At her words the breast of Shibli Bagarag took in a great wind, and he hung his head a moment to ponder them; and he thought, ’There’s provokingness in the speech of this old woman, and she’s one that instigateth keenly.  She called me by my name!  Heard I that?  ’Tis a mystery!’ And he thought, ’Peradventure she is a Genie, one of an ill tribe, and she’s luring me to my perdition in this city!  How if that be so?’ And again he thought, ’It cannot be!  She’s probably the Genie that presided over my birth, and promised me dower of great things through the mouths of the readers of planets.’

Now, when Shibli Bagarag had so deliberated, he lifted his sight, and lo, the old woman was no longer before him!  He stared, and rubbed his eyes, but she was clean gone.  Then ran he to the knolls and eminences that were scattered about, to command a view, but she was nowhere visible.  So he thought, ‘’Twas a dream!’ and he was composing himself to despair upon the scant herbage of one of those knolls, when as he chanced to gaze down the city below, he saw there a commotion and a crowd of people flocking one way; he thought, ’’Twas surely no dream? come not Genii, and go they not, in the fashion of that old woman?  I’ll even descend on yonder city, and try my tackle on Shagpat, inquiring for him, and if he is there, I shall know I have had to do with a potent spirit.  Allah protect me!’

So, having shut together the clasps of resolve, he arose and made for the gates of the city, and entered it by the principal entrance.  It was a fair city, the fairest and chief of that country; prosperous, powerful; a mart for numerous commodities, handicrafts, wares; round it a wild country and a waste of sand, ruled by the lion in his wrath, and in it the tiger, the camelopard, the antelope, and other animals.  Hither, in caravans, came the people of Oolb and the people of Damascus, and the people of Vatz, and they of Bagdad, and the Ringheez, great traders, and others, trading; and there was constant flow of intercourse between them and the city of Shagpat.  Now as Shibli Bagarag paced up one of the streets of the city, he beheld a multitude in procession following one that was crowned after the manner of kings, with a glittering crown, clad in the yellow girdled robes, and he sporting a fine profusion of hair, unequalled by all around him, save by one that was a little behind, shadowed by his presence.  So Shibli Bagarag thought, ’Is one of this twain Shagpat? for never till now have I seen such rare growths, and ’twere indeed a bliss to slip the blade between them and those masses of darkness that hang from them.’  Then he stepped before the King, and made himself prominent in his path, humbling himself; and it was as he anticipated, the King prevented his removal by the slaves that would have dragged him away, and desired a hearing as to his business, and what brought him to the city, a stranger.

Thereupon Shibli Bagarag prostrated himself and cried, ’O great King, Sovereign of the Time! surely I am one to be looked on with the eye of grace; and I am nephew to Baba Mustapha, renowned in Shiraz, a barber;—­I a barber, and it is my prayer, O King of the Age, that thou take me under thy protection and the shield of thy fair will, while I perform good work in this city by operating on the unshorn.’