One of those evenings, that he was entirely satisfied with his mistress or with himself, he proposed sending for Selim, to walk in the groves of the Seraglio. These were verdant closets, where many things may be said and done without witnesses. In their way thither, Mangogul turn’d the conversation on the reasons people have for loving. Mirzoza, mounted on grand principles, and fill’d with ideas of virtue, which certainly did not suit with her rank, person, or age, maintain’d that people very frequently loved for the sake of loving; and that connections begun by a likeness of characters, supported by esteem, and cemented by mutual confidence, were very lasting and constant; without any pretensions to favors on the man’s side, or on the woman’s any temptation to grant them.

“Thus it is, Madam,” replied the Sultan, “that you have been spoil’d by romances. In them you have seen heroes respectuous, and princesses virtuous even to folly; without reflecting that those Beings never existed but in the brains of authors. If you ask Selim, who thoroughly well knows the catechism of Cythera, ‘what is love?’ I would lay a wager that he would answer you, that love, is nothing else but⁠—”