Part 13

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.