Page:Stories after Nature.pdf/68

44 Then she took the skins, the pebbles, and the map, and put them upon the camel; and turning to the multitude smiled sweetly, and said, "Tell my father that I am content." So she bowed, and put her arm upon her husband's neck, and leading the camel by a string, she turned her back to them, and journeyed towards the desert. And the multitude returned shouting.

Here the virtuous were content and happy; and the proud heart plagued to the amount of its folly: but "Heaven, that hath the hearts of princes in its own hand," worketh after its own way.

These two built them a house, and the continual content and cheerfulness of Zara at length shamed away the melancholy that existed in the fine feeling of her husband; he knowing that for him she had become an outcast, and that he was a beggar without any worldly comforts. The remainder of the money, that Zara in her charity had sent to her husband, was now their daily life and anchor; it was soon gone, and they bethought themselves how they might live. Zara said, "Heaven did not put it into the head of my dear father to bestow on me the camel to no use; howbeit I love the animal with almost a holy love, not only that it fondles me and is so