With her predilection for all foreign things, the Princess could not help contemplating with satisfaction the attractive figure of the stranger; and it never struck her that the sight of an Endymion may have quite another influence on a maiden's heart, than the creation of a milliner, set up for show in her booth. With kind gentle voice, she gave her handsome gardener orders how to manage the arrangement of his flowers; often asked his own, advice respecting it, and talked with him so long as any horticultural idea was in her head. She left him at length, but scarcely was she gone five paces when she turned to give him fresh commissions; and as she took a promenade along the serpentine-walk, she called him again to her, and put new questions to him, and proposed new improvements before she went away. As the day began to cool, she again felt the want of fresh air, and scarcely had the sun returned to gild the waxing Nile, when a wish to see the awakening flowers unfold their blossoms, brought her back into the garden. Day after day her love of fresh air and awakening flowers increased; and in these visits she never failed to go directly to the place where her florist was labouring, and give him new orders, which he strove punctually and speedily to execute. One day the Bostangi,[21] when she came to see him, was not to be found; she wandered up and down the intertwisted walks, regardless of the flowers that were blooming around her, and, by the high tints of their colours and the balmy air of their perfumes, as if striving with each other to attract her attention; she expected him behind every bush, searched every branching plant that might conceal him, fancied she should find him in the grotto, and, on his failing to appear, made a pilgrimage to all the groves in the garden, hoping to surprise him somewhere asleep, and enjoying the embarrassment which he would feel when she awoke him; but the head-gardener nowhere met her eye. By chance she came upon the stoical Viet, the Count's Groom, a dull piece of mechanism, whom his master had been able to make nothing out of but a drawer of water. On perceiving her, he wheeled with his water-cans to the left-about, that he might not meet her, but she called him to her, and asked, Where the Bostangi was? "Where else," said he, in his sturdy way, "but in the hands of the Jewish quack-salver, who will sweat the soul from his body in a trice?" These tidings cut the lovely Princess to the heart, for she had never dreamed that it was sickness which prevented her Bostangi from appearing at his post. She immediately returned to her palace, where her women saw, with consternation, that the serene brow of their mistress was overcast, as when the moist breath of the south wind has dimmed the mirror of the sky, and the hovering vapours have collected into clouds. In retiring to the Seraglio, she had plucked a variety of flowers, but all were of a mournful character, and