Chapter VI: Part 6

High as the Landgraf had been stationed in this sublunary world, it was a question whether, in the courts of Heaven, he might be found worthy to kneel on the footstool of her throne, and raise his eyes to his former bedmate. Yet, many vows as she made, many good works as she did, much as her prayers in other cases had availed with all the Saints, her credit in the upper world was not sufficient to stretch out her husband's term a span. He died on this march, in the bloom of life, of a malignant fever, at Otranto, before he had acquired the knightly merit of chining a single Saracen. While he was preparing for departure, and the time was come for him to give the world his blessing, he called Count Ernst from among his other servants and vassals to his bedside; appointed him commander of the troops which he himself had led thus far, and made him swear that he would not return till he had thrice drawn his sword against the Infidel. Then he took the holy viaticum from the hands of his marching chaplain; and ordering as many masses for his soul, as might have brought himself and all his followers triumphantly into the New Jerusalem, he breathed his last. Count Ernst had the corpse of his lord embalmed: he enclosed it in a silver coffin, and sent it to the widowed lady, who wore mourning for her husband like a Roman Empress, for she never laid her weeds aside while she continued in this world.

Count Ernst of Gleichen forwarded the pilgrimage as much as possible, and arrived in safety with his people in the camp at Ptolemais. Here, it was rather a theatrical emblem of war than a serious campaign that met his view. For as on our stages, when they represent a camp or field of battle, there are merely a few tents erected in the foreground, and a little handful of players scuffling together; but in the distance many painted tents and squadrons to assist the illusion, and cheat the eye, the whole being merely intended for an artificial deception of the senses; so also was the crusading army a mixture of fiction and reality. Of the numerous heroic hosts that left their native country, it was always the smallest part that reached the boundaries of the land they had gone forth to conquer. But few were devoured by the swords of the Saracens. These Infidels had powerful allies, whom they sent beyond their frontiers, and who made brisk work among their enemies, though getting neither wages nor thanks for their good service. These allies were, Hunger and Nakedness, Perils by land and water and among bad brethren, Frost and Heat, Pestilence and malignant Boils; and the grinding Home-sickness also fell at times like a heavy Incubus upon the steel harness, and crushed it together like soft pasteboard, and spurred the steed to a quick return. Under these circumstances, Count Ernst had little hope of speedily fulfilling his oath, and thrice dyeing his knightly sword in unbelieving blood, as must be done before he thought of returning. For three days' journey round the camp, no Arab archer was to be seen; the weakness of the Christian host lay concealed behind its bulwarks and entrenchments; they did not venture out to seek the distant enemy, but waited for the slow help of his slumbering Holiness, who, since the wakeful night that gave rise to this Crusade, had enjoyed unbroken sleep, and about the issue of the Holy War had troubled himself very little.

In this inaction, as inglorious to the Christian army, as of old that loitering was to the Greeks before the walls of bloody but courageous Troy, where the godlike Achilles, with his confederates, moped so long about his fair Briseis,--the chivalry of Christendom kept up much jollity and recreation in their camp, to kill lazy time, and scare away the blue devils; the Italians, with song and harping, to which the nimble-footed Frenchmen danced; the solemn Spaniards with chess; the English with cock-fighting; the Germans with feasting and wassail.

Count Ernst, taking small delight in any of these pastimes, amused himself with hunting; made war on the foxes in the dry wildernesses, and pursued the shy chamois into the barren mountains. The knights of his train "disagreed" with the glowing sun by day, and the damp evening air under the open sky, and sneaked to a side when their lord called for his horses; therefore, in his hunting expeditions, he was generally attended only by his faithful Squire, named the mettled Kurt, and a single groom. Once, his eagerness in clambering after the chamois, had carried him to such a distance, that the sun was dipping in the Mid-sea wave before he thought of returning; and, fast as he hastened homewards, night came upon him at a distance from the camp. The appearance of some treacherous _ignes fatui_, which he mistook for the watch-fires, led him off still farther. On discovering his error, he resolved to rest beneath a tree till daybreak. The trusty Squire prepared a bed of soft moss for his lord, who, wearied by the heat of the day, fell asleep before he could lift his hand to bless himself, according to custom, with the sign of the cross. But to the mettled Kurt there came no wink of sleep, for he was by nature watchful like a bird of darkness; and though this gift had not belonged to him, his faithful care for his lord would have kept him waking. The night, as usual in the climate of Asia, was serene and still; the stars twinkled in pure diamond light; and solemn silence, as in the Valley of Death, reigned over the wide desert. No breath of air was stirring, yet the nocturnal coolness poured life and refreshment over herb and living thing. But about the third watch, when the morning star had begun to announce the coming day, there arose a din in the dusky remoteness, like the voice of a forest stream rushing over some steep precipice. The watchful squire listened eagerly, and sent his other senses also out for tidings, as his sharp eye could not pierce the veil of darkness. He hearkened, and snuffed at the same time, like a bloodhound, for a scent came towards him as of sweet-smelling herbs and trodden grass, and the strange noise appeared to be approaching. He laid his ear to the ground, and heard a trampling as of horses' hoofs, which led him to conclude that the Infernal Chase was hunting in these parts. A cold shudder passed over him, and his terror grew extreme. He shook his master from sleep; and the latter, having roused himself, soon saw that here another than a spectral host was to be fronted. Whilst his groom girded up the horses, the Count had his harness buckled on in all haste.

