a nurse, who was a Christian, and of Italian extraction. This slave had
in early youth been kidnapped from the beach of her native town by a
Barbary pirate; sold in Alexandria; and, by the course of trade,
transmitted from one hand to another, till at last she had arrived in
the palace of the Sultan, where her hale constitution recommended her to
this office, which she filled with the greatest reputation. Though less
tuneful than the French court-nurse, who used to give the signal for a
general chorus over all Versailles, whenever she uplifted, with
melodious throat, her _Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre_; yet nature had
sufficiently indemnified her by a glibness of tongue, in which she was
unrivalled. She knew as many tales and stories as the fair Sheherazade
in the Thousand-and-one Nights; a species of entertainment for which it
would appear the race of Sultans, in the privacy of their seraglios,
have considerable liking. The Princess, at least, found pleasure in it,
not for a thousand nights, but for a thousand weeks; and when once a
maiden has attained the age of a thousand weeks, she can no longer be
contented with the histories of others, for she sees materials in
herself to make a history of her own. In process of time, the gifted
waiting-woman changed her nursery-tales with the theory of European
manners and customs; and being herself a warm patriot, and recollecting
her native country with delight, she painted the superiorities of Italy
so vividly, that the fancy of her tender nursling became filled with the
subject, and the pleasant impression never afterwards faded from her
memory. The more this fair Princess grew in stature, the stronger grew
in her the love for foreign decoration; and her whole demeanour shaped
itself according to the customs of Europe rather than of Egypt.
From youth upwards she had been a great lover of flowers: part of her
occupation had consisted in forming, according to the manner of the
Arabs, a constant succession of significant nosegays and garlands; with
which, in delicate expressiveness, she used to disclose the emotions of
her heart. Nay, she at last grew so inventive, that, by combining
flowers of various properties, she could compose, and often very
happily, whole sentences and texts of the Koran. These she would then
submit to her playmates for interpretation, which they seldom failed to
hit. Thus one day, for example, she formed with Chalcedonic Lychnis the
figure of a heart; surrounded it with white Roses and Lilies; fastened
under it two mounting Kingsweeds, enclosing a beautifully marked Anemone
between them; and her women, when she showed them, the wreath,
unanimously read: Innocence of heart is above Birth and Beauty. She
frequently presented her slaves with fresh nosegays: and these
flower-donations commonly included praise or blame for their receivers.
A garland of Peony-roses censured levity; the swelling Poppy, dulness
and vanity; a bunch of odoriferous Hyacinths, with drooping bells, was a
panegyric for modesty; the gold Lily, which shuts her leaves at sunset,
for prudence; the Marine Convolvulus rebuked eye-service; and the
blossoms of the Thorn-Apple, with the Daisy whose roots are poisonous,
indicated slander and private envy.
Father Othman took a secret pleasure in this sprightly play of his
daughter's fancy, though he himself had no talent for deciphering these
witty hieroglyphics, and was frequently obliged to look with the
spectacles of his whole Divan before he could pierce their meaning. The
exotic taste of the Princess was not hidden from him; and though, as a
plain Mussulman, he could not sympathise with her in it, he endeavoured,
as a tender and indulgent parent, rather to maintain than to suppress
this favourite tendency of his daughter. He fell upon the project of
combining her passion for flowers with her preference for foreign parts,
and laying out a garden for her in the taste of the Franks. This idea
appeared to him so happy, that he lost not a moment in imparting it to
his favourite, Shiek Kiamel, and pressing him with the strictest
injunctions to realise it as speedily as possible. The Shiek, well
knowing that his master's wishes were for him commands, which he must
obey without reply, presumed not to mention the difficulties which he
saw in the attempt. He himself understood as little about European
gardens as the Sultan; and in all Cairo there was no mortal known to
him, with whom he might find counsel in the business. Therefore he made
search among the Christian slaves for a man skilful in gardening; and
lighted exactly on the wrong hand for extricating him from his
difficulty. It was no wonder, then, that Shiek Kiamel shook his head
contemplatively as he inspected the procedure of this horticultural
improvement; for he was apprehensive, that if it delighted the Sultan as
little as it did himself, he might be involved in a heavy
responsibility, and his favouriteship, at the very least, might take
wings and fly away.
