These words, spoken with warmth and visible conviction, found free entrance into the open heart of the Princess: especially, the glory, it appeared to her, must be a sort of head-dress that would sit not ill upon the face. Her quick fancy fastened on this idea, which she asked to have explained; and the Count with all eagerness embraced this opportunity of painting the Christian Heaven to her as charming as he possibly could; he chose the loveliest images his mind would suggest; and spoke with as much confidence as if he had descended directly from the place on a mission to the Princess. Now, as it has pleased the Prophet to endow the fair sex with very scanty expectations in the other world, our apostolic preacher failed the less in his intentions; though it cannot be asserted that he was preeminently qualified for the missionary duty. But whether it were that Heaven itself favoured the work of conversion, or that the foreign tastes of the Princess extended to the spiritual conceptions of the Western nations, or that the person of this Preacher to the Heathen mixed in the effect, certain it is she was all ear, and would have listened to her pedagogue with pleasure for many hours longer, had not the approach of night cut short their lesson. For the present, she hastily dropped her veil, and retired to the Seraglio. It is a well-known fact, that the children of princes are always very docile, and make giant steps in every branch of profitable knowledge, as our Journals often plainly enough testify; while the other citizens of this world must content themselves with dwarf steps. It was not surprising, therefore, that the Sultan of Egypt's daughter had in a short space mastered the whole synopsis of Church doctrine as completely as her teacher could impart it, bating a few heresies, which, in his inacquaintance with the delicate shades of faith, he had undesignedly mingled with it. Nor did this acquisition remain a dead letter with her; it awakened the most zealous wish for proselytising. Accordingly, the plan of the Princess had now in so far altered, that she no longer insisted on converting the Count, but rather felt inclined to let herself be converted by him; and this not only in regard to unity in faith, but also to the purposed unity in love. The whole question now was, by what means this intention could be realised. She took counsel with Bostangi, he with the mettled Kurt, in their nocturnal deliberations on this weighty matter; and the latter voted distinctly to strike the iron while it was hot; to inform the fair proselyte of the Count's rank and birth; propose to her to run away with him; instantly to cross the water for the European shore; and live together in Thuringia as Christian man and wife.