The dim shadows gradually withdrew, and the advancing morning tinted the eastern hem of the horizon with purple light. The Count now discovered, what he had anticipated, a host of Saracens approaching, all equipped for fight, to snatch some booty from the Christians. To escape their hands was hopeless, and the hospitable tree in the wide solitary plain gave no shelter to conceal horse and man behind it. Unluckily the massy steed was not a Hippogryph, but a heavy-bodied Frieslander, to which, by reason of its make, the happy talent of bearing off its master on the wings of the wind had not been allotted; therefore the gallant hero gave his soul to the keeping of God and the Holy Virgin, and resolved on dying like a knight. He bade his servants follow him, and sell their lives as dear as might be. Thereupon he pricked the Frieslander boldly forward, and dashed right into the middle of the hostile squadron, who had been expecting no such sudden onset from a single knight. The Pagans started in astonishment, and flew asunder like light chaff when scattered by the wind. But seeing that the enemy was only three men strong, their courage rose, and there began an unequal battle, in which valour was surpassed by number. The Count meanwhile kept plunging yarely through the ranks; the point of his lance gleamed death and destruction to the Infidel; and when it found its man, he flew inevitably from his saddle. Their Captain himself, who ran at him with grim fury, his manly arm laid low, and with his victorious spear transfixed him writhing in the dust, as St. George of England did the Dragon. The mettled Kurt went on with no less briskness; though availing little for attack, he was a master in the science of dispatching, and sent all to pot who did not make resistance; as a modern critic butchers the defenceless rabble of the lame and halt, who venture with such courage in our days into the literary tilt-yard: and if now and then some fainting invalid, with furious aim, like an exasperated Reviewer-hunter, did hurl a stone at him with enfeebled fist, he heeded it little; for he knew well that his basnet and iron jack would turn a moderate thump. The groom, too, did his best to make clear ground about him, and kept his master's back unharmed. But as nine gad-flies will beat the strongest horse; four Caffre bulls an African lion; and, by the common tale, one troop of mice an archbishop, as the _Maeusethurm_, or Mouse-tower, on the Rhine, by Huebner's account, gives open testimony; so the Count of Gleichen, after doing knightly battle, was at length overpowered by the number of his enemies. His arm grew weary, his lance was shivered into splinters, his sword became blunt, and his Friesland horse at last staggered down upon the gory battle-field. The Knight's fall was the watch-word of victory; a hundred valiant arms stormed in on him to wrench away his sword, and his hand had no longer any strength for resistance. As the mettled Kurt observed the Knight come down, his own courage sank also, and along with it the pole-axe, wherewith he had so magnanimously hammered in the Saracenic skulls. He surrendered at discretion, and pressingly entreated quarter. The groom stood in blank rumination; bore himself enduringly; and awaited with oxlike equanimity the stroke of some mace upon his basnet, which should crush him to the ground.

But the Saracens were less inhuman victors than the conquered could have expected; they disarmed their three prisoners of war, and did them no bodily harm whatever. This mild usage took its rise not in any movement of philanthropy, but in mere spy's-mercy: from a dead enemy there is nothing to be learnt, and the special object of this roaming troop had been to get correct intelligence about the state of matters in the Christian host at Ptolemais. The captives, being questioned and heard, were next, according to the Asiatic fashion, furnished with slave-fetters; and as a ship was just then lying ready to set sail for Alexandria, the Bey of Asdod sent them off with it as a present to the Sultan of Egypt, to confirm at Court their description of the Christian resources and position. The rumour of the bold Frank's valour had arrived before him at the gates of Grand Cairo; and so pugnacious a prisoner might, on entering the hostile metropolis, have merited as pompous a reception as the Twelfth of April saw bestowed upon the Comte de Grasse in London, where the merry capital emulously strove to let the conquered sea-hero feel the honour which their victory had done him: but Moslem self-conceit allows no justice to foreign merit. Count Ernst, in the garb of a felon, loaded with heavy chains, was quietly locked into the Grated Tower, where the Sultan's slaves were wont to be kept.

Here, in long painful nights, and mournful solitary days, he had time and leisure to survey the grim stony aspect of his future life; and it required as much steadfastness and courage to bear up under these contemplations, as to tilt it on the battle-field among a wandering horde of Arabs. The image of his former domestic happiness kept hovering before his eyes; he thought of his gentle wife, and the tender shoots of their chaste love. Ah! how he cursed the miserable feud of Mother-church with the Gog and Magog of the East, which had robbed him of his fair lot in existence, and fettered him in slave-shackles never to be loosed! In such moments he was ready to despair altogether; and his piety had well-nigh made shipwreck on this rock of offence.

