Letter from Schemselnihar to the Prince of Persia.

“The person who will deliver to you this letter will give you more correct information concerning me than I can, for I have not been myself since I saw you.  Deprived of your presence, I endeavour to deceive myself by conversing with you by these ill-written lines, with the same pleasure as if I had the happiness of speaking to you in person.

“It is said that patience is a cure for all evils, but instead of relieving it heightens my sufferings.  Although your picture is deeply engraver in my heart, my eyes desire to have the original continually before them; and they will lose all their light, if they be any considerable time deprived of this felicity.  May I flatter myself that yours have the same impatience to see me?  Yes, I can; their tender glances have sufficiently assured me of this.  How happy, prince, would it be for you, how happy for Schemselnihar, if our united desires were not thwarted by invincible obstacles; obstacles which afflict me the more sensibly as they affect you.

“These thoughts which my fingers write, and which I express with incredible pleasure, repeating them again and again, proceed from the bottom of my heart, and from the incurable wound which you have made in it; a wound which I bless a thousand times, notwithstanding the cruel torments I endure through your absence.  I would reckon all that opposes our love nothing, were I only allowed to see you sometimes with freedom; I should then enjoy your company, and what could I desire more?

“Do not imagine that I say more than I think.  Alas! whatever expressions I use, I feel that I think more than I can tell you.  My eyes, which are continually watching and weeping for your return; my afflicted heart, which desires you alone; the sighs that escape me as often as I think on you, and that is every moment; my imagination, which represents no other object to me than my dear prince; the complaints that I make to heaven for the rigour of my destiny; m a word, my grief, my distress, my torments, which have allowed me no ease since I was deprived of your presence, will vouch for what I write.

“Am not I unhappy to be born to dove, without hope of enjoying the object of my passion?  This afflicting thought oppresses me so that I should die, were I not persuaded that you love me:  but this sweet comfort balances my despair, and preserves my life.  Tell me that you love me always.  I will keep your letter carefully, and read it a thousand times a-day:  I shall endure my afflictions with less impatience:  I pray heaven may cease to be angry at us, and grant us an opportunity to say that we love one another without fear; and that we shall never cease thus to love.  Adieu.  I salute Ebn Thaher, to whom we are so much obliged.”