Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
“Soon after the women came about me, each contending to be more officious
than the other, and my maids themselves were served with reverence. We
travelled onward by short journeys. On the fourth day the chief told me
that my ransom must be two hundred ounces of gold, which I not only
promised him, but told him that I would add fifty more if I and my maids
were honourably treated.
“I never knew the power of gold before. From that time I was the leader
of the troop. The march of every day was longer or shorter as I
commanded, and the tents were pitched where I chose to rest. We now had
camels and other conveniences for travel; my own women were always at my
side, and I amused myself with observing the manners of the vagrant
nations, and with viewing remains of ancient edifices, with which these
deserted countries appear to have been in some distant age lavishly
embellished.
“The chief of the band was a man far from illiterate: he was able to
travel by the stars or the compass, and had marked in his erratic
expeditions such places as are most worthy the notice of a passenger. He
observed to me that buildings are always best preserved in places little
frequented and difficult of access; for when once a country declines from
its primitive splendour, the more inhabitants are left, the quicker ruin
will be made. Walls supply stones more easily than quarries; and palaces
and temples will be demolished to make stables of granite and cottages of
porphyry.’”
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE ADVENTURES OF PEKUAH (_continued_).
“WE wandered about in this manner for some weeks, either, as our chief
pretended, for my gratification, or, as I rather suspected, for some
convenience of his own. I endeavoured to appear contented where
sullenness and resentment would have been of no use, and that endeavour
conduced much to the calmness of my mind; but my heart was always with
Nekayah, and the troubles of the night much overbalanced the amusements
of the day. My women, who threw all their cares upon their mistress, set
their minds at ease from the time when they saw me treated with respect,
and gave themselves up to the incidental alleviations of our fatigue
without solicitude or sorrow. I was pleased with their pleasure, and
animated with their confidence. My condition had lost much of its
terror, since I found that the Arab ranged the country merely to get
riches. Avarice is a uniform and tractable vice: other intellectual
distempers are different in different constitutions of mind; that which
soothes the pride of one will offend the pride of another; but to the
favour of the covetous there is a ready way—bring money, and nothing is
denied.
“At last we came to the dwelling of our chief; a strong and spacious
house, built with stone in an island of the Nile, which lies, as I was
told, under the tropic. ‘Lady,’ said the Arab, ‘you shall rest after
your journey a few weeks in this place, where you are to consider
yourself as Sovereign. My occupation is war: I have therefore chosen
this obscure residence, from which I can issue unexpected, and to which I
can retire unpursued. You may now repose in security: here are few
pleasures, but here is no danger.’ He then led me into the inner
apartments, and seating me on the richest couch, bowed to the ground.
“His women, who considered me as a rival, looked on me with malignity;
but being soon informed that I was a great lady detained only for my
ransom, they began to vie with each other in obsequiousness and
reverence.
“Being again comforted with new assurances of speedy liberty, I was for
some days diverted from impatience by the novelty of the place. The
turrets overlooked the country to a great distance, and afforded a view
of many windings of the stream. In the day I wandered from one place to
another, as the course of the sun varied the splendour of the prospect,
and saw many things which I had never seen before. The crocodiles and
river-horses are common in this unpeopled region; and I often looked upon
them with terror, though I knew they could not hurt me. For some time I
expected to see mermaids and tritons, which, as Imlac has told me, the
European travellers have stationed in the Nile; but no such beings ever
appeared, and the Arab, when I inquired after them, laughed at my
credulity.
“At night the Arab always attended me to a tower set apart for celestial
observations, where he endeavoured to teach me the names and courses of
the stars. I had no great inclination to this study; but an appearance
of attention was necessary to please my instructor, who valued himself
for his skill, and in a little while I found some employment requisite to
beguile the tediousness of time, which was to be passed always amidst the
same objects. I was weary of looking in the morning on things from which
I had turned away weary in the evening: I therefore was at last willing
to observe the stars rather than do nothing, but could not always compose
my thoughts, and was very often thinking on Nekayah when others imagined
me contemplating the sky. Soon after, the Arab went upon another
expedition, and then my only pleasure was to talk with my maids about the
accident by which we were carried away, and the happiness we should all
enjoy at the end of our captivity.”
“There were women in your Arab’s fortress,” said the Princess; “why did
you not make them your companions, enjoy their conversation, and partake
their diversions? In a place where they found business or amusement, why
should you alone sit corroded with idle melancholy? or why could not you
bear for a few months that condition to which they were condemned for
life?”
