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 peri-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
Mihr-afruz,' 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 smilin