have no
admission. Whatever Nature has provided for the delight of sense, is
here spread forth to be enjoyed. What can mortals hope or imagine, which
the master of this palace has not obtained? The dishes of luxury cover
his table, the voice of harmony lulls him in his bowers; he breathes the
fragrance of the groves of Java, and sleeps upon the down of the cygnets
of Ganges. He speaks, and his mandate is obeyed; he wishes, and his wish
is gratified; all whom he sees obey him, and all whom he hears flatter
him. How different, Ortogrul, is thy condition, who art doomed to the
perpetual torments of unsatisfied desire, and who hast no amusement in
thy power that can withhold thee from thy own reflections! They tell
thee that thou art wise; but what does wisdom avail with poverty? None
will flatter the poor, and the wise have very little power of flattering
themselves. That man is surely the most wretched of the sons of
wretchedness, who lives with his own faults and follies always before
him, and who has none to reconcile him to himself by praise and
veneration. I have long sought content, and have not found it; I will
from this moment endeavour to be rich.

Full of this new resolution, he shut himself up in his chamber for six
months, to deliberate how he should grow rich; he sometimes proposed to
offer himself as a counsellor to one of the kings of India, and
sometimes resolved to dig for diamonds in the mines of Golconda. One
day, after some hours passed in violent fluctuation of opinion, sleep
insensibly seized him in his chair; he dreamed that he was ranging a
desert country in search of some one that might teach him to grow rich;
and as he stood on the top of a hill shaded with cypress, in doubt
whither to direct his steps, his father appeared on a sudden standing
before him. Ortogrul, said the old man, I know thy perplexity; listen to
thy father; turn thine eye on the opposite mountain. Ortogrul looked,
and saw a torrent tumbling down the rocks, roaring with the noise of
thunder, and scattering its foam on the impending woods. Now, said his
father, behold the valley that lies between the hills. Ortogrul looked,
and espied a little well, out of which issued a small rivulet. Tell me
now, said his father, dost thou wish for sudden affluence, that may pour
upon thee like the mountain torrent, or for a slow and gradual increase,
resembling the rill gliding from the well? Let me be quickly rich, said
Ortogrul; let the gol