Page:Fairytales00auln.djvu/637

Rh indicated that your parents were either great lords, or very rich people,—as to the rest,—what advice can we give you? If you consult our affection for you, certainly you would remain with us, and console our old age by your charming company. If the mansion we have built here does not please you, or that living in this retirement distresses you, we will go wherever you wish, provided it is not to Court; long experience has given us a distaste to it; and you would be disgusted also, perhaps, if you were made acquainted with the continual troubles, dissimulations, jealousies, caprices, real evils, and imaginary benefits that are to be met with there: we could tell you still more about it; but you would think that our counsels were interested. Indeed, they are so, my children, for we would wish you to remain in this peaceful retreat, although you are your own masters to leave it whenever you like. At the same time remember you are at present in port, and you would venture on a tempestuous ocean; that the troubles of it nearly always surpass the pleasures; that life is short, that it is often quitted in the midst of our career, that the grandeurs of the world are as false brilliants, which by a strange fatality we permit to dazzle us, and that the most sterling happiness is to know how to limit our desires, to love peace, and to seek wisdom."

The Corsair would not have ended his remonstrances so soon, had he not been interrupted by Prince Heureux. "My dear father," said he, "we are too anxious to discover something of our birth, to bury ourselves in the depths of a desert; the moral you teach is excellent, and I wish we were able to profit by it, but some strange fatality calls us elsewhere; allow us to fulfil the course of our destiny—we will come again to see you, and give you an account of our adventures."

At these words the Corsair and his wife shed tears. The Princes were very much affected, and Belle-Etoile particularly so, who was of an admirable disposition, and who would never have thought of quitting the desert if she had been sure that Cheri would have always remained with her.

This resolution having been taken, they thought of nothing else, but preparing for their embarkation; for having been found upon the sea, they had some hope it would enlighten them on the matter they were so anxious about. They had a horse for each of them put on board their little vessel, and