In the days of Count Ernst there was current, among anecdotic persons, a wondrous story of Duke Henry the Lion, which at that period, as a thing that had occurred within the memory of man, found great credence in the German Empire. The Duke, so runs the tale, while proceeding over sea to the Holy Land, was, in a tempest, cast away upon a desert part of the African coast; where, escaping alone from shipwreck, he found shelter and succour in the den of a hospitable Lion. This kindness in the savage owner of the cave had its origin not in the heart, but in the left hind-paw; while hunting in the Libyan wilderness, he had run a thorn into his foot, which so tormented him, that he could hardly move, and had entirely forgotten his natural voracity. The acquaintance being formed, and mutual confidence established between the parties, the Duke assumed the office of chirurgeon to the royal beast, and laboriously picked out the thorn from his foot. The patient rapidly recovered, and, mindful of the service, entertained his lodger with his best from the produce of his plunder; and, though a Lion, was as friendly and officious towards him as a lap-dog.

The Duke, however, soon grew weary of the cold collations of his four-footed landlord, and began to long for the flesh-pots of his own far-distant kitchen; for in readying the game handed in to him, he by no means rivalled his Brunswick cook. Then the home-sickness came upon him like a heavy load; and seeing no possibility of ever getting back to his paternal heritage, the thought of this so grieved his soul, that he wasted visibly, and pined like a wounded hart. Thereupon the Tempter, with his wonted impudence in desert places, came before him, in the figure of a little swart wrinkled manikin, whom the Duke at first sight took for an ourang-outang; but it was the Devil himself, Satan in proper person, and he grinned, and said: "Duke Henry, what ails thee? If thou trust to me, I will put an end to all thy sorrow, and take thee home to thy wife to sup with her this night in the Castle of Brunswick; for a lordly supper is making ready there, seeing she is about to wed another man, having lost hope of thy life."

This despatch came rolling like a thunder-clap into the Duke's ear, and cut him through the heart like a sharp two-edged sword. Rage burnt in his eyes like flames of fire, and desperation uproared in his breast. If Heaven will not help me in this crisis, thought he, then let Hell! It was one of those entangling situations which the Arch-crimp, with his consummate skill in psychological science, can employ so dextrously when the enlisting of a soul that he has cast an eye on is to prosper in his hands. The Duke, without hesitation, buckled on his golden spurs, girded his sword about his loins, and put himself in readiness. "Quick, my good fellow!" said he; "carry me, and this my trusty Lion, to Brunswick, before the varlet reach my bed!"--"Well!" answered Blackbeard, "but dost thou know the carriage-dues?"--"Ask what thou wilt!" said Duke Henry; "it shall be given thee at thy word."--"Thy soul at sight in the other world," replied Beelzebub.--"Done! Be it so!" cried furious jealousy, from Henry's mouth.

The bargain was forthwith concluded in legal form, between the two contracting parties. The Infernal Kite directly changed himself into a winged Griffin, and seizing the Duke in the one clutch, and the trusty Lion in the other, conveyed them both in one night from the Libyan coast to Brunswick, the towering city, founded on the lasting basis of the Harz, which even the lying prophecies of the Zillerfeld vaticinator have not ventured to overthrow. There he set down his burden safely in the middle of the market-place, and vanished, just as the watchman was blowing his horn with intent to proclaim the hour of midnight, and then carol forth a superannuated bridal-song from his rusty mum-washed weasand. The ducal palace, and the whole city, still gleamed like the starry heaven with the nuptial illumination; every street resounded with the din and tumult of the gay people streaming forward to gaze on the decorated bride, and the solemn torch-dance with which the festival was to conclude. The Aeronaut, unwearied by his voyage, pressed on amid the crowding multitude through the entrance of the Palace; advanced with clanking spurs, under the guidance of his trusty Lion, to the banquet-chamber; drew his sword, and cried: "With me, whoever stands by Duke Henry; and to traitors, death and hell!" The Lion also bellowed, as if seven thunders had been uttering their united voices; shook his awful mane, and furiously erected his tail, as the signal of attack. The cornets and kettle-drums struck silent suddenly, and a horrid sound of battle pealed from the tumult in the wedding-hall, up to the very Gothic roof, till the walls rang with it, and the thresholds shook.

The golden-haired bridegroom, and his party-coloured butterflies of courtiers, fell beneath the sword of the Duke, as the thousand Philistines beneath the ass's jaw-bone, in the sturdy fist of the son of Manoah; and he who escaped the sword, rushed into the Lion's throat, and was butchered like a defenceless lamb. When the forward wooer and his retinue of serving-men and nobles were abolished, Duke Henry, having used his household privilege as sternly as of old the wise Ulysses to the wooing-club of his chaste Penelope, sat down to table, refreshed in spirit, beside his wife, who was just beginning to recover from the deadly fright his entrance had caused her. While briskly enjoying the dainties of his cook, which had not been prepared for him, he cast a glance of triumph on his new conquest, and perceived that she was bathed in ambiguous tears, which might as well refer to loss as to gain. However, like a man that knew the world, he explained them wholly to his own advantage; and merely reproving her in gentle words for the hurry of her heart, he from that hour entered upon all his former rights.

