'Kars fell! Its garrison was captured, but Ali escaped the Cossacks of Mouravieff, and hastened home to find Saïda, not as of old, at her chamber window to answer the tinkling of his lute at night, when the quiet stars looked down on the blue Bosphorus, and the thousand lights of Stamboul were shining on its waters; but to seek her green grave among the silent ones at Pera, and he was almost beside himself with grief. Three days he remained on his knees at her resting-place, until he had read over all the hundred and fourteen chapters of the Koran, and covered the grass with flowers. Then he placed above her a gilded tomb, on which he wrote in charming verses the whole history of their hopeless love; and this tomb cost the poor lieutenant nine hundred piastres. Beside that tomb he swore a dreadful vow to slay both Ali Pasha and her father.
'While this rash vow was trembling on his lips, that father of cruelty and avarice, the old merchant, tottering on his staff, and with tears rolling down his white beard, appeared under the tall and sombre cypresses of the cemetery; and then the frantic Ali, transported with rage, sprang up from amid the flowers of Saïda's grave, and drawing a pistol from his girdle, shot him dead!
'From that moment Ali became a maniac, and the sultan sent him here. Allah has dried up his brains; but He is ever merciful and just; so whether my poor comrade shall recover, and be as he was in other times, a merry companion, a true friend, and gallant soldier, I know not; our kismet is in the hands of God and the Prophet, whose holy finger traced it, at the moment of our birth, upon our infant brows.'[*]
[*] Ali did recover, and is now a cole agassi (major) of the Turkish artillery at Hunkiar Skellessi: but being, as Jack Belton says, in full possession of his senses, vows he will never think of marriage more.
'A mournful story, Achmet Effendi,' said I, gazing with deep interest on the hollow cheek, lack-lustre eyes, and wasted form of this brave young officer, who had seen as much service, and fought with the gallant Williams at Kars; 'but, if I may inquire, what brought you here?'
'Love, also,' he answered, with a smile, and then a frown of anger on his olive brow. 'A few words will tell you all. My father is the Bashi-katib or military secretary of the Egyptian Contingent. The orta or battalion to which I belonged, and still belong—'
'Still belong?' I reiterated, glancing at his fetters,
'Yes,' said he, colouring, 'you shall hear.'
'I was in cantonments at Pera, when I became acquainted with a lady who was wont to walk, unattended either by slaves or carpet-spreaders, in the great cemetery there—'
'Ah!' said I, with mournful interest.