" Replied the smith, "Hearing and
obeying," and fell a-working to keep his word. And when they were
ready, the Moorman paid him what price he required, then, taking them,
he carried them to the khan and set them in a basket. Presently he
began wandering about the highways and market streets of the capital
crying aloud: "Ho! Who will exchange old lamps for new lamps?" But
when the folk heard him cry on this wise, they derided him and said,
"Doubtless this man is Jinnmad, for that he goeth about offering new
for old." And a world followed him, and the children of the quarter
caught him up from place to place, laughing at him the while, nor
did he forbid them or care for their maltreatment. And he ceased not
strolling about the streets till he came under Aladdin's pavilion,
where he shouted with his loudest voice, and the boys screamed at him:
"A madman! A madman!"
Now Destiny had decreed that the Lady Badr al-Budur be sitting in
her kiosque, whence she heard one crying like a crier, and the
children bawling at him. Only she understood not what was going on, so
she gave orders to one of her slave girls, saying, "Go thou and see
who 'tis that crieth, and what be his cry.
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