Count Ernst had often listened to this strange story, from the lips of his nurse; yet in riper years, as an enlightened sceptic, entertained doubts of its truth. But in the dreary loneliness of his Grated Tower, the whole incident acquired a form of possibility, and his wavering nursery belief increased almost to conviction. A transit through the air appeared to him the simplest thing in nature, if the Prince of Darkness, in the gloomy midnight, chose to lend his bat-wings for the purpose. Though in obedience to his religious principles, he no night neglected to cut a large cross before him as he went to sleep; yet a secret longing awoke in his heart, without its own distinct consciousness, to accomplish the same adventure. If a wandering mouse in the night-season happened to scratch upon the wainscot, he immediately supposed the Hellish Proteus was announcing his arrival, and at times in thought he went so far as settling the freight charges beforehand. But except the illusion of a dream, which juggled him into an aerial journey to his German native land, the Count gained nothing by his nursery faith, except employing with these fantasies a few vacant hours; and like a reader of novels, transporting himself into the situation of the acting hero. Why old Abaddon showed himself so sluggish in this case, when the kidnapping of a soul was in the wind, and in all likelihood the enterprise must have succeeded, may be accounted for in two ways. Either the Count's Guardian Angel was more watchful than the one to whom Duke Henry had intrusted the keeping of his soul, and resisted so stoutly that the Evil One could get no advantage over him; or the Prince of the Air had grown disgusted with the transport-trade in this his own element, having been bubbled out of his stipulated freightage by Duke Henry after all their engagements; for when it came to the point with Henry, his soul was found to have so many good works on her side of the account, that the scores on the Infernal tally were altogether cancelled by them.

Whilst Count Ernst was weaving in romantic dreams a feeble shadow of hope for deliverance from his captivity, and for a few moments in the midst of them forgetting his dejection and misery, his returning servants brought the Countess tidings that their master had vanished from the camp, and none knew what had become of him. Some supposed that he had been the prey of snakes or dragons; others that a pestilential blast of wind had met him in the Syrian desert, and killed him; others that he had been robbed and murdered, or taken captive, by some plundering troop of Arabs. In one point all agreed: That he was to be held _pro mortuo_, dead in law, and that the Countess was entirely relieved and enfranchised from her matrimonial engagements. But to the Countess herself, a secret foreboding still whispered that her lord was alive notwithstanding. Nor did she by any means repress this thought, which so solaced her heart; for hope is always the stoutest stay of the afflicted, and the sweetest dream of life. To maintain it, she secretly equipped a trusty servant, and sent him out for tidings, over sea into the Holy Land. Like the raven from the Ark, this scout flew to and fro upon the waters, and was no more heard of. Then she sent another forth; who returned after several years' cruising over sea and land; but no olive-leaf of hope was in his bill. Nevertheless the steadfast lady doubted not in the least that she should yet meet her lord in the land of the living: for she had a firm persuasion that so tender and true a husband could not possibly have left the world without in the catastrophe remembering his wife and little children at home, and giving them some token of his death. Now, since the Count's departure, there had nothing happened in the Castle; neither in the armoury by rattling of the harness, nor in the garret by a rolling joist, nor in the bed-chamber by a faint footstep, or heavy-booted tread. Nor had any nightly moaning chanted its _Naenia_ down from the high battlements of the palace; nor had the baleful bird Kreideweiss ever issued its lugubrious death-summons. In the absence of all these signs of evil omen, she inferred by the principles of female common-sense philosophy, which even in our own times are by no means fallen into such desuetude among the fair sex, as Father Aristotle's _Organum_ is among the male, that her much-loved husband was still living; a conclusion, which we know was perfectly correct. The fruitless issue of her first two missions of discovery, the object of which was more important to her than the finding of the Southern Polar Continent is to us, she allowed not in the least to deter her from sending out a third Apostle into All the World. This third was of a slow turn, and had imprinted on his mind the adage, _As soon gets the snail to his bed as the swallow_; therefore he called at every inn, and treated himself well. And it being infinitely more convenient that the people whom he was to question about his master should come to him, than that he should go tracking and spying them out in the wide world, he determined on choosing a position where he could examine every passenger from the East, with the insolent inquisitiveness of a toll-man behind his barrier; and fixed his quarters by the harbour of Venice. This Queen of the Waters was at that time, as it were, the general gate, which all pilgrims and crusaders from the Holy Land passed through in their way home. Whether this shrewd genius chose the best or the worst means for discharging his appointed function, will appear in the sequel.

After a seven-years narrow custody in the Grated Tower at Grand Cairo,--a term which to the Count seemed far longer than to the Seven Sleepers their seventy-years sleep in the Roman catacombs,--he concluded himself to be forsaken of Heaven and Hell, and utterly gave up hope of ever getting out in the body from this melancholy cage, where the kind face of the sun was not allowed to visit him, and the broken daylight struggled faintly in through a window secured with iron bars. His devil-romance was long ago concluded; and his faith in miraculous assistance from his Guardian Saint was lighter than a mustard-seed. He vegetated rather than lived; and if in these circumstances any wish arose in him, it was the wish to be annihilated.

