The same evening Murad was seized with a second whim.
He had never been allowed to to out alone—what could be more delightful than to take a stroll abroad at night? He only knew the face of Nature by day, he wished to see her in her silent moments, in the hours of gloom and half-obscured moonlight. He had heard of the songs of night-birds, of the roar of the hungry lion; of those insects which, glittering among the leaves, turn every bush into a casket of diamonds; of the mysterious odours which earth yields to the flowers only in the solemn hours of darkness; but now he determined to see, to hear, and to learn all these for himself.
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He retired to rest as usual, placed his yataghan under his pillow, and waited till all was quiet in the palace. Then he rose softly, dressed himself, and walked to the door of his apartments. There he found his governor sleeping across the threshold. He paused to reflect.
“If I try to open this door, I shall rouse my guardian. If I wake him, will he grant my prayers? Certainly not. Will he yield to my threats? No; he will only laugh at them. If I disturb his slumbers, therefore, it will be to place him in a position of great difficulty, which I should exceedingly regret. It will be better, then, not to wake him!”—and Murad quietly thrust the point of his sword down the sleeper’s throat, and quitted the place.
The first thing he had to do was to cross the gardens. It seemed as if he had never seen them before. The fountains falling back into their basins made a silvery tinkling, which formed a ravishing accompaniment to the song of the nightingales. The bats, which looked like great leather birds, wheeled in circles through the air upon noiseless wings. The trees, allowing the moonbeams to filter through their foliage, flung mosaics of light and shade upon the sward.
Murad fancied he saw one of the marble lions move, and started back, but speedily seeing his mistake, was heartily ashamed of himself, although he knew there was no one near to laugh at his alarm. If a real lion had chanced to pass at that moment he would have had to pay for the fright which the statue had cost Murad. As soon as he had recovered the first feeling of surprise at the novelty, of the scene, Murad, who was not exactly of a poetic temperament, hurried on. What he wanted to see was not the garden—fine enough in its way, but only a prison, beyond the walls of which he had never wandered at liberty—where every step he set was on a well-kept lawn. He wanted freedom of space and chance adventure. He sprang over the wall and fell into the midst of a detachment of Nubians going their rounds.