therefore, not to commit this fault, but to let us have the comfort of finding you here again after forty days. We would willingly carry the key of the golden door along with us; but it would be an affront to a prince like you to question your discretion and modesty. This discourse of the fair princesses made me extremely sorrowful. I omitted not to make them sensible how much their absence would afflict me: I thanked them for their good advice, and assured them that I would follow it, and willingly do what was much more difficult, in order to be so happy as to pass the rest of my days with ladies of such rare qualifications. We took leave of one another with a great deal of tenderness; and having embraced them all, they at last departed, and I was left alone in the castle. Their agreeable company, the good cheer, the concert of music, and other pleasures, had so much diverted me during the whole year, that I neither had time, nor the least desire, to see the wonderful things contained in this enchanted palace. Nay, I did not so much as take notice of a. thousand rare objects that were every day in my sight; for I was so taken with the charming beauty of those ladies, and took so much pleasure in seeing them wholly employed to oblige me, that their departure afflicted me very sensibly; and though their absence was to be only forty days, it seemed to be an age to live without them. I promised myself not to forget the important advice they had given me, not to open the golden door; but as I was permitted to satisfy my curiosity in every thing I took the first of the keys of the other doors, which were hung in good order. I opened the first door, and came into an orchard, which I believe the universe could not equal; I could not imagine that any thing could surpass it, but that which our religion promises us after death; the symmetry, the neatness, the admirable order of the trees, the abundance and diversity of a thousand sorts of unknown fruits, their freshness and beauty, ravished my sight.