At Court, this project had hitherto been treated as a secret, and the
entrance of the place prohibited to every one in the seraglio. The
Sultan purposed to surprise his daughter with this present on her
birthday; to conduct her with ceremony into the garden, and make it over
to her as her own. This day was now approaching; and his Highness had a
wish to take a view of everything beforehand, to get acquainted with the
new arrangements; that he might give himself the happiness of pointing
out in person to his daughter the peculiar beauties of her garden. He
communicated this to the Shiek, whom the tidings did not much
exhilarate; and who, in consequence, composed a short defensive oration,
which he fondly hoped might extricate his head from the noose, if the
Sultan showed himself dissatisfied with the appearance of his Christian
garden.
"Commander of the Faithful," he purposed to say, "thy nod is the
director of my path; my feet hasten whither thou leadest them, and my
hand holds fast what thou committest to it. Thou wishedst a garden after
the manner of the Franks: here stands it before thy eyes. These
untutored barbarians have no gardens; but meagre wastes of sand, which,
in their own rude climate, where no dates or lemons ripen, and there is
neither Kalaf nor Bahobab,[19] they plant with grass and weeds. For the
curse of the Prophet has smitten with perpetual barrenness the plains of
the Unbeliever, and forbidden him any foretaste of Paradise by the
perfume of the Mecca balm-tree, or the enjoyment of spicy fruits."
[19] _Kalaf_, a shrub, from whose blossoms a liquor is extracted,
resembling our cherry-water, and much used in domestic medicine.
_Bahobab_, a sort of fruit, in great esteem among the Egyptians.
The day was far spent, when the Sultan, attended only by the Shiek,
stept into the garden, in high expectation of the wonders he was to
behold. A wide unobstructed prospect over a part of the city, and the
mirror surface of the Nile with its _Musherns_, _Shamdecks_ and
_Sheomeons_[20] sailing to and fro; in the background, the
skyward-pointing pyramids, and a chain of blue vapoury mountains, met
his eye from the upper terrace, no longer shrouded-in by the leafy grove
of palms. A refreshing breath of air was also stirring in the place, and
fanning him agreeably. Crowds of new objects pressed on him from every
side. The garden had in truth got a strange foreign aspect; and the old
park which had been his promenade from youth upwards, and had long since
wearied him by its everlasting sameness, was no longer to be recognised.
The knowing Kurt had judged wisely, that the charm of novelty would have
its influence. The Sultan tried this horticultural metamorphosis not by
the principles of a critic, but by its first impression on the senses;
and as these are easily decoyed into contentment by the bait of
singularity, the whole seemed good and right to him there as he found
it. Even the crooked unsymmetrical walks, overlaid with hard stamped
gravel, gave his feet an elastic force, and a light firm tread,
accustomed as he was to move on nothing else but Persian carpets, or on
the soft greensward. He could not satisfy himself with wandering up and
down the labyrinthic walks; and he showed himself especially contented
with the rich variety of wild flowers, which had been fostered and
cultivated with the greatest care, though they were blossoming of their
own accord, outside the wall, with equal luxuriance and in greater
multitude.
[20] Various sorts of sailing craft in use there.
At last, having placed himself upon a seat, he turned to the Shiek with
a cheerful countenance, and said: "Kiamel, thou hast not deceived my
expectation: I well anticipated that thou wouldst transform me this old
park into something singular, and diverse from the fashion of the land;
and now I will not hide my satisfaction from thee. Melechsala may accept
thy work as a garden after the manner of the Franks."
