shall unseal thee, to his destruction and thy unspeakable advantage.  Go to the great city; thou art beautiful as the day; he is young, handsome, and amorous; he will infallibly fall in love with thee.  Do thou submit to his caresses, he will perish miserably; thou (such is the charm) ransomed by the kiss of love, wilt become wholesome and innocuous as thy fellows, preserving only thy knowledge of poisons, always useful, in the present state of society invaluable.  Thou wilt therefore next repair to the city of Constantinople, bearing recommendatory letters from me to the Empress Theophano, now happily reigning.”

“Father,” said Mithridata, “either I shall love this young prince, or I shall not.  If I do not love him, I am nowise minded to suffer him to caress me.  If I do love him, I am as little minded to be the cause of his death.”

“Not even in consideration of the benefit which will accrue to thee by this event?”

“Not even for that consideration.”

“O these daughters!” exclaimed the old man.  “We bring them up tenderly, we exhaust all our science for the improvement of their minds and bodies, we set our choicest hopes upon them, and entrust them with the fulfilment of our most cherished aspirations; and when all is done, they will not so much as commit a murder to please us!  Miserable ingrate, receive the just requital of thy selfish disobedience!”

“O father, do not turn me into a tadpole!”

“I will not, but I will turn thee out of doors.”

And he did.

II

Though disinherited, Mithridata was not destitute.  She had secured a particle of the philosopher’s stone—­a slender outfit for a magician’s daughter! yet ensuring her a certain portion of wealth.  What should she do now?  The great object of her life must henceforth be to avoid committing murder, especially murdering any handsome young man.  It would have seemed most natural to retire into a convent, but, not to speak of her lack of vocation, she felt that her father would justly consider that she had disgraced her family, and she still looked forward to reconciliation with him.  She might have taken a hermitage, but her instinct told her that a fair solitary can only keep young men off by strong measures; and she disliked the character of a hermitess with a bull-dog.  She therefore went straight to the great city, took a house, and surrounded herself with attendants.  In the choice of these she was particularly careful to select those only whose personal appearance was such as to discourage any approach to familiarity or endearment.  Never before or since was youthful beauty surrounded by such moustached duennas, squinting chambermaids, hunchbacked pages, and stumpy maids-of-all-work.  This was a real sorrow to her, for she loved beauty; it was a still sadder trial that she could no longer feel it right to indulge herself in the least morsel of arsenic; she sighed for strychnia, and pined for prussic acid.  The change of diet was of course at first most trying to her health, and in fact occasioned a serious illness, but youth and a sound constitution pulled her through.