"Our Khanóum Seltanetta is dying: here is the writing to the leech about her illness:" with these words he gave Ammalát a silver tube, in which was a small piece of paper rolled up. Ammalát turned as pale as death; his hands shook—his eyes sank under his eyebrows when he had read the note: with a broken voice he uttered detached words. "Three nights—and she sleeps not, eats not—delirious!--her life is in danger—save her! O God of righteousness—and I am idling here—leading a life of holidays—and my soul's soul is ready to quit the earth, and leave me a rotten corse! Oh that all her sufferings could fall on my head! and that I could lie in her coffin, if that would restore her to health. Sweetest and loveliest! thou art fading, rose of Avár, and destiny has stretched out her talons over thee. Colonel," he cried at length, seizing my hand, "grant my only, my solemn prayer—let me but once more look on her!"——
"On whom, my friend?"
"On my Seltanetta—on the daughter of the Khan of Avár—whom I love more than my life, than my soul! She is ill, she is dying—perhaps dead by this time—while I am wasting words—and I could not receive into my heart her last word—her last look—could not wipe away the icy tear of death! Oh, why do not the ashes of the ruined sun fall on my head—why will not the earth bury me in its ruins!"
He fell on my breast, choking with grief, in a tearless agony, unable to pronounce a word.
This was not a time for accusations of insincerity, much less to set forth the reasons which rendered it unadvisable for him to go among the enemies of Russia. There are circumstances before which all reasons must give way, and I felt that Ammalát was in such circumstances. On my own responsibility I resolved to let him go. "He that obliges from the heart, and speedily, twice obliges," is my favourite proverb, and best maxim. I pressed in my embrace the unhappy Tartar, and we mingled our tears together.
"My friend Ammalát," said I, "hasten where your heart calls you. God grant that you may carry thither health and recovery, and bring back peace of mind! A happy journey!"
"Farewell, my benefactor," he cried, deeply touched, "farewell, and perhaps for ever! I will not return to life, if Allah takes from me my Seltanetta. May God keep you!"
He took the wounded Aváretz to the Hakím