Nightly we conversed in whispers, and had our interchange of love-letters; not that poor Basilia wrote, or that I then could write; alas, no! Our letters were simply flowers, tied together with a ribband, and in this symbolical language we conferred. It is a language lovers easily learn, and the Circassian sooner than all. I ransacked the bazaars of the Armenians and Muscovites for gaudy trinkets and perfumes, as presents for Basilia; and fearless of the Russ, I daily caracoled my horse—my Zupi—before her father's house, that she might see me attired in the glittering arms and splendid costume of a Circassian cavalier; and happy was I—oh, how happy! if but once I saw the muslin-veiled form of my beautiful Basilia. At her feet I laid the shawls of Cashmere and the beads of Bokhara. She gave me a waist-belt embroidered by herself, and a morocco breast-pocket to hold my cartridges, in return.
Summoning up courage, I one day put on my most splendid habiliments; my coat of mail, which shone like water in the sun; a helmet of steel, damascened by my own hands; and I armed myself with weapons which, like every Tcherkesse warrior, I had tempered and ornamented with silver and precious stones, all by my own skill. Bathed, perfumed, and anointed, I rode up to the door of Abdallah ibn Obba; and while my heart trembled and died away within me, and my colour came and went like that of a woman under the bowstring, I asked his daughter in marriage. He heard me in ominous silence.
"May God be with thee, Abdallah," said I.
"With thee be God," said he, and paused again, on which I timidly rehearsed all I had said.
The old merchant, who was seated on a rich carpet, with his legs folded under him, and a split reed, ink-horn, and piles of papers and accounts on one side of him, and his fragrant narguillah on the other, heard me without moving a muscle of his solemn visage; and after smoking for some time, drew the yellow mouthpiece from his mustachioed lips, and shaking his bushy beard, replied to me, slowly,—
"May you be saluted, O Osman Rioni! No—no, Osman, this cannot be! The son of a prince weds a prince's daughter, even as a slave weds the daughter of a slave. Thus, the rich give their children in marriage only to the rich, and thou, Osman, art very poor. Remember, that this daughter may yet be a mine of wealth to me."
I knew what the old wretch meant by these words—the market of Stamboul—and my blood ran cold.
"Her beauty," he resumed, "is a miracle, and her birth was also a miracle; hence sho was born for great purposes, and may yet be a source of delight to him who wears the sword of Omar, our Lord the Sultan Abdul Medjid—who can tell? She was born of my first wife, Tsha; when she was old, stricken in years, and hopelessly barren, on seeing a hen feed her chickens one day, her heart was moved; she wept and prayed the holy Prophet to give her a little child in her old age, whereupon she had Basilia in the fulness of time; so thus I tell thee, she was born for great things. Enough, enough, Osman Rioni, go thy ways, for thou art very poor."
"True, father," said I, while my heart became chilled with despair; "I am poor, and my brothers Selim and Karolyi are also poor, for we have no inheritance but the name of our father, and what we can wrench in combat from the enemies of our country, and for every meal of food we have to fight the convoys of the Russ on the mountain, or the wild beasts in the forest; but a time is at hand when I shall have all my father's patrimony again, when the forts of the Kuban shall lie in ruins by its shore, while the wolf shall batten on the bones of their defenders. A time shall come when I may ride from the grassy steppes of Marinskoi to the reedy flow of the Kisselbash River, lord of all the land my father bequeathed to me, with this sword, when the Russian bayonets were clashing in his heart!"
"God is great," replied the merchant, calmly; "when that time comes return, and seek my daughter, but not till then."