weeping, the vizier entered, and demanded the reason of their sorrow.  The lady told him the shame Agib had undergone at school, which did so much afflict the vizier, that he joined his tears with theirs; and judging that the misfortune that had happened to his daughter was the common discourse of the town, he was quite out of patience.  In this state he went to the sultan’s palace, and, falling at his feet, humbly prayed him to give him leave to make a journey into the provinces of the Levant, and particularly to Balsora, in search of his nephew Bedreddin, as he could not bear that the people of the city should believe a genius had got his daughter with child.  The sultan was much concerned at the vizier’s affliction, commended his resolution, gave him leave to go, and caused a passport also to be written for him, praying, in the most obliging terms, all kings and princes, in whose dominions the said Bedreddin might sojourn, to grant that the vizier might bring him along with him.

Schemseddin, not knowing how to express his thankfulness to the sultan for this favour, thought it his duty to fall down before him a second time, and the floods of tears he shed gave sufficient testimony of his gratitude.  At last, having wished the sultan all manner of prosperity, he took leave, and went home to his house, where he disposed every thing for his journey, the preparations for which were carried on with so much diligence, that in four days he left the city, accompanied by his daughter and his grandson Agib.

They travelled nineteen days without stopping; but on the twentieth, arriving in a very pleasant meadow at a small distance from Damascus, they stopped, and pitched their tents on the banks of a river that runs through the town, and affords a very agreeable prospect to its neighbourhood.  Schemseddin Mohammed declared that he would stay in that pleasant place two days, and pursue his journey on the third.  In the mean time he granted permission to his retinue to go to Damascus; and almost all of them made use of it—­some influenced by curiosity to see a city of which they had heard much, and others by the opportunity of vending in it such Egyptian goods as they had brought with them, or of buying the stuffs and rarities of the country.  The beautiful lady, desirous that her son Agib might share in the satisfaction of viewing that celebrated city, ordered the black eunuch, who acted in the quality of his governor, to conduct him hither, and to take care that he came to no harm.  Accordingly Agib, arrayed in magnificent apparel, went along with the eunuch, who held a large cane in his hand.  They had no sooner entered the city than Agib, fair and glorious as the day, attracted the eyes of the people.  Some left their houses in order to gain a nearer view of him, others looked out at their windows, and those who passed along the streets were not satisfied with stopping to view him, but kept pace with him to prolong the pleasure of such an agreeable sight:  in fine, every one admired him, and implored a thousand benedictions on the father and mother who had given being to so fine a child.  By chance the eunuch and he passed by the shop where Bedreddin Hassan was, and there the crowd was so great, that they were forced to halt.