our ancestors which tradition has preserved to us:
"In ancient times a young wolf was put to school, to endeavour, by instruction, to correct his natural propensity to voracity. His master, in order to teach him to read, transcribed, in large characters, some letters of the alphabet, and attempted to make him understand these signs. But instead of reading K L S, as it was written, the savage animal read fluently Kid, Lamb, Sheep. He was governed by instinct, and his nature was incorrigible. The son of a robber is in the very same situation: vice is coeval with his existence. From the beginning he is an infected mass, which it is impossible to purify. But what astonishes me most, sire, is that such a criminal should have survived one moment the insult he has offered to the Crown."
These remonstrances of the Second Vizier having enraged the mind of the monarch still more, he ordered the prisoner to be brought in chains into his presence. He was obeyed.
Aladin appeared. The King, doing violence to the sentiments which moved him in his favour, addressed him with the greatest severity.