The three suitors started at once on their travels, each of them taking opposite ways, and going in search of remarkable things into far different countries.
A long time had not passed before one of the young nobles found a wonderful carpet which would carry rapidly through the air whoever sat upon it.
Another of them found a marvellous telescope, through which he could see everybody and everything in the world, and even the many-coloured sands at the bottom of the great deep sea.
The third found a wonder-working ointment, which could cure every disease in the world, and even bring dead people back to life again.
Now the three noble travellers were far distant from each other when they found these wonderful things. But when the young man who had found the telescope looked through it, he saw one of his former friends and present rivals walking with a carpet on his shoulder, and so he set out to join him. As he could always see, by means of his marvellous telescope, where the other nobleman was, he had no great difficulty in finding him, and when the two had met, they sat side by side on the wonderful carpet, and it carried them through the air until they had joined the third traveller. One day, when each of them had been telling of the remarkable things he had seen in his travels, one of them exclaimed suddenly, “Now let us see what the beautiful princess is doing, and where she is.” Then the noble who had found the telescope, looked through it and saw, to his great surprise and dismay, that the king’s daughter was lying very sick and at the point of death. He told this to his two friends and rivals, and they, too, were thunderstruck at the bad news—until the one who had found the wonder-working ointment, remembering it suddenly, exclaimed, “I am sure I could cure her, if I could only reach the palace soon enough!” On hearing this the noble who had found the wonderful carpet cried out, “Let us sit down on my carpet, and it will quickly carry us to the king’s palace!”
Thereupon the three nobles gently placed themselves in 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.