From this lethargic stupor he was suddenly aroused by the rattling of a bunch of keys, before the door of his cell. Since the day of his entrance, his jailor had never more performed for him the office of turnkey; for all the necessaries of the prisoner had been conveyed through a trap-board in the door. Accordingly, it was not without long resistance, and the bribery of a little vegetable oil, that the rusty bolt obeyed him. But the creaking of the iron hinges, as the door went up with reluctant grating, was to the Count a compound of more melodious notes than ever came from the Harmonica of Franklin. A foreboding palpitation of the heart set his stagnant blood in motion; and he expected with impatient longing the intelligence of a change in his fate: for the rest, it was indifferent to him whether it brought life or death. Two black slaves entered with his jailor, at whose signal they loosed the fetters from the prisoner; and a second mute sign from the solemn graybeard commanded him to follow. He obeyed with faltering steps; his feet refused their service, and he needed the support of the two slaves, to totter down the winding stone stair. He was then conducted to the Captain of the Prison, who, looking at him with a reproachful air, thus spoke: "Obstinate Frank, what made thee hide the craft thou art acquainted with, when thou wert put into the Grated Tower? One of thy fellow-prisoners has betrayed thee, and informed us that thou art a master in the art of gardening. Go, whither the will of the Sultan calls thee; lay out a garden in the manner of the Franks, and watch over it like the apple of thy eye; that the Flower of the World may blossom in it pleasantly, for the adorning of the East."

If the Count had got a call to Paris to be Rector of the Sorbonne, the appointment could not have astonished him more, than this of being gardener to the Sultan of Egypt. About gardening he understood as little as a laic about the secrets of the Church. In Italy, it is true, he had seen many gardens; and at Nuernberg, where the dawn of that art was now first penetrating into Germany, though the horticultural luxury of the Nuernbergers did not yet extend much farther than a bowling-green, and a few beds of roman lettuce. But about the planning of gardens, and the cultivation of plants, like a martial nobleman, he had never troubled his head; and his botanic science was so limited, that the Flower of the World had never once come under his inspection. Hence he knew not in the least by what method it was to be treated; whether like the aloe it must be brought to blossom by the aid of art, or like a common marigold by the genial virtue of nature alone. Nevertheless, he did not venture to acknowledge his ignorance, or decline the preferment offered him; being reasonably apprehensive that they might convince him of his fitness for the post, by a bastinading on the soles.

A pleasant park was assigned him, which he was to change into a European garden. The spot had, either by the hand of bountiful Nature, or of ancient cultivation, been so happily disposed and ornamented already, that the new Abdalonymus, let him cudgel his brains as he would, could perceive no error or defect in it, nothing that admitted of improvement. Besides, the aspect of living and active nature, which for seven long years in his dreary prison he had been obliged to forego, affected him at once so powerfully, that he inhaled rapture from every grass-flower, and looked at all things around him with delight, like the First Man in Paradise, to whom the scientific thought of censuring anything in the arrangement of his Eden did not occur. The Count therefore found himself in no small embarrassment about discharging his commission creditably; he feared that every change would rob the garden of a beauty, and were he detected as a botcher, he must travel back into his Grated Tower.

In the mean time, as Shiek Kiamel, Overseer of the Gardens and favourite of the Sultan, was diligently stimulating him to begin the work, he required fifty slaves, as necessary for the execution of his enterprise. Next morning at dawn, they were all ready, and passed muster before their new commander, who as yet saw not how he should employ a man of them. But how great was his joy as he perceived the mottled Kurt and the ponderous Groom, his two companions of misfortune, ranked among the troop! A hundredweight of lead rolled off his heart, the wrinkle of dejection vanished from his brow, and his eyes were enlightened, as if he had dipt his staff in honey and tasted thereof. He led the trusty Squire aside, and frankly informed him into what a heterogeneous element he had been cast by the caprices of fate, where he could neither fly nor swim; nor could he in the least comprehend what enigmatical mistake had exchanged his knightly sword with the gardener's spade. No sooner had he done speaking, than the mettled Kurt, with wet eyes, fell at his feet, then lifted up his voice and said: "Pardon, dear master! It is I that have caused your perplexity and your deliverance from the rascally Grated Tower, which has kept you so long in ward. Be not angry that the innocent deceit of your servant has brought you out of it; be glad rather that you see God's sky again above your head. The Sultan required a garden after the manner of the Franks, and had proclamation made to all the Christian captives in the Bazam, that the proper man should step forth, and expect great recompense if the undertaking prospered. No one of them durst meddle with it; but I recollected your heavy durance. Then some good spirit whispered me the lie of announcing you as an adept in the art of gardening, and it has succeeded perfectly. And now never vex yourself about the way of managing the business: the Sultan, like the great people of the world, has a fancy not for something better than he has already, but for something different, that may be new and singular. Therefore, delve and devastate, and cut and carve, in this glorious field, according to your pleasure; and depend upon it, everything you do or purpose will be right in his eyes."

