FERHAUD NAD SHIRENE. 
185 
fidence, to execute his purpose by some stratagem ; and, as the 
legend goes, she arrived at the high mountain-platform of Be- 
Sitoon, where she found the unconscious victim busily employed 
in making his excavations, while at every stroke of his pick-axe 
he exclaimed the name of his beloved. The old woman, affecting 
a paroxysm of commiseration, cried out in return, “ O Ferhaud! 
why do you deceive yourself in calling on the name of Shirene ? 
Alas ! where is she now ? Two weeks are gone, and a third is 
passing, since she was no more. Khosroo, the king, has put on 
his robes of mourning, and will lament her till the fourth week 
rises upon his sorrow!” Ferhaud raised his head in horror, at 
this dreadful narration ; and, in the delirium of his despair, 
seizing the perfidious wretch who had uttered the tale, threw 
himself from the rock, and both the betrayer and betrayed met 
the same terrible death, at the same moment. As I before 
hinted, some historians of the fair Shirene intimate that the 
sighs of the ingenious sculptor had not always been breathed to 
the rocks ; she also, had heard and echoed them ; and, when the 
sad story was told her of the untimely fate of her lover, “ like 
the rose deserted by the nightingale, she drooped her head, and 
withered.” The disconsolate Khosroo, it is said, after so cruel 
a reverse of all the hopes he had conceived on the death of his 
rival, became the prey of remorse ; and, determining to make all 
the reparation in his power, he buried the lovers so near to each 
other, that the only division between them was the body of the 
old woman, whose wicked falsehood had occasioned the fatal ca¬ 
tastrophe to all three. The people of the valley told me, that I 
might see their graves at Kesra Shirene, in my way to Bagdad; 
and that I should know the spot, by observing a couple of rose- 
trees, which grew out of the mould that covered the faithful 
VOL. II. 
B B 
