osed
of a mixture of henbane, opium, hemlock, black hellebore, and aconite; and
another officer went to thine with a bowstring of blue silk. Neither of us
was to be found. Cador, the better to deceive the king, pretended to come
and accuse us both. He said that thou hadst taken the road to the Indies,
and I that to Memphis, on which the king's guards were immediately
dispatched in pursuit of us both.

"The couriers who pursued me did not know me. I had hardly ever shown my
face to any but thee, and to thee only in the presence and by the order of
my husband. They conducted themselves in the pursuit by the description
that had been given them of my person. On the frontiers of Egypt they met
with a woman of the same stature with me, and possessed perhaps of greater
charms. She was weeping and wandering. They made no doubt but that this
woman was the Queen of Babylon and accordingly brought her to Moabdar.
Their mistake at first threw the king into a violent passion; but having
viewed this woman more attentively, he found her extremely handsome and
was comforted. She was called Missouf. I have since been informed that
this name in the Egyptian language signifies the capricious fair one. She
was so in reality; but she had as much cunning as caprice. She pleased
Moabdar and gained such an ascendancy over him as to make him choose her
for his wife. Her character then began to appear in its true colors. She
gave herself up, without scruple, to all the freaks of a wanton
imagination. She would have obliged the chief of the magi, who was old and
gouty, to dance before her; and on his refusal, she persecuted him with
the most unrelenting cruelty. She ordered her master of the horse to make
her a pie of sweetmeats. In vain did he represent that he was not a
pastry-cook; he was obliged to make it, and lost his place, because it was
baked a little too hard. The post of master of the horse she gave to her
dwarf, and that of chancellor to her page. In this manner did she govern
Babylon. Everybody regretted the loss of me. The king, who till the moment
of his resolving to poison me and strangle thee had been a tolerably good
kind of man, seemed now to have drowned all his virtues in his immoderate
fondness for this capricious fair one. He came to the temple on the great
day of the feast held in honor of the sacred fire. I saw him implore the
gods in behalf of Missouf, at the feet of the statue in which I was
inclosed. I raised my voice,