ness.
Nouronihar, compressing her hands upon her bosom, hesitated for some
moments to advance; the solitude of her situation was new, the silence of
the night awful, and every object inspired sensations which till then she
never had felt: the affright of Gulchenrouz recurred to her mind, and she
a thousand times turned to go back, but this luminous appearance was
always before her; urged on by an irresistible impulse, she continued to
approach it, in defiance of every obstacle that opposed her progress.

At length she arrived at the opening of the glen; but, instead of coming
up to the light, she found herself surrounded by darkness, excepting that
at a considerable distance a faint spark glimmered by fits. She stopped
a second time; the sound of water-falls mingling their murmurs, the
hollow rustlings amongst the palm-branches, and the funereal screams of
the birds from their rifted trunks, all conspired to fill her with
terror; she imagined every moment that she trod on some venomous reptile;
all the stories of malignant Dives and dismal Gouls thronged into her
memory; but her curiosity was, notwithstanding, more predominant than her
fears; she therefore firmly entered a winding track that led towards the
spark, but, being a stranger to the path, she had not gone far till she
began to repent of her rashness.

"Alas!" said she, "that I were but in those secure and illuminated
apartments where my evenings glided on with Gulchenrouz! Dear child! how
would thy heart flutter with terror wert thou wandering in these wild
solitudes like me!" At the close of this apostrophe she regained her
road, and, coming to steps hewn out in the rock, ascended them
undismayed; the light, which was now gradually enlarging, appeared above
her on the summit of the mountain; at length she distinguished a
plaintive and melodious union of voices, proceeding from a sort of
cavern, that resembled the dirges which are sung over tombs; a sound,
likewise, like that which arises from the filling of baths, at the same
time struck her ear; she continued ascending, and discovered large wax
torches in full blaze planted here and there in the fissures of the rock;
this preparation filled her with fear, whilst the subtle and potent odour
which the torches exhaled caused her to sink almost lifeless at the
entrance of the grot.

Casting her eyes within in this kind of trance, she beheld a large
cistern of gold filled with a water, whose vapour distilled