nstruments! What taste did you not express in
your song! Whoever, like Damake, joined such merit to so much beauty?
But I perceive you love me not," added this passionate Prince, with
the utmost tenderness, "since you refuse to attach your destiny to
mine. Doubtless you have an aversion for my person."

"I am very far from deserving this reproach, my lord," said Damake;
"you yourself shall be the judge. The greatest pleasure and the
highest satisfaction I have felt on this day, which your prejudice in
my favour has made you think so glorious, was the being able to
express before the whole Court, in a proper manner, the sentiments
with which you have filled my heart."

"What can you wait for further to render me the happiest man upon
earth?" cried Nourgehan with eagerness. "You love me, and I adore you.
What wants there more? My wishes for you are become an ocean unbounded
by any shore."

"I resolve to deserve you, my lord," replied she, "by talents of more
value than those of music; by a justness of sense more valuable than
that which your sages set such a price upon, and which is only a mere
subtlety of mind. I wish to establish myself in your heart upon
foundations more solid than beauty, or those superficial talents that
you have had the goodness to applaud. In short, I wish that love may
in you only be a passage to that esteem and friendship which I aspire
to deserve. Submit your impatience to grant me this favour--it perhaps
gives me more pain to ask it than your Majesty to grant: let me live
some time under the shadow of your felicity."

"I am capable of nothing now," replied Nourgehan, "but of loving and
adoring you; but at least permit me to give a full proof of the
justice I do your merit. Assist in the divan, preside in all affairs,
and give me your counsels: I can follow none that are more prudent or
better judged."

"The diamond boasted," replied Damake, smiling, "that there was no
stone which equalled it in strength and hardness. Allah, who loves not
pride, changed its nature in favour of lead, the vilest of metals, to
which He gave the power to cut it. Independently of the pride I must
render myself guilty of if I accepted your offers,--Allah forbid that
I should do that wrong to my Sovereign Lord!--to authorize by my
behaviour the reproaches that would be thrown upon him. There would be
a foundation to say that he was governed by a woman. I allow," added
she, "that your Majesty ought to have a Vizie