Letter from Schemselnihar to Ali Ebn Becar, Prince of Persia.

The person who carries this letter will give you a better account concerning me than I can do, for I have not been myself since I saw you:  deprived of your presence, I sought to divert myself by entertaining you with these ill-written lines, as if I had the good fortune to speak to you.

It is said that patience is a cure for all distempers; but it sours mine instead of sweetening it.  Although your picture be deeply engraven in my heart, my eyes desire constantly to see the original; and their sight will vanish if they are much longer deprived of that pleasure.  May I flatter myself that yours have the same impatience to see me?  Yes I can; their tender glances discovered it to me.  How happy, prince, should you and Schemselnihar both be, if our agreeable desires were not crossed by invincible obstacles, which afflict me as sensibly as they do you!

Those thoughts which my fingers write, and which I express with incredible pleasure, and repeat again and again, speak 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 for your absence.  I would reckon all that opposes our love nothing, were I only allowed to see you sometimes with freedom; I would then enjoy you, and what more could I desire?

Do not imagine that I say more than I think.  Alas! whatever expressions I am able to use, I am sensible 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 nothing but you alone; the sighs that escape me as often as I think on you, that is, every moment; my imagination, which represents no other object than my dear prince; the complaints that I make to Heaven for the rigour of my destiny; in a word, my grief, my trouble, my torments, which give me no ease ever since I lost the sight of you, are witnesses of what I write.

Am not I unhappy to be born to love, without hope of enjoying him whom I love?  This doleful thought oppresses me so much, 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 will 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 may never cease to love!  Adieu.  I salute Ebn Thaher, who has so much obliged us.