“The diversions of the women,” answered Pekuah, “were only childish play,
by which the mind accustomed to stronger operations could not be kept
busy. I could do all which they delighted in doing by powers merely
sensitive, while my intellectual faculties were flown to Cairo. They ran
from room to room, as a bird hops from wire to wire in his cage. They
danced for the sake of motion, as lambs frisk in a meadow. One sometimes
pretended to be hurt that the rest might be alarmed, or hid herself that
another might seek her. Part of their time passed in watching the
progress of light bodies that floated on the river, and part in marking
the various forms into which clouds broke in the sky.
“Their business was only needlework, in which I and my maids sometimes
helped them; but you know that the mind will easily straggle from the
fingers, nor will you suspect that captivity and absence from Nekayah
could receive solace from silken flowers.
“Nor was much satisfaction to be hoped from their conversation: for of
what could they be expected to talk? They had seen nothing, for they had
lived from early youth in that narrow spot: of what they had not seen
they could have no knowledge, for they could not read. They had no idea
but of the few things that were within their view, and had hardly names
for anything but their clothes and their food. As I bore a superior
character, I was often called to terminate their quarrels, which I
decided as equitably as I could. If it could have amused me to hear the
complaints of each against the rest, I might have been often detained by
long stories; but the motives of their animosity were so small that I
could not listen without interrupting the tale.”
“How,” said Rasselas, “can the Arab, whom you represented as a man of
more than common accomplishments, take any pleasure in his seraglio, when
it is filled only with women like these? Are they exquisitely
beautiful?”
“They do not,” said Pekuah, “want that unaffecting and ignoble beauty
which may subsist without sprightliness or sublimity, without energy of
thought or dignity of virtue. But to a man like the Arab such beauty was
only a flower casually plucked and carelessly thrown away. Whatever
pleasures he might find among them, they were not those of friendship or
society. When they were playing about him he looked on them with
inattentive superiority; when they vied for his regard he sometimes
turned away disgusted. As they had no knowledge, their talk could take
nothing from the tediousness of life; as they had no choice, their
fondness, or appearance of fondness, excited in him neither pride nor
gratitude. He was not exalted in his own esteem by the smiles of a woman
who saw no other man, nor was much obliged by that regard of which he
could never know the sincerity, and which he might often perceive to be
exerted not so much to delight him as to pain a rival. That which he
gave, and they received, as love, was only a careless distribution of
superfluous time, such love as man can bestow upon that which he
despises, such as has neither hope nor fear, neither joy nor sorrow.”
“You have reason, lady, to think yourself happy,” said Imlac, “that you
have been thus easily dismissed. How could a mind, hungry for knowledge,
be willing, in an intellectual famine, to lose such a banquet as Pekuah’s
conversation?”
“I am inclined to believe,” answered Pekuah, “that he was for some time
in suspense; for, notwithstanding his promise, whenever I proposed to
despatch a messenger to Cairo he found some excuse for delay. While I
was detained in his house he made many incursions into the neighbouring
countries, and perhaps he would have refused to discharge me had his
plunder been equal to his wishes. He returned always courteous, related
his adventures, delighted to hear my observations, and endeavoured to
advance my acquaintance with the stars. When I importuned him to send
away my letters, he soothed me with professions of honour and sincerity;
and when I could be no longer decently denied, put his troop again in
motion, and left me to govern in his absence. I was much afflicted by
this studied procrastination, and was sometimes afraid that I should be
forgotten; that you would leave Cairo, and I must end my days in an
island of the Nile.
“I grew at last hopeless and dejected, and cared so little to entertain
him, that he for a while more frequently talked with my maids. That he
should fall in love with them or with me, might have been equally fatal,
and I was not much pleased with the growing friendship. My anxiety was
not long, for, as I recovered some degree of cheerfulness, he returned to
me, and I could not forbear to despise my former uneasiness.
“He still delayed to send for my ransom, and would perhaps never have
determined had not your agent found his way to him. The gold, which he
would not fetch, he could not reject when it was offered. He hastened to
prepare for our journey hither, like a man delivered from the pain of an
intestine conflict. I took leave of my companions in the house, who
dismissed me with cold indifference.”
Nekayah having heard her favourite’s relation, rose and embraced her, and
Rasselas gave her a hundred ounces of gold, which she presented to the
Arab for the fifty that were promised.
CHAPTER XL
THE HISTORY OF A MAN OF LEARNING.
THEY returned to Cairo, and were so well pleased at finding themselves
together that none of them went much abroad. The Prince began to love
learning, and one day declared to Imlac that he intended to devote
himself to science and pass the rest of his days in literary solitude.
“Before you make your final choice,” answered Imlac, “you ought to
examine its hazards, and converse with some of those who are grown old in
the company of themselves. I have just left the observatory of one of
the most learned astronomers in the world, who has spent forty years in
unwearied attention to the motion and appearances of the celestial
bodies, and has drawn out his soul in endless calculations. He admits a
few friends once a month to hear his deductions and enjoy his