“SCHEMSELNIHAR TO ALI EBN BECAR, PRINCE OF PERSIA.
“The person who will deliver this letter to you, will give you an account of me better than I can myself; for I know nothing, since I ceased beholding you. Deprived of your presence, I seek to continue the illusion, and converse with you by means of these ill-formed lines, which afford me some pleasure, while I am prevented the happiness of speaking to you.
“Patience, they say, is the remedy for all evils: yet those I suffer are increased instead of relieved by it. Although your image is indelibly engraven on my heart, my eyes nevertheless wish again to behold the original; and their sight will forsake them, if they remain deprived of that gratification for any length of time. Dare I flatter myself, that yours experience the same impatience to see me? Yes, I may; they have sufficiently proved it to me by their tender glances. Happy would Schemselnihar be, happy would you be, prince, if my wishes, which are conformable to yours, were not opposed by insurmountable obstacles! These obstacles occasion me an affliction so much the more poignant, as they are the cause of sorrow to you.
“These sentiments, which my fingers trace, and in expressing of which I feel such inconceivable pleasure, that I cannot repeat them too often, proceed from the bottom of my heart; from that incurable wound you have made in it; a wound which I bless a thousand times, notwithstanding the cruel sufferings I endure in your absence. I should little heed all that opposes our love, were I only permitted to see you occasionally without restraint. You would then be mine; and what more could I desire?
“Do not imagine that my words convey more than I feel. Alas! whatever expressions I may use, I shall still think much more than I can ever say. My eyes, which never cease looking for you, and incessantly weep till they shall behold you again; my afflicted heart which seeks but you; my sighs which escape my lips, whenever I think on you, and that is continually; my imagination which never reflects any object but my beloved prince; the complaints I utter to Heaven of the rigour of my fate; in short, my melancholy, my uneasiness, my sufferings from which I have had no respite since I lost sight of you, are all sufficient pledges of the truth of what I write.
“Am I not truly unfortunate to be born to love, love, without indulging the hope of possessing the object of my affections? This distracting reflection overpowers me to such a degree, that I should die, were I not persuaded that you love me. But this sweet consolation counteracts my despair, and attaches me to life. Tell me that you love me still. I will preserve your letter with precious care; I will read it a thousand times a-day; and I shall then bear my sorrows with less impatience. I pray that heaven may no longer be irritated against us, and may grant us an opportunity of telling each other, without restraint, the tender affection we feel, and that we will never cease to love. Farewell.
“I salute Ebn Thaher, to whom we each have so many obligations.”
The prince of Persia was not satisfied with reading this letter only once; he thought he had not bestowed sufficient attention on it; he read it again more deliberately, and while thus engaged he alternately uttered deep sighs and wept; he then would burst into transports of joy and tenderness, according to the different emotions he experienced from the contents of the letter. In short, he could not withdraw his eyes from the characters, traced by so dear a hand, and he was going to read it a third time, when Ebn Thaher represented to him, that the slave had no time to lose, and that he must prepare an answer. “Alas!” cried the prince, “how can I reply to so obliging and kind a letter? In what terms shall I describe the state of my soul? My mind is agitated by a thousand distressing thoughts, and my sentiments are destroyed, before I have time to express them by others, which in their turn are erased as soon as formed. While my body is so much in unison with the situation of my mind, how shall I be able to hold the paper and guide the cane to form the letters?”
Saying this, he drew from a little writing-case, which was near him, some paper, a cut cane, and an ink-horn; but before he began to write, he gave the letter of Schemselnihar to Ebn Thaher, and begged him to hold it open whilst he wrote, that by occasionally casting his eyes over it, he might be better enabled to answer it. He took up the writing-cane to begin; but the tears, which flowed from his eyes on the paper, frequently obliged him to stop to allow them a free current. He at length finished his letter, and giving it to Ebn Thaher, “Do me the favor to read it,” said he, “and see, if the agitation my spirits are in, has allowed me to write a proper answer.” Ebn Thaher took it, and read as follows:
“THE PRINCE OF PERSIA TO SCHEMSELNIHAR.