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 employmentrequisite 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 intellectualfamine, 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 intestineconflict. I took leave of my