The sultan, to be assured of the truth, rose up instantly, and went up into the hall, where, when he saw the African magician dead, and his face already livid by the strength of the poison, he embraced Aladdin with great tenderness, and said, “My son, be not displeased at my proceedings against you; they arose from my paternal love, and therefore you ought to forgive the excesses to which it hurried me.” “Sir,” replied Aladdin, “I have not the least reason to complain of your majesty’s conduct, since you did nothing but what your duty required of you. This infamous magician, the basest of men, was the sole cause of my misfortune. When your majesty has leisure, I will give you an account of another villainous action he was guilty of to me, which was no less black and base than this, from which I was preserved by the grace of God in a very particular manner.” “I will take an opportunity, and that very shortly,” replied the sultan, “to hear it; but in the meantime let us think only of rejoicing, and the removal of this odious object.” Aladdin ordered the magician’s dead carcass to be removed and thrown on the dunghill, for the birds and beasts to prey upon. In the meantime the sultan commanded the drums, trumpets, cymbals, and other instruments of music, to announce the public joy, and a feast of ten days to be proclaimed for joy of the return of the princess Badr-oul-boudour, and Aladdin with his palace. Thus Aladdin escaped a second time the almost inevitable danger of losing his life: but this was not the last, since he ran as great a hazard a third time, the circumstances of which I shall relate. The African magician had a younger brother, who was a great necromancer, and even surpassed him in villainy and pernicious designs. As they did not live together, or in the same city, but oftentimes when one was in the east the other was in the west, they failed not every year to inform themselves, by their art of necromancy, where each other was, how they did, and whether they stood in need of each other’s assistance. Some time after the African magician had failed in his enterprise against Aladdin’s happiness, his younger brother, who had not heard any tidings of him for a year, and was not in Africa, but in a distant country, had the curiosity to know in what part of the world he was, how he did, and what he was doing; and as he, as well as his brother, always carried a geomantic square instrument about him, he prepared the sand, cast the points, and drew the figures. On examining the houses, he found that his brother was no longer living; by another house, that he had been poisoned, and died suddenly; and by another, that it was in the capital of the kingdom of China; and that the person who poisoned him was of mean birth, and married to a princess, a sultan’s daughter.