Aladdin went out of the sultan’s presence with great humiliation, and in a condition worthy of pity. He crossed the courts of the palace, hanging down his head, and in so great confusion that he durst not lift up his eyes. The principal officers of the court, who had all professed themselves his friends, and whom he had never disobliged, instead of going up to him to comfort him, and offer him a retreat in their houses, turned their backs on him, as much to avoid seeing him, as lest he should know them. But had they accosted him with a word of comfort, or offer of service, they would have no more known Aladdin. He did not know himself, and was no longer in his senses, as plainly appeared by asking everybody he met, and at every house, if they had seen his palace or could tell him any news of it. These questions made everybody believe that Aladdin was mad. Some laughed at him, but people of sense and humanity, particularly those who had any connection of business or friendship with him, really pitied him. For three days he rambled about the city after this manner, without coming to any resolution, or eating anything but what some good people forced him to take out of charity. At last, as he could no longer, in his unhappy condition, stay in a city where he had formerly made so fine a figure, he quitted it, and took the road to the country, and after he had traversed several fields in a frightful uncertainty, at the approach of night he came to a river side. 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, whom the sultan expects from me? I shall never succeed; I had better free myself at once from so much fruitless fatigue and such bitter grief which 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 could not do it without first saying his prayers. Going to prepare himself, he went first to the river side to wash his hands and face, according to custom. But that place being steep and slippery, by reason of the water’s beating against it, 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 put on his finger before he went down into the subterraneous abode to fetch the precious lamp, which had not been taken from him. In slipping down the bank he rubbed the ring so hard by holding on the rock, that immediately the same genie appeared whom he saw in the cave where the magician 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.”