This speech was as the murmur of a running brook in the ears of a tired wanderer in the desert. The Count drew balsam to his soul from it, and courage to commence with boldness the ungainly undertaking. He set his men to work at random, without plan; and proceeded with the well-ordered shady park, as one of your "bold geniuses" proceeds with an antiquated author, who falls into his creative hands, and, nill he will he, must submit to let himself be modernised, that is to say, again made readable and likeable; or as a new pedagogue with the ancient forms of the Schools. He jumbled in variegated confusion what he found before him, making all things different, nothing better. The profitable fruit-trees he rooted out, and planted rosemary and valerian, and exotic shrubs, or scentless amaranths, in their stead. The rich soil he dug away, and coated the naked bottom with many-coloured gravel, which he carefully stamped hard, and smoothed like a threshing-floor, that no blade of grass might spring in it. The whole space he divided into various terraces, which he begirt with a hem of green; and through these a strangely-twisted flower-bed serpentised along, and ended in a knot of villanously-smelling boxwood. And as from his ignorance of botany, he paid no heed to the proper seasons for sowing and planting, his garden project hovered for a long time between life and death, and had the aspect of a suit of clothes _a feuille mourante_.

Shiek Kiamel, and the Sultan himself, allowed the Western gardener to take his course, without deranging his conception by their interference or their dictatorial opinion, and by premature hypercriticism interrupting the procedure of his horticultural genius. In this they acted more wisely than our obstreperous public, which, from our famous philanthropic scheme of sowing acorns, expected in a summer or two a stock of strong oaks, fit to be masts for three-deckers; while the plantation was as yet so soft and feeble, that a few frosty nights might have sent it to destruction. Now, indeed, almost in the middle of the second decade of years from the commencement of the enterprise, when the first fruits must certainly be over-ripe, it were in good season for a German Kiamel to step forward with the question: "Planter, what art thou about? Let us see what thy delving, and the loud clatter of thy cars and wheelbarrows have produced?" And if the plantation stood before him like that of the Gleichic Garden at Grand Cairo, in the sere and yellow leaf, then were he well entitled, after due consideration of the matter, like the Shiek, to shake his head in silence, to spit a squirt through his teeth, and think within himself: If this be all, it might have stayed as it was. For one day, as the gardener was surveying his new creation with contentment, sitting in judgment on himself, and pronouncing that the work praised the master, and that, everything considered, it had fallen out better than he could have anticipated, his whole ideal being before his eyes, not only what was then, but what was to be made of it,--the Overseer, the Sultan's favourite, stept into the garden, and said: "Frank, what art thou about? And how far art thou got with thy labour?" The Count easily perceived that the produce of his genius would now have to stand a rigorous criticism; however, he had long been ready for this accident. He collected all his presence of mind, and answered confidently: "Come, sir, and see! This former wilderness has obeyed the hand of art, and is now moulded, after the pattern of Paradise, into a scene which the Houris would not disdain to select for their abode." The Shiek, hearing a professed artist speak with such apparent warmth and satisfaction of his own performance, and giving the master credit for deeper insight in his own sphere than he himself possessed, restrained the avowal of his discontentment with the whole arrangement, modestly ascribing this dislike to his inacquaintance with foreign taste, and leaving the matter to rest on its own basis. Nevertheless, he could not help putting one or two questions, for his own information; to which the garden satrap was not in the least behindhand with his answers.

"Where are the glorious fruit-trees," began the Shiek, "which stood on this sandy level, loaded with peaches and sweet lemons, which solaced the eye, and invited the promenader to refreshing enjoyment?"

"They are all hewn away by the surface, and their place is no longer to be found."

"And why so?"

"Could the garden of the Sultan admit such trash of trees, which the commonest citizen of Cairo cultivates, and the fruit of which is offered for sale by assloads every day?"

"What moved thee to desolate the pleasant grove of dates and tamarinds, which was the wanderer's shelter against the sultry noontide, and gave him coolness and refection under the vault of its shady boughs?"

"What has shade to do in a garden which, while the sun shoots forth scorching beams, stands solitary and deserted, and only exhales its balsamic odours when fanned by the cool breeze of evening?"

"But did not this grove cover, with an impenetrable veil, the secrets of love, when the Sultan, enchanted by the charms of a fair Circassian, wished to hide his tenderness from the jealous eyes of her companions?"

"An impenetrable veil is to be found in that bower, overarched with honeysuckle and ivy; or in that cool grotto, where a crystal fountain gushes out of artificial rocks into a basin of marble; or in that covered walk with its trellises of clustering vines; or on the sofa, pillowed with soft moss, in the rustic reed-house by the pond; nor will any of these secret shrines afford lodging for destructive worms, and buzzing insects, or keep away the wafting air, or shut up the free prospect, as the gloomy grove of tamarinds did."

"But why hast thou planted sage, and hyssop which grows upon the wall, here on this spot where formerly the precious balm-tree of Mecca bloomed?"

"Because the Sultan wanted no Arabian, but a European garden. In Italy, and in the German gardens of the Nuernbergers, no dates are ripened, nor does any balm-tree of Mecca bloom."

