Bozaldab, Calif of Egypt, had dwelt securely for many years in the silken
pavilions of pleasure, and had every morning anointed his head with
the oil of gladness, when his only son Aboram, for whom he had crowded
his treasuries with gold, extended his dominions with conquests, and
secured them with impregnable fortresses, was suddenly wounded, as he was
hunting, with an arrow from an unknown hand, and expired in the field.
Bozaldab, in the distraction of grief and despair, refused to return
to his palace, and retired to the gloomiest grotto in the neighbouring
mountain: he there rolled himself on the dust, tore away the hairs
of his hoary beard, and dashed the cup of consolation that Patience
offered him to the ground. He suffered not his minstrels to approach his
presence; but listened to the melancholy birds of midnight, that flit
through the solitary vaults and echoing chambers of the Pyramids. “Can
that God be benevolent,” he cried, “who thus wounds the soul, as from an
ambush, with unexpected sorrows, and crushes his creatures in a moment
with irremediable calamity? Ye lying Imans, prate to us no more of the
justness and the kindness of an all-directing and all-loving Providence!
He, whom ye pretend reigns in heaven, is so far from protecting the sons
of men, that he perpetually delights to blast the sweetest flowerets in
the garden of Hope; and like a malignant giant to beat down the strongest
towers of happiness with the iron mace of his anger. If this Being
possessed the goodness and the power with which flattering priests have
invested him, he would doubtless be inclined and enabled to banish those
evils which render the world a dungeon of distress, a vale of vanity and
woe.—I will continue in it no longer!”
At that moment he furiously raised his hand, which Despair had armed with
a dagger, to strike deep into his bosom; when suddenly thick flashes of
lightning shot through the cavern, and a being of more than human beauty
and magnitude, arrayed in azure robes, crowned with amaranth, and waving
a branch of palm in his right hand, arrested the arm of the trembling and
astonished Calif, and said with a majestic smile, “Follow me to the top
of this mountain.”
“Look from hence,” said the awful conductor; “I am Caloc, the Angel of
Peace; Look from hence into the valley.”
Bozaldab opened his eyes and beheld a barren, a sultry, and solitary
island, in the midst of which sat a pale, meagre, and ghastly figure:
it was a merchant just perishing with famine, and lamenting that he
could find neither wild berries, nor a single spring in this forlorn
and uninhabited desert; and begging the protection of heaven against
the tigers that would now certainly destroy him, since he had consumed
the last fuel he had collected to make nightly fires to affright them.
He then cast a casket of jewels on the sand, as trifles of no use; and
crept, feeble and trembling, to an eminence, where he was accustomed to
sit to watch the setting sun, and to give signal to any ship that might
haply approach the island.
“Inhabitant of heaven,” cried Bozaldab, “suffer not this wretch to perish
by the fury of wild beasts!”
“Peace,” said the angel, “and observe.”
He looked again, and behold a vessel arrived at the desolate isle. What
words can paint the rapture of the starving merchant, when the captain
offered to transport him to his native country, if he would reward
him with half the jewels of his casket? No sooner had this pityless
commander received the stipulated sum, than he held a consultation with
his crew, and they agreed to seize the remaining jewels, and leave the
unhappy exile in the same helpless and lamentable condition in which they
discovered him. He wept and trembled, intreated and implored in vain.