The Shiek, when he heard his despot talk in this dialect, marvelled much
that all things took so well; and blessed himself that he had held his
tongue, and retained his defensive oration to himself. Perceiving that
the Sultan seemed to look upon the whole as his invention, he directly
turned the rudder of his talk to the favourable breeze which was
rustling his sails, and spoke thus: "Puissant Commander of the Faithful,
be it known to thee that thy obedient slave took thought with himself
day and night how he might produce out of this old date-grove, at thy
beck and order, something unexampled, the like of which had never been
in Egypt before. Doubtless it was an inspiration of the Prophet that
suggested the idea of planning it according to the pattern of Paradise;
for I trusted, that by so doing I should not fail to meet the intention
of thy Highness."
The worthy Sultan's conception of the Paradise, which to all appearance
by the course of nature he must soon become possessed of, had still been
exceedingly confused; or rather, like the favoured of fortune, who take
their ease in this lower world, he had never troubled himself much about
the other. But whenever any Dervish or Iman, or other spiritual person,
mentioned Paradise, some image of his old park used to rise on his
fancy; and the park was not by any means his favourite scene. Now,
however, his imagination had been steered on quite a different tack. The
new picture of his future happiness filled his soul with joy; at least
he could now suppose that Paradise might not be so dull as he had
hitherto figured it: and believing that he now possessed a model of it
on the small scale, he formed a high opinion of the garden; and
expressed this forthwith, by directly making Shiek Kiamel a Bey, and
presenting him with a splendid caftan. Your thorough-paced courtier
belies his nature in no quarter of the world: Kiamel, without the
slightest hesitation, modestly appropriated the reward of a service
which his functionary had performed; not uttering a syllable about him
to the Sultan, and thinking him rather too liberally rewarded by a few
aspers which he added to his daily pay.
About the time when the Sun enters the Ram, a celestial phenomenon,
which in our climates is the watch-word for winter to commence his
operation; but under the milder sky of Egypt announces the finest season
of the year, the Flower of the World stept forth into the garden which
had been prepared for her, and found it altogether to her foreign taste.
She herself was, in truth, its greatest ornament: any scene where she
had wandered, had it been a desert in Arabia the Stony, or a Greenland
ice-field, would, in the eyes of a gallant person, have been changed
into Elysium at her appearance. The wilderness of flowers, which chance
had mingled in interminable rows, gave equal occupation to her eye and
her spirit: the disorder itself she assimilated, by her sprightly
allegories, to methodical arrangement.
According to the custom of the country, every time she entered the
garden, all specimens of the male sex, planters, diggers,
water-carriers, were expelled by her guard of Eunuchs. The Grace for
whom our artist worked was thus hidden from his eyes, much as he could
have wished for once to behold this Flower of the World, which had so
long been a riddle in his botany. But as the Princess used to overstep
the fashions of the East in many points, so by degrees, while she grew
to like the garden more and more, and to pay it several visits daily,
she began to feel obstructed and annoyed by the attendance of her guard
sallying out before her in solemn parade, as if the Sultan had been
riding to Mosque in the Bairam festival. She frequently appeared alone,
or leaning on the arm of some favourite waiting-woman; always, however,
with a thin veil over her face, and a little rush basket in her hand:
she wandered up and down the walks, plucking flowers, which, according
to custom, she arranged into emblems of her thoughts, and distributed
among her people.
One morning, before the hot season of the day, while the dewdrops were
still reflecting all the colours of the rainbow from the grass, she
visited her Tempe to enjoy the cool morning air, just as her gardener
was employed in lifting from the ground some faded plants, and replacing
them by others newly blown, which he was carefully transporting in
flower-pots, and then cunningly inserting in the soil with all their
appurtenances, as if by a magic vegetation they had started from the
bosom of the earth in a single night. The Princess noticed with pleasure
this pretty deception of the senses, and having now found out the secret
of the flowers which she plucked away being daily succeeded by fresh
ones, so that there was never any want, she thought of turning her
discovery to advantage, and instructing the gardener how and when to
arrange them, and make them blossom. On raising his eyes, the Count
beheld this female Angel, whom he took for the possessor of the garden,
for she was encircled with celestial charms as with a halo. He was so
surprised by this appearance that he dropped a flower-pot from his
hands, forgetful of the precious colocassia contained in it, which ended
its tender life as tragically as the Sieur Pilastre de Rosier, though
both only fell into the bosom of their mother Earth.
