The Scented Garden

Introduction 9 some leaves of it under his dirty sheepskin. It is too sacred even to sell, whatever the extremi- ty : the one copy — a mutilated and incorrect In- dian — which by dint of infinite diplomacy I half cajoled, half forced from a drunken Afghan ele- phant-snarer in Ceylon, where I was shooting on leave, became the prey of the ants which help to make that devil-haunted Eden a House of Little Ease. As, seriously, I expect to get my copy within twelve months or so (a brother officer, now at Q..., where the copyist lives, has promised me to stretch out — unofficially — the iron hand of the Sirkar on my behalf) I may say that I intend to issue the MS. in facsimile, as a pendant to the present volume. For, when all is said and done, I do not believe in either the advisability or the efficacy of this secrecy business. The Apocalypse has been pub- lished for some years now, and I have yet to meet anyone who really knows how to extract the gold. Certainly no unworthy person. All arcana are indicible. A man whose formula is n may un- derstand (n + 1), but not (n + 101). So that my Persian MS. is doubly safe from the profaning touch of the British Public. Even the Persians themselves hold that there are Guardians who know how to guard : without pandering to any such superstitious beliefs, I may say that as far as results go, I believe them to be right. I should observe that the translation itself, as well as many of the notes, is due in the very great- est degree to the earnest help of my munshi, and of a certain dealer in furs, with whom I travelled through L... h, A... r, and G... t, as well as in the C... s country, during two successive summers. Some two months after the completion of trans- lation, I fell in with the gentleman whose name ap- pears with mine on the title-page. He represented