Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 1.djvu/137

Rh a short defensive oration, which he fondly hoped might extricate his head from the noose, if the Sultan showed himself dissatisfied with the appearance of his Christian garden.

“Commander of the Faithful,” he purposed to say, “thy nod is the director of my path; my feet hasten whither thou leadest them, and my hand holds fast what thou committest to it. Thou wishedst a garden after the manner of the Franks: here stands it before thy eyes. These untutored barbarians have no gardens; but meagre wastes of sand, which, in their own rude climate, where no dates or lemons ripen, and there is neither Kalaf nor Bahobab, they plant with grass and weeds. For the curse of the Prophet has smitten with perpetual barrenness the plains of the Unbeliever, and forbidden him any foretaste of Paradise by the perfume of the Mecca balm-tree, or the enjoyment of spicy fruits.”

The day was far spent, when the Sultan, attended only by the Shiek, stept into the garden, in high expectation of the wonders he was to behold. A wide unobstructed prospect over a part of the city, and the mirror surface of the Nile with its Musherns, Shamdecks and Sheomeons sailing to and fro; in the background, the skyward-pointing pyramids, and a chain of blue vapoury mountains, met his eye from the upper terrace, no longer shrouded-in by the leafy grove of palms. A refreshing breath of air was also stirring in the place, and fanning him agreeably. Crowds of new objects pressed on him from every side. The garden had in truth got a strange foreign aspect; and the old park which had been his promenade from youth upwards, and had long since wearied him by its everlasting sameness, was no longer to be recognised. The knowing Kurt had judged wisely, that the charm of novelty would have its influence. The Sultan tried this horticultural metamorphosis not by the principles of a critic, but by its first impression on the senses; and as these are easily decoyed into contentment by the bait of singularity, the whole seemed good and right to him there as he found it. Even the crooked unsymmetrical walks, overlaid with hard stamped gravel, gave his Rh