ut people
of sense and humanity, particularly those who had had any connection of
business or friendship with him, really pitied him. For three days he
rambled about the city in this manner, without coming to any resolution
or eating anything but what some compassionate people forced him to take
out of charity. At last he took the road to the country; and after he
had traversed several fields in wild uncertainty, at the approach of
night came to the bank of a river. There, possessed by his despair, he
said to himself: "Where shall I seek my palace? In what province,
country, or part of the world, shall I find that and my dear princess? I
shall never succeed; I would better free myself at once from fruitless
endeavours, and such bitter grief as preys upon me." He was just going
to throw himself into the river, but, as a good Mussulman, true to his
religion, he thought he should not do it without first saying his
prayers. Going to prepare himself, he went to the river's brink, in
order to perform the usual ablutions. The place being steep and
slippery, he slid down, and had certainly fallen into the river, but for
a little rock, which projected about two feet out of the earth. Happily
also for him, he still had on the ring which the African magician had
put on his finger before he went down into the subterranean abode to
fetch the precious lamp. In slipping down the bank he rubbed the ring so
hard by holding on the rock, that immediately the same genie appeared
whom he had seen in the cave where the magician had left him. "What
wouldst thou have?" said the genie. "I am ready to obey thee as thy
slave, and the slave of all those that have that ring on their finger;
both I and the other slaves of the ring."

Aladdin, agreeably surprised at an apparition he so little expected in
his present calamity, replied; "Save my life, genie, a second time,
either by showing me to the place where the palace I caused to be built
now stands, or immediately transporting it back where it first stood."
"What you command me," answered the genie, "is not wholly in my power; I
am only the slave of the ring; you must address yourself to the slave of
the lamp." "If that be the case," replied Aladdin, "I command thee, by
the power of the ring, to transport me to the spot where my palace
stands, in what part of the world soever it may be, and set me down
under the window of the Princess Badroulboudour." These words were no
sooner out of his mouth t