the Emperor, that he might make
his complaints of the refusal and menaces he had given him."

The Vizier made many difficulties and great entreaties to avoid these
vexatious and mortifying conditions; but the hour approaching which
the Emperor had appointed for an audience, and the guards refusing to
let him enter till he had satisfied the desires of the potter, he was
obliged to submit to them; to promise the thousand sequins, to hang
the pot about his neck, and to carry the potter on his back, a
condition from which he would not recede. The Emperor, surprised at
seeing his Vizier arrive in a manner so ridiculous and so unsuitable
to his dignity, commanded him to explain what it all meant. When he
was told, he obliged the Vizier to pay the thousand sequins
immediately; and comprehending of how great an injury it might be to a
Prince to have an avaricious minister, he deposed him, and was pleased
with the potter for having made known to him a fact that he never
would have suspected otherwise.

Nourgehan formed a counsel of the most worthy men of the empire,
ordained wise and prudent laws, and departed to visit his provinces,
with a resolution of releasing his people from any possible abuse of
an authority which is always dangerous, when those who exercise it are
at too great a distance from the Sovereign. This Prince, endowed with
every virtue, had no other wish than that of deserving after his death
the noble epitaph of that Persian monarch who has graved upon his
tomb, "Weep! for Shah Chuja is dead!"

Nourgehan, visiting all the provinces of his kingdom, had already gone
through the greatest part of them, and remedied numberless disorders,
when his curiosity engaged him in a journey into Tartary, his
neighbouring kingdom. Finding himself so near their country, he had a
desire also to see and know the manners of these Tartars, who were
more civilized than others, for they had cities and fixed habitations:
their women also are not shut up like those of the other Asiatics. The
Tartars came to meet the Emperor of the Moguls. Some of them
performed courses on their swiftest horses to do him honour, others,
accompanied with their women, formed a kind of dance which, though a
little savage, was not destitute of grace. In the number of the Tartar
women who presented themselves before him, Nourgehan was struck with
the beauty of a young person of eighteen, named Damake.[10] She
possessed great beauty; an inexpressible sens