I divided the remainder of my money with my humane nurse, and sent her out into the city to inquire how matters were going on.
"She brought me word that the fury of the plague had much abated, but that she had met several funerals, and that she had heard many of the merchants cursing the folly of Murad the Unlucky, who, as they said, had brought all this calamity upon the inhabitants of Cairo.

Even fools, they say, learn by experience.

I took care to burn the bed on which I had lain and the clothes I had worn; I concealed my real name, which I knew would inspire detestation, and gained admittance, with a crowd of other poor wretches, into a lazaretto, where I performed quarantine and offered up prayers daily for the sick.
"When I thought it was impossible I could spread the infection, I took my passage home.

I was eager to get away from Grand Cairo, where I knew I was an object of execration.

I had a strange fancy haunting my mind; I imagined that all my misfortunes, since I left Constantinople, had arisen from my neglect of the talisman upon the beautiful china vase.