ood nurse. "Look, my
daughter, upon my grey hairs! If age and time have furrowed my brow
with wrinkles, they have also given me experience. I am no more the
sport of passion, and my counsels will be dictated by prudence."

Chamsada, shaken but not convinced by these arguments, replied to her,

"My secret is very weighty, my dear nurse; it weighs down my heart;
but it is impossible it should ever come out of it. In trusting you
with it, I must be well assured that it will remain for ever shut up
in your breast."

"Your wishes shall be fulfilled," said the old woman. "I am discreet,
and never shall my lips divulge your secret; but let it be no more one
with her who takes so lively an interest in your happiness."

At length Chamsada could resist her no longer: she related to her all
her adventures, and informed her that the young man of whom the Sultan
was become jealous was her son Shaseliman, who had been supposed to
have been dead.

"O great Prophet, I thank you!" exclaimed the nurse. "Praised be
Mahomet! we have nothing to struggle with but chimeras! Be comforted,
my daughter: every cloud will disappear: I behold the rising of a
bright day."

"O my good mother, we shall never, never reach it. Never will this
young man be believed to be my son. We shall be accused of falsehood,
and I would prefer the loss of his life, and of my own, rather than be
suspected of this infamy."

"I approve of your delicacy," said the nurse; "but my precautions
shall prevent everything that might hurt it."

Upon this she went out, and immediately entered the Sultan's
apartment, whom she found in the same state of dejection and sorrow in
which she had left him; she embraced him and took him by the hand.

"My son," said she to him, "you are too much afflicted. If you are a
true Mussulman, I conjure you by the name of the great Prophet to
reveal to me the true cause of the grief which afflicts you."

Unable any longer to withstand the force of this intercession, the
Sultan was forced to reveal all his distress.

"I loved Chamsada with my whole heart," said the Sultan. "Her graces,
her wisdom, her virtues, all the charms, in a word, with which she was
adorned, appeared to me a delicious garden, where my thoughts wandered
with delight. All is now changed into a frightful desert, where I see
nothing but hideous monsters and dreadful precipices. Chamsada is
faithless. The false Chamsada whom I adored, and whom I love still,
has betray