As it was no great distance to his father’s capital, prince Ahmed soon arrived there.  The people, rejoiced to see him again, received him with acclamations, and followed him in crowds to the palace.  The sultan received and embraced him with great joy; complaining at the same time, with a fatherly tenderness, of the affliction his long absence had occasioned; which, he said, was the more distressing, as fortune having decided in favour of prince Ali his brother, he was afraid he might have committed some act of despair.

“Sir,” replied prince Ahmed, “I leave it to your majesty to consider, if after having lost the princess Nouronnihar, who was the only object of my desires, I could bear to be a witness of Ali’s happiness.  If I had been capable of such unworthy apathy, what would the court and city have thought of my love, or what your majesty?  Love is a passion we cannot suppress at our will; while it lasts, it rules and governs us in spite of our boasted reason.  Your majesty knows, that when I shot my arrow, the most extraordinary accident that ever befell mortal happened to me, for surely it was such, that in so large and level a plain as that where the horses are exercised, it should not be possible to find my arrow.  I lost your decision in my favour, which was as much due to my love, as to that of the princes my brothers.  Though thus vanquished by the caprice of fate, I lost no time in vain complaints; but to satisfy my perplexed mind, upon what I could not comprehend, I left my attendants, and returned alone to look for my arrow.  I sought all about the place where Houssain’s and Ali’s arrows were found, and where I imagined mine must have fallen, but all my labour was in vain.  I was not discouraged, but continued my search in a direct line, and after this manner had gone above a league, without being able to meet with any thing like an arrow, when I reflected that it was not possible that mine should have flown so far.  I stopped, and asked myself whether I was in my right senses, to flatter myself with having had strength to shoot an arrow so much farther than any of the strongest archers in the world were able to do.  After I had argued thus with myself, I was ready to abandon my enterprise; but when on the point of putting my resolution in execution, I found myself drawn forward against my will; and after having gone four leagues, to that part of the plain where it is bounded by rocks, I perceived an arrow.  I ran, took it up, and knew it to be the same which I had shot.  Far from thinking your majesty had done me any injustice in declaring for my brother Ali, I interpreted what had happened to me quite otherwise, and never doubted there was a mystery in it to my advantage; the discovery of which I ought not to neglect, and which I found out without going from the spot.  But as to this mystery I beg your majesty will not be offended if I remain silent, and that you will be satisfied to know from my own mouth that I am happy, and content with my fate.