of HAMET was an example of all that
was either great or good, Abdallah felt no anxiety upon leaving them
together, except what arose from his fears, that his daughter would not
be able to secure the conquest she had made.

As it was impossible for HAMET to have such an acquaintance with ALMEIDA
as he desired, till he could enter into conversation with her upon terms
of equality; it was his first care to sooth her into confidence and
familiarity, and by degrees he succeeded: he soon found, in the free
intercourse of mind with mind, which he established instead of the
implicit submission which only ecchoed his own voice, how little of the
pleasure that women were formed to give can be enjoyed, when they are
considered merely as slaves to a tyrant's will, the passive subjects of
transient dalliance and casual enjoyment. The pleasure which he took in
the youthful beauty of ALMEIDA, was now endeared, exalted, and refined,
by the tender sensibility of her heart, and by the reflexion of his own
felicity from her eyes: when he admired the gracefulness of her motion,
the elegance of her figure, the symmetry of her features, and the bloom
of her complexion, he considered them as the decorations only of a
mind, capable of mixing with his own in the most exquisite delight, of
reciprocating all his ideas, and catching new pleasure from his
pleasure. Desire was no longer appetite; it was imagination, it was
reason; it included remembrance of the past, and anticipation of the
future; and its object was not the sex, but ALMEIDA.

As HAMET never witheld any pleasure that it was in his power to impart,
he soon acquainted Abdallah, that he waited only for a proper time to
place ALMEIDA upon the throne; but that he had some reasons for keeping
a resolution, which he thought himself obliged to communicate to him,
concealed from others.

It happened, however, that some of the women who attended upon ALMEIDA,
met with some female slaves belonging to the seraglio of ALMORAN, at the
public baths, and related to them all the particulars of ALMEIDA'S
preservation by HAMET; that he had first conveyed her to his own
apartments, and had since been frequently with her in that which he had
assigned her in his palace: they were also lavish in the praise of her
beauty, and free in their conjectures what might be the issue of her
intercourse with HAMET.

Thus the situation of HAMET and ALMEIDA became the subject of
conversation in the seraglio of ALM