business of the state; and as his sense of honour, and his love of the
public, made this the employment of his choice, it was to him the
perpetual source of a generous and sublime felicity. ALMORAN also was
equally diligent, but from another motive: he was actuated, not by love
of the public, but by jealousy of his brother; he performed his task as
the drudge of necessity, with reluctance and ill will; so that to him it
produced pain and anxiety, weariness and impatience.

To atone for this waste of time, he determined to crowd all that
remained with delight: his gardens were an epitome of all nature, and on
his palace were exhausted all the treasures of art; his seraglio was
filled with beauties of every nation, and his table supplied with
dainties from the remotest corners of his dominions. In the songs that
were repeated in his presence, he listened at once to the voice of
adulation and music; he breathed the perfumes of Arabia, and he tasted
the forbidden pleasure of wine. But as every appetite is soon satiated
by excess, his eagerness to accumulate pleasure deprived him of
enjoyment. Among the variety of beauty that surrounded him, the passion,
which, to be luxurious, must be delicate and refined, was degraded to a
mere instinct, and exhausted in endless dissipation; the caress was
unendeared by a consciousness of reciprocal delight, and was immediately
succeeded by indifference or disgust. By the dainties that perpetually
urged him to intemperance, that appetite, which alone could make even
dainties tasteful, was destroyed. The splendor of his palace and the
beauty of his gardens, became at length so familiar to his eye, that
they were frequently before him, without being seen. Even flattery and
music lost their power, by too frequent a repetition: and the broken
slumbers of the night, and the languor of the morning, were more than
equivalent to the transient hilarity that was inspired by wine. Thus
passed the time of ALMORAN, divided between painful labours which he did