Nor is the Soldan less impassioned in his vows. After telling her of his readiness to forego the customs of Mahometan kings, and to make her his only mistress and wife, he thus closes the speech:—
A love which answers my consuming flame.
My heart is one that owns not moderate joys;
Faint love would make me think myself abhorred:
Such is the character of all my mind.
Boundless my wish to worship, solace you;
If the same ardour glows within your breast,
At once I wed you—not on other terms;
The perilous constraint of marriage-ties
Would be my bane if it were not your bliss."
It is at this moment that young Nerestan returns from France. He had brought with him the ransom of Zaire, Fatima, and the ten cavaliers. "I have redeemed my word," he said to the Soldan, "it is now for thee to hold to thine; but know that I have exhausted my fortune in the purchase. Nothing but honourable poverty remains for me, and I am about to return to my bonds." The Soldan, admiring the courage of the Christian, and himself born for generous actions, remitted all the ransoms, gave him a hundred knights for ten, and loaded him with presents, but, at the same time, signified that Zaire could not be purchased and was indeed above all price. Also he declined to give up among the redeemed a prince of Lusignan, captured long ago in Cæsarea.
This Lusignan, the last of the stock of the kings of Jerusalem, was an old man, venerated throughout the East, and whose name alone might be dangerous to the Saracens. It was he whom Nerestan had chiefly wished to redeem. The
- ↑ Zaïre, a dissyllable in the French play, is made a monosyllable here, as being more euphonious to English ears and better suited to English verse.
