to my command, when he
ventured to enter my apartment at midnight by a secret passage. He
carried me off and conducted me to the temple of Oromazes, where the
magi his brother shut me up in that huge statue whose base reaches to
the foundation of the temple and whose top rises to the summit of the
dome. I was there buried in a manner; but was saved by the magi; and
supplied with all the necessaries of life. At break of day his
majesty's apothecary entered my chamber with a potion composed of a
mixture of henbane, opium, hemlock, black hellebore, and aconite; and
another officer went to thine with a bowstring of blue silk. Neither of
us was to be found. Cador, the better to deceive the king, pretended to
come and accuse us both. He said that thou hadst taken the road to the
Indies, and I that to Memphis, on which the king's guards were
immediately dispatched in pursuit of us both.

"The couriers who pursued me did not know me. I had hardly ever shown
my face to any but thee, and to thee only in the presence and by the
order of my husband. They conducted themselves in the pursuit by the
description that had been given them of my person. On the frontiers of
Egypt they met with a woman of the same stature with me, and possessed
perhaps of greater charms. She was weeping and wandering. They made no
doubt but that this woman was the Queen of Babylon and accordingly
brought her to Moabdar. Their mistake at first threw the king into a
violent passion; but having viewed this woman more attentively, he
found her extremely handsome and was comforted. She was called Missouf.
I have since been informed that this name in the Egyptian language
signifies the capricious fair one. She was so in reality; but she had
as much cunning as caprice. She pleased Moabdar and gained such an
ascendancy over him as to make him choose her for his wife. Her
character then began to appear in its true colors. She gave herself up,
without scruple, to all the freaks of a wanton imagination. She would
have obliged the chief of the magi, who was old and gouty, to dance
before her; and on his refusal, she persecuted him with the most
unrelenting cruelty. She ordered her master of the horse to make her a
pie of sweetmeats. In vain did he represent that he was not a
pastry-cook; he was obliged to make it, and lost his place, because it
was baked a little too hard. The post of master of the horse she gave
to her dwarf, and that of chancellor to her page. In thi