treasured in her memory as rules of life, and she deliberated to no
other end than to conjecture on any occasion what would have been
the opinion and counsel of Pekuah.

The women by whom she was attended knew nothing of her real
condition, and therefore she could not talk to them but with
caution and reserve. She began to remit her curiosity, having no
great desire to collect notions which she had no convenience of
uttering. Rasselas endeavoured first to comfort and afterwards to
divert her; he hired musicians, to whom she seemed to listen, but
did not hear them; and procured masters to instruct her in various
arts, whose lectures, when they visited her again, were again to be
repeated. She had lost her taste of pleasure and her ambition of
excellence; and her mind, though forced into short excursions,
always recurred to the image of her friend.

Imlac was every morning earnestly enjoined to renew his inquiries,
and was asked every night whether he had yet heard of Pekuah; till,
not being able to return the Princess the answer that she desired,
he was less and less willing to come into her presence. She
observed his backwardness, and commanded him to attend her. "You
are not," said she, "to confound impatience with resentment, or to
suppose that I charge you with negligence because I repine at your
unsuccessfulness. I do not much wonder at your absence. I know
that the unhappy are never pleasing, and that all naturally avoid
the contagion of misery. To hear complaints is wearisome alike to
the wretched and the happy; for who would cloud by adventitious
grief the short gleams of gaiety which life allows us, or who that
is struggling under his own evils will add to them the miseries of
another?