Stormonu
NeoGrognard
Thought this seemed appropriate
From the Arabian Nights said:The fisherman, having finished his prayer, cast his nets the fourth time; and when he thought it was time, he drew them as before, with great difficulty; but, instead of fish, found nothing in them but a vessel of yellow copper, which by its weight seemed to be full of something; and he observed that it was shut up and sealed, with a leaden seal upon it. This rejoiced him: 'I will sell it,' said he, 'at the foundry, and with the money arising from the produce buy a measure of corn.' He examined the vessel on all sides, and shook it, to see if what was within made any noise, but heard nothing. This, with the impression of the seal upon the leaden cover, made him think there was something precious in it. To try this, he took a knife, and opened it with very little trouble. He presently turned the mouth downward, but nothing came out, which surprised him extremely. He set it before him, and while he looked upon it attentively, there came out a very thick smoke which obliged him to retire two or three paces away.
The smoke ascended to the clouds, and extending itself along the sea and upon the shore, formed a great mist, which, we may well imagine, did mightily astonish the fisherman. When the smoke was all out of the vessel, it reunited itself, and became a solid body, of which there was formed a genie twice as high as the greatest of giants. At the sight of a monster of such unwieldy bulk, the fisherman would fain have fled, but he was so frightened that he could not go one step.
'Solomon,' cried the genie immediately, 'Solomon, great prophet, pardon, pardon; I will never more oppose thy will, I will obey all thy commands.'
When the fisherman heard these words of the genie, he recovered his courage, and said to him, 'Proud spirit, what is it that you say? It is above eighteen hundred years since the prophet Solomon died, and we are now at the end of time. Tell me your history, and how you came to be shut up in this vessel.'
The genie, turning to the fisherman with a fierce look, said, 'You must speak to me with more civility; you are very bold to call me a proud spirit.'
'Very well,' replied the fisherman, 'shall I speak to you with more civility, and call you the owl of good luck?'
'I say,' answered the genie, 'speak to me more civilly, before I kill thee.'
'Ah!' replied the fisherman, 'why would you kill me? Did I not just now set you at liberty, and have you already forgotten it?'
'Yes, I remember it,' said the genie,' but that shall not hinder me from killing thee: I have only one favour to grant thee.'
'And what is that ?' said the fisherman.
'It is,' answered the genie, 'to give thee thy choice, in what manner thou wouldst have me take thy life.'
'But wherein have I offended you?' replied the fisherman. 'Is that your reward for the good service I have done you?'
'I cannot treat you otherwise,' said the genie; and that you may be convinced of it, hearken to my story.
'I am one of those rebellious spirits that opposed the will of Heaven: all the other genii owned Solomon, the great prophet, and submitted to him. Sacar and I were the only genii that would never be guilty of a mean thing: and, to avenge himself, that great monarch sent Asaph, the son of Barakhia, his chief minister, to apprehend me. That was accordingly done. Asaph seized my person, and brought me by force before his master's throne.
'Solomon, the son of David, commanded me to quit my way of living, to acknowledge his power, and to submit myself to his commands: I bravely refused to obey, and told him I would rather expose myself to his resentment than swear fealty, and submit to him, as he required. To punish me, he shut me up in this copper vessel; and to make sure that I should not break prison, he himself stamped upon this leaden cover his seal, with the great name of God engraver upon it. Then he gave the vessel to one of the genii who submitted to him, with orders to throw me into the sea, which was done, to my sorrow.
'During the first hundred years' imprisonment, I swore that if anyone would deliver me before the hundred years expired, I would make him rich, even after his death: but that century ran out, and nobody did me the good office. During the second, I made an oath that I would open all the treasures of the earth to anyone that should set me at liberty; but with no better success. In the third, I promised to make my deliverer a potent monarch, to be always near him in spirit, and to grant him every day three requests, of what nature soever they might be: but this century ran out as well as the two former, and I continued in prison. At last, being angry, or rather mad, to find myself a prisoner so long, I swore that if afterwards anyone should deliver me, I would kill him without mercy, and grant him no other favour but to choose what kind of death he would die; and, therefore, since you have delivered me to-day, I give you that choice.'