To this last argument no answer could be made. As neither the Shiek nor any of the Heathen in Cairo had ever been at Nuernberg, he had nothing for it but to take this version of the garden from Arabic into German, on the word of the interpreter. Only, he could not bring himself to think that the present horticultural reform had been managed by the pattern of the Paradise, appointed by the Prophet for believing Mussulmans; and, allowing the pretension to be true, he promised to himself, from the joys of the future life, no very special consolation. There was nothing for him, therefore, but, in the way above mentioned, to shake his head, contemplatively squirt a dash of liquid out over his beard, and go the way whence he had come.

The Sultan who at that time swayed the Egyptian sceptre was the gallant Malek al Aziz Othman, a son of the renowned Saladin. The fame of Sultan Malek rests less upon his qualities in the field or the cabinet, than upon the unexampled numerousness of his offspring. Of princes he had so many, that had every one of them been destined to wear a crown, he might have stocked with them all the kingdoms of the then known world. Seventeen years ago, however, this copious spring had, one hot summer, finally gone dry. Princess Melechsala terminated the long series of the Sultanic progeny; and, in the unanimous opinion of the Court, she was the jewel of the whole. She enjoyed to its full extent the prerogative of youngest children, preference to all the rest; and this distinction was enhanced by the circumstance, that of all the Sultan's daughters, she alone had remained in life; while Nature had adorned her with so many charms, that they enchanted even the paternal eye. For this must in general be conceded to the Oriental Princes, that in the scientific criticism of female beauty they are infinitely more advanced than our Occidentals, who are every now and then betraying their imperfect culture in this point.[18] Melechsala was the pride of the Sultan's family; her brothers themselves were unremitting in attentions to her, and in efforts to outdo each other in affectionate regard. The grave Divan was frequently employed in considering what Prince, by means of her, might be connected, in the bonds of love, with the interest of the Egyptian state. This her royal father made his smallest care; he was solely and incessantly concerned to grant this darling of his heart her every wish, to keep her spirit always in a cheerful mood, that no cloud might overcast the serene horizon of her brow.

[18] _Journal of Fashions_, June 1786.

The first years of childhood she had passed under the superintendence of a nurse, who was a Christian, and of Italian extraction. This slave had in early youth been kidnapped from the beach of her native town by a Barbary pirate; sold in Alexandria; and, by the course of trade, transmitted from one hand to another, till at last she had arrived in the palace of the Sultan, where her hale constitution recommended her to this office, which she filled with the greatest reputation. Though less tuneful than the French court-nurse, who used to give the signal for a general chorus over all Versailles, whenever she uplifted, with melodious throat, her _Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre_; yet nature had sufficiently indemnified her by a glibness of tongue, in which she was unrivalled. She knew as many tales and stories as the fair Sheherazade in the Thousand-and-one Nights; a species of entertainment for which it would appear the race of Sultans, in the privacy of their seraglios, have considerable liking. The Princess, at least, found pleasure in it, not for a thousand nights, but for a thousand weeks; and when once a maiden has attained the age of a thousand weeks, she can no longer be contented with the histories of others, for she sees materials in herself to make a history of her own. In process of time, the gifted waiting-woman changed her nursery-tales with the theory of European manners and customs; and being herself a warm patriot, and recollecting her native country with delight, she painted the superiorities of Italy so vividly, that the fancy of her tender nursling became filled with the subject, and the pleasant impression never afterwards faded from her memory. The more this fair Princess grew in stature, the stronger grew in her the love for foreign decoration; and her whole demeanour shaped itself according to the customs of Europe rather than of Egypt.

From youth upwards she had been a great lover of flowers: part of her occupation had consisted in forming, according to the manner of the Arabs, a constant succession of significant nosegays and garlands; with which, in delicate expressiveness, she used to disclose the emotions of her heart. Nay, she at last grew so inventive, that, by combining flowers of various properties, she could compose, and often very happily, whole sentences and texts of the Koran. These she would then submit to her playmates for interpretation, which they seldom failed to hit. Thus one day, for example, she formed with Chalcedonic Lychnis the figure of a heart; surrounded it with white Roses and Lilies; fastened under it two mounting Kingsweeds, enclosing a beautifully marked Anemone between them; and her women, when she showed them, the wreath, unanimously read: Innocence of heart is above Birth and Beauty. She frequently presented her slaves with fresh nosegays: and these flower-donations commonly included praise or blame for their receivers. A garland of Peony-roses censured levity; the swelling Poppy, dulness and vanity; a bunch of odoriferous Hyacinths, with drooping bells, was a panegyric for modesty; the gold Lily, which shuts her leaves at sunset, for prudence; the Marine Convolvulus rebuked eye-service; and the blossoms of the Thorn-Apple, with the Daisy whose roots are poisonous, indicated slander and private envy.

