en years determined by fate. A number
of workmen were employed in forming in the rock a cavity of a hundred
feet in depth, about a hundred and fifty in length, and thirty in
breadth. They let down into this every material necessary to make a
commodious lodging; a spring of water was found there, and they
contrived a passage for it, as well as for the rain-water which might
be collected in this cavity. They carried earth to it, and put plants
there, which were soon in a thriving condition.

After having furnished this little palace in a proper manner, they let
down into it the Prince and his nurse by the help of a pulley,
together with every necessary article for a month. At the end of every
moon Hebraim came regularly to visit his son. The nurse laid the
child in a basket made of bulrushes, which was lifted up to the very
brim of the entrance; and while the father yielded to the sweetest
emotions of nature in caressing his son, a numerous guard, by the
thundering sound of their instruments, kept the wild beasts at a
distance. When the visit was over the provisions were renewed, and the
cord, rolling upon the pulley, gently returned to the bottom of the
cave the basket and the infant.

The young Prince grew and prospered in this solitary habitation, which
a very strong vegetation had adorned with trees and shrubs of every
kind. The fatal term marked out by the astrologers had almost elapsed.
Only twenty days were wanting to fulfil the seven years, when a troop
of unknown hunters, in vigorous pursuit of an enormous tiger which
they had already wounded, came to the summit of the mountain in full
view of their prey. The furious animal, terrified by their shouts, and
struck by arrows which were shot at it from every quarter, found this
cavity in its course, and either blinded by terror or being now in
despair, immediately sprang down it. It fell upon a tree, which,
bending under its weight, considerably broke the force of a fall which
would have dashed it to pieces on the bottom of this pit.

The terrified nurse endeavoured to conceal herself, and the monster
found the child, which it grievously wounded on the shoulder. On
hearing the cries of the infant, however, the nurse, forgetting her
own danger, flew to his assistance. The tiger darted at her, and
having torn her in pieces, was about to devour her, when the huntsmen,
coming suddenly up to the brink of the precipice, discharged at once a
shower of arrows upon the vor