The Count stood petrified like a statue without life or motion; one
might have broken off his nose, as the Turks do with stone statues in
temples and gardens, and never have aroused him. But the sweet voice of
the Princess, who opened her purple lips, recalled him to his senses.
"Christian," said she, "be not afraid! It is my blame that thou art here
beside me; go forward with thy work, and order thy flowers as I shall
bid thee."--"Glorious Flower of the World!" replied the gardener, "in
whose splendour all the colours of this blossomy creation wax pale, thou
reignest here as in thy firmament, like the Star-queen on the
battlements of Heaven. Let thy nod enliven the hand of the happiest
among thy slaves, who kisses his fetters, so thou think him worthy to
perform thy commands." The Princess had not expected that a slave would
open his mouth to her, still less pay her compliments, and her eyes had
been directed rather to the flowers than the planter. She now deigned to
cast a glance on him, and was astonished to behold a man of the most
noble form, surpassing in masculine grace all that she had ever seen or
dreamed of.
Count Ernst of Gleichen had been celebrated for his manly beauty over
all Germany. At the tournament of Wuerzburg, he had been the hero of the
dames. When he raised his visor to take air, the running of the boldest
spearman was lost for every female eye; all looked on him alone; and
when he closed his helmet to begin a course, the chastest bosom heaved
higher, and all hearts beat anxious sympathy with the lordly Knight. The
partial hand of the Duke of Bavaria's love-sick niece had crowned him
with a guerdon, which the young man blushed to receive. His seven years'
durance in the Grated Tower, had indeed paled his blooming cheeks,
relaxed his firm-set limbs, and dulled the fire of his eyes; but the
enjoyment of the free atmosphere, and Labour, the playmate of Health,
had now made good the loss, with interest. He was flourishing like a
laurel, which has pined throughout the long winter in the greenhouse,
and at the return of spring sends forth new leaves, and gets a fair
verdant crown.
With her predilection for all foreign things, the Princess could not
help contemplating with satisfaction the attractive figure of the
stranger; and it never struck her that the sight of an Endymion may have
quite another influence on a maiden's heart, than the creation of a
milliner, set up for show in her booth. With kind gentle voice, she gave
her handsome gardener orders how to manage the arrangement of his
flowers; often asked his own, advice respecting it, and talked with him
so long as any horticultural idea was in her head. She left him at
length, but scarcely was she gone five paces when she turned to give
him fresh commissions; and as she took a promenade along the
serpentine-walk, she called him again to her, and put new questions to
him, and proposed new improvements before she went away. As the day
began to cool, she again felt the want of fresh air, and scarcely had
the sun returned to gild the waxing Nile, when a wish to see the
awakening flowers unfold their blossoms, brought her back into the
garden. Day after day her love of fresh air and awakening flowers
increased; and in these visits she never failed to go directly to the
place where her florist was labouring, and give him new orders, which he
strove punctually and speedily to execute.