Father Othman took a secret pleasure in this sprightly play of his daughter's fancy, though he himself had no talent for deciphering these witty hieroglyphics, and was frequently obliged to look with the spectacles of his whole Divan before he could pierce their meaning. The exotic taste of the Princess was not hidden from him; and though, as a plain Mussulman, he could not sympathise with her in it, he endeavoured, as a tender and indulgent parent, rather to maintain than to suppress this favourite tendency of his daughter. He fell upon the project of combining her passion for flowers with her preference for foreign parts, and laying out a garden for her in the taste of the Franks. This idea appeared to him so happy, that he lost not a moment in imparting it to his favourite, Shiek Kiamel, and pressing him with the strictest injunctions to realise it as speedily as possible. The Shiek, well knowing that his master's wishes were for him commands, which he must obey without reply, presumed not to mention the difficulties which he saw in the attempt. He himself understood as little about European gardens as the Sultan; and in all Cairo there was no mortal known to him, with whom he might find counsel in the business. Therefore he made search among the Christian slaves for a man skilful in gardening; and lighted exactly on the wrong hand for extricating him from his difficulty. It was no wonder, then, that Shiek Kiamel shook his head contemplatively as he inspected the procedure of this horticultural improvement; for he was apprehensive, that if it delighted the Sultan as little as it did himself, he might be involved in a heavy responsibility, and his favouriteship, at the very least, might take wings and fly away.

At Court, this project had hitherto been treated as a secret, and the entrance of the place prohibited to every one in the seraglio. The Sultan purposed to surprise his daughter with this present on her birthday; to conduct her with ceremony into the garden, and make it over to her as her own. This day was now approaching; and his Highness had a wish to take a view of everything beforehand, to get acquainted with the new arrangements; that he might give himself the happiness of pointing out in person to his daughter the peculiar beauties of her garden. He communicated this to the Shiek, whom the tidings did not much exhilarate; and who, in consequence, composed 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,[19] 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."

[19] _Kalaf_, a shrub, from whose blossoms a liquor is extracted,
resembling our cherry-water, and much used in domestic medicine.
_Bahobab_, a sort of fruit, in great esteem among the Egyptians.

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_[20] 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 feet an elastic force, and a light firm tread, accustomed as he was to move on nothing else but Persian carpets, or on the soft greensward. He could not satisfy himself with wandering up and down the labyrinthic walks; and he showed himself especially contented with the rich variety of wild flowers, which had been fostered and cultivated with the greatest care, though they were blossoming of their own accord, outside the wall, with equal luxuriance and in greater multitude.

[20] Various sorts of sailing craft in use there.

At last, having placed himself upon a seat, he turned to the Shiek with a cheerful countenance, and said: "Kiamel, thou hast not deceived my expectation: I well anticipated that thou wouldst transform me this old park into something singular, and diverse from the fashion of the land; and now I will not hide my satisfaction from thee. Melechsala may accept thy work as a garden after the manner of the Franks."

The Shiek, when he heard his despot talk in this dialect, marvelled much that all things took so well; and blessed himself that he had held his tongue, and retained his defensive oration to himself. Perceiving that the Sultan seemed to look upon the whole as his invention, he directly turned the rudder of his talk to the favourable breeze which was rustling his sails, and spoke thus: "Puissant Commander of the Faithful, be it known to thee that thy obedient slave took thought with himself day and night how he might produce out of this old date-grove, at thy beck and order, something unexampled, the like of which had never been in Egypt before. Doubtless it was an inspiration of the Prophet that suggested the idea of planning it according to the pattern of Paradise; for I trusted, that by so doing I should not fail to meet the intention of thy Highness."

The worthy Sultan's conception of the Paradise, which to all appearance by the course of nature he must soon become possessed of, had still been exceedingly confused; or rather, like the favoured of fortune, who take their ease in this lower world, he had never troubled himself much about the other. But whenever any Dervish or Iman, or other spiritual person, mentioned Paradise, some image of his old park used to rise on his fancy; and the park was not by any means his favourite scene. Now, however, his imagination had been steered on quite a different tack. The new picture of his future happiness filled his soul with joy; at least he could now suppose that Paradise might not be so dull as he had hitherto figured it: and believing that he now possessed a model of it on the small scale, he formed a high opinion of the garden; and expressed this forthwith, by directly making Shiek Kiamel a Bey, and presenting him with a splendid caftan. Your thorough-paced courtier belies his nature in no quarter of the world: Kiamel, without the slightest hesitation, modestly appropriated the reward of a service which his functionary had performed; not uttering a syllable about him to the Sultan, and thinking him rather too liberally rewarded by a few aspers which he added to his daily pay.

About the time when the Sun enters the Ram, a celestial phenomenon, which in our climates is the watch-word for winter to commence his operation; but under the milder sky of Egypt announces the finest season of the year, the Flower of the World stept forth into the garden which had been prepared for her, and found it altogether to her foreign taste. She herself was, in truth, its greatest ornament: any scene where she had wandered, had it been a desert in Arabia the Stony, or a Greenland ice-field, would, in the eyes of a gallant person, have been changed into Elysium at her appearance. The wilderness of flowers, which chance had mingled in interminable rows, gave equal occupation to her eye and her spirit: the disorder itself she assimilated, by her sprightly allegories, to methodical arrangement.