The Brown Fairy Book | Page 8

city, but heard nothing of service, for there was no
one in all that land who understood the riddle of Princess Mihr-afruz.
One day he thought he would go to her own palace and see if he could
learn anything there, so he went out to her garden-house. It was a very
splendid place, with a wonderful gateway, and walls like Alexander's
ramparts. Many gate-keepers were on guard, and there was no chance
of passing them. His heart was full of bitterness, but he said to himself:
'All will be well! it is here I shall get what I want.' He went round
outside the garden wall hoping to find a gap, and he made supplication
in the Court of Supplications and prayed, 'O Holder of the hand of the
helpless! show me my way.'
While he prayed he bethought himself that he could get into the garden
with a stream of inflowing water. He looked carefully round, fearing to
be seen, stripped, slid into the stream and was carried within the great

walls. There he hid himself till his loin cloth was dry. The garden was a
very Eden, with running water amongst its lawns, with flowers and the
lament of doves and the jug-jug of nightingales. It was a place to steal
the senses from the brain, and he wandered about and saw the house,
but there seemed to be no one there. In the forecourt was a royal seat of
polished jasper, and in the middle of the platform was a basin of purest
water that flashed like a mirror. He pleased himself with these sights
for a while, and then went back to the garden and hid himself from the
gardeners and passed the night. Next morning he put on the appearance
of a madman and wandered about till he came to a lawn where several
pert-faced girls were amusing themselves. On a throne, jewelled and
overspread with silken stuffs, sat a girl the splendour of whose beauty
lighted up the place, and whose ambergris and attar perfumed the
whole air. 'That must be Mihrafruz,' he thought, 'she is indeed lovely.'
Just then one of the attendants came to the water's edge to fill a cup,
and though the prince was in hiding, his face was reflected in the water.
When she saw this image she was frightened, and let her cup fall into
the stream, and thought, 'Is it an angel, or a peri, or a man?' Fear and
trembling took hold of her, and she screamed as women scream. Then
some of the other girls came and took her to the princess who asked:
'What is the matter, pretty one?'
'O princess! I went for water, and I saw an image, and I was afraid.' So
another girl went to the water and saw the same thing, and came back
with the same story. The princess wished to see for herself; she rose
and paced to the spot with the march of a prancing peacock. When she
saw the image she said to her nurse: 'Find out who is reflected in the
water, and where he lives.' Her words reached the prince's ear, he lifted
up his head; she saw him and beheld beauty such as she had never seen
before. She lost a hundred hearts to him, and signed to her nurse to
bring him to her presence. The prince let himself be persuaded to go
with the nurse, but when the princess questioned him as to who he was
and how he had got into her garden, he behaved like a man out of his
mind--sometimes smiling, sometimes crying, and saying: ' I am
hungry,'Or words misplaced and random, civil mixed with the rude.
'What a pity!' said the princess, 'he is mad!' As she liked him she said:
'He is my madman; let no one hurt him.' She took him to her house and
told him not to go away, for that she would provide for all his wants.

The prince thought, 'It would be excellent if here, in her very house, I
could get the answer to her riddle; but I must be silent, on pain of
death.'
Now in the princess's household there was a girl called Dil-aram[FN#7];
she it was who had first seen the image of the prince. She came to love
him very much, and she spent day and night thinking how she could
make her affection known to him. One day she escaped from the
princess's notice and went to the prince, and laid her head on his feet
and said: ' Heaven has bestowed on you beauty and charm. Tell me
your secret; who are you, and how did you come here? I love you very
much, and if you would like to leave this place