One day the Bostangi,[21] when she came to see him, was not to be found;
she wandered up and down the intertwisted walks, regardless of the
flowers that were blooming around her, and, by the high tints of their
colours and the balmy air of their perfumes, as if striving with each
other to attract her attention; she expected him behind every bush,
searched every branching plant that might conceal him, fancied she
should find him in the grotto, and, on his failing to appear, made a
pilgrimage to all the groves in the garden, hoping to surprise him
somewhere asleep, and enjoying the embarrassment which he would feel
when she awoke him; but the head-gardener nowhere met her eye. By chance
she came upon the stoical Viet, the Count's Groom, a dull piece of
mechanism, whom his master had been able to make nothing out of but a
drawer of water. On perceiving her, he wheeled with his water-cans to
the left-about, that he might not meet her, but she called him to her,
and asked, Where the Bostangi was? "Where else," said he, in his sturdy
way, "but in the hands of the Jewish quack-salver, who will sweat the
soul from his body in a trice?" These tidings cut the lovely Princess to
the heart, for she had never dreamed that it was sickness which
prevented her Bostangi from appearing at his post. She immediately
returned to her palace, where her women saw, with consternation, that
the serene brow of their mistress was overcast, as when the moist breath
of the south wind has dimmed the mirror of the sky, and the hovering
vapours have collected into clouds. In retiring to the Seraglio, she had
plucked a variety of flowers, but all were of a mournful character, and
bound with cypress and rosemary, indicating clearly enough the sadness
of her mood. She did the same for several days, which brought her
council of women into much perplexity, and many deep debates about the
cause of their fair Melechsala's grief; but withal, as in female
consultations too often happens, they arrived at no conclusion, as in
calling for the vote there was such a dissonance of opinions, that no
harmonious note could be discovered in them. The truth was, Count
Ernst's too zealous efforts to anticipate every nod of the Princess, and
realise whatever she expressed the faintest hint of, had so acted on a
frame unused to labour, that his health suffered under it, and he was
seized with a fever. Yet the Jewish pupil of Galen, or rather the
Count's fine constitution, mastered the disease, and in a few days he
was able to resume his tasks. The instant the Princess noticed him, the
clouds fled away from her brow; and her female senate, to whom her
melancholy humour had remained an inexplicable riddle, now unanimously
voted that some flower-plant, of whose progress she had been in doubt,
had now taken root and begun to thrive,--a conclusion not inaccurate, if
taken allegorically.
[21] Head-gardener.
Princess Melechsala was still as innocent in heart as she had come from
the hands of Nature. She had never got the smallest warning or
foreboding of the rogueries, which Amor is wont to play on inexperienced
beauties. Hitherto, on the whole, there has been a want of _Hints for
Princesses and Maidens_ in regard to love; though a satisfactory theory
of that kind might do infinitely greater service to the world than any
_Hints for the Instructors of Princes_;[22] a class of persons who
regard no hint, however broad, nay sometimes take it ill; whereas
maidens never fail to notice every hint, and pay heed to it, their
perception being finer, and a secret hint precisely their affair. The
Princess was still in the first novitiate of love, and had not the
slightest knowledge of its mysteries. She therefore yielded wholly to
her feelings, without scrupling in the least, or ever calling a Divan of
the three confidantes of her heart, Reason, Prudence and Reflection, to
deliberate on the business. Had she done so, doubtless the concern she
felt in the circumstances of the Bostangi would have indicated to her
that the germ of an unknown passion was already vegetating strongly in
her heart, and Reason and Reflection would have whispered to her that
this passion was _love_. Whether in the Count's heart there was any
similar process going on in secret, we have no diplomatic evidence
before us: his over-anxious zeal to execute the commands of his
mistress might excite some such conjecture; and if so, a bunch of Lovage
with a withered stalk of Honesty, tied up together, might have befitted
him as an allegorical nosegay. Perhaps, however, it was nothing but an
innocent chivalrous feeling which occasioned this distinguished
alacrity; for in those times it was the most inviolable law of
Knighthood, that its professors should in all things rigorously conform
to the injunctions of the fair.
[22] Allusion to a small Treatise, which, about the time Musaeus
wrote his story, had appeared under that title.--WIELAND.
No day now passed without the good Melechsala's holding trustful
conversation with her Bostangi. The soft tone of her voice delighted his
ear, and every one of her expressions seemed to say something flattering
to him. Had he been endowed with the self-confidence of a court lord, he
would have turned so fair a situation to profit for making farther
advances: but he constantly restrained himself within the bounds of
modesty. And as the Princess was entirely inexperienced in the science
of coquetry, and knew not how to set about encouraging the timid
shepherd to the stealing of her heart, the whole intrigue revolved upon
the axis of mutual good-will; and might undoubtedly have long continued
so revolving, had not Chance, which we all know commonly officiates as
_primum mobile_ in every change of things, ere long given the scene
another form.