never took me to
task about my faith or his own.

_Eugenius._ How wert thou mainly occupied?

_Filippo._ I will give your Holiness a sample both of my employments
and of his character. He was going one evening to a country-house,
about fifteen miles from Tunis; and he ordered me to accompany him. I
found there a spacious garden, overrun with wild flowers and most
luxuriant grass, in irregular tufts, according to the dryness or the
humidity of the spot. The clematis overtopped the lemon and
orange-trees; and the perennial pea sent forth here a pink blossom,
here a purple, here a white one, and after holding (as it were) a
short conversation with the humbler plants, sprang up about an old
cypress, played among its branches, and mitigated its gloom. White
pigeons, and others in colour like the dawn of day, looked down on us
and ceased to coo, until some of their companions, in whom they had
more confidence, encouraged them loudly from remoter boughs, or
alighted on the shoulders of Abdul, at whose side I was standing. A
few of them examined me in every position their inquisitive eyes could
take; displaying all the advantages of their versatile necks, and
pretending querulous fear in the midst of petulant approaches.

_Eugenius._ Is it of pigeons thou art talking, O Filippo? I hope it
may be.

_Filippo._ Of Abdul's pigeons. He was fond of taming all creatures;
men, horses, pigeons, equally: but he tamed them all by kindness. In
this wilderness is an edifice not unlike our Italian chapter-houses
built by the Lombards, with long narrow windows, high above the
ground. The centre is now a bath, the waters of which, in another part
of the enclosure, had supplied a fountain, at present in ruins, and
covered by tufted canes, and by every variety of aquatic plants. The
structure has no remains of roof: and, of six windows, one alone is
unconcealed by ivy. This had been walled up long ago, and the cement
in the inside of it was hard and polished. 'Lippi!' said Abdul to me,
after I had long admired the place in silence, 'I leave to thy
superintendence this bath and garden. Be sparing of the leaves and
branches: make paths only wide enough for me. Let me see no mark of
hatchet or pruning-hook, and tell the labourers that whoever takes a
nest or an egg shall be impaled.'

_Eugenius._ Monster! so then he would really have impaled a poor
wretch for eating a bird's egg? How disproportionate is the punishment
to the offence!

_Fi