About two miles from Hussun Abdaul were those Royal Gardens which had
grown beautiful under the care of so many lovely eyes, and were beautiful
still though those eyes could see them no longer. This place, with its
flowers and its holy silence interrupted only by the dipping of the wings
of birds in its marble basins filled with the pure water of those hills,
was to LALLA ROOKH all that her heart could fancy of fragrance, coolness,
and almost heavenly tranquillity. As the Prophet said of Damascus, "it was
too delicious;"[276]--and here in listening to the sweet voice of
FERAMORZ or reading in his eyes what yet he never dared to tell her, the
most exquisite moments of her whole life were passed. One evening when
they had been talking of the Sultana Nourmahal, the Light of the Haram,
[277] who had so often wandered among these flowers, and fed with her own
hands in those marble basins the small shining fishes of which she was so
fond,--the youth in order to delay the moment of separation proposed to
recite a short story or rather rhapsody of which this adored Sultana was
the heroine. It related, he said, to the reconcilement of a sort of
lovers' quarrel which took place between her and the Emperor during a
Feast of Roses at Cashmere; and would remind the Princess of that
difference between Haroun-al-Raschid and his fair mistress Marida, which
was so happily made up by the soft strains of the musician Moussali.
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