Thereupon the three nobles gently placed themselves on the carpet, which rose instantly in the air, and carried them direct to the king’s palace.
The king received them immediately; but said very sadly, ‘I am sorry for you; for all your travels have been in vain. My daughter is just dying, so she can marry none of you!’
But the nobleman who possessed the wonder-working ointment said respectfully, ‘Do not fear, sire, the princess will not die!’ And on being permitted to enter the apartment where she lay sick, he placed the ointment so that she could smell it. In a few moments the princess revived, and when her waiting-women had rubbed a little of the ointment in her skin she recovered so quickly that in a few days she was better than she had been before she was taken ill.
The king was so glad to have his daughter given back to him, as he thought, from the grave, that he declared that she should marry no one but the young nobleman whose wonderful ointment had cured her.
But now a great dispute arose between the three young nobles; the one who possessed the ointment affirmed that had he not found it the princess would have died, and could not, therefore, have married any one; the noble who owned the telescope declared that had he not found the wonderful telescope they would never have known that the princess was dying, and so his friend would not have brought the ointment to cure her; whilst the third noble proved to them that had he not found the wonderful carpet, neither the finding of the ointment nor the telescope would have helped the princess, since they could not have travelled such a great distance in time to save her.
The king, overhearing this dispute, called the young noblemen to him, and said to them, ‘My lords, from what you have said, I see that I cannot, with justice, give my daughter to any of you; therefore, I pray you to give up altogether the idea of marrying her, and that you continue friends as you always were before you became rivals.’
The three young nobles saw that the king had decided justly; so they all left their native country, and went into a far-off desert to live like hermits. And the king gave the princess to another of his great nobles.
Many, many years had passed away since the marriage of the princess, when her husband was sent by her father to a distant country with which the king was waging war. The nobleman took his wife, the princess, with him, as he was uncertain how long he might be forced to remain abroad. Now it happened that a violent storm arose just as the vessel, in which the princess and her husband were, was approaching a strange coast, and in the height of the great tempest the ship dashed on some rocks, and went to pieces instantly. All the people on board perished in the waves, excepting only the princess, who clung very fast to a boat, and was carried by the wind and the tide to the sea-shore. There she found what seemed to be an uninhabited country, and, finding a small cave in a rock, she lived in it alone three years, feeding on wild herbs and fruits. She searched every day to find some way out of the forest which surrounded her cave, but could find none. One day, however, when she had wandered farther than usual from the cave where she lived, she came suddenly on another cave, which had, to her great astonishment, a small door. She tried over and over again to open the door, thinking she would pass the night in the cave; but all her efforts were unavailing, it was shut so fast. At length, however, a deep voice from within the cave called out, ‘Who is at the door?’
At this the princess was so surprised that she could not answer for some moments; when, however, she had recovered a little, she said, ‘Open me the door!’ Immediately the door was opened from within, and she saw, with sudden terror, an old man with a thick grey beard reaching below his waist, and long white hair flowing over his shoulders.
What frightened the princess the more was her finding a man living here in the same desert where she had lived herself three years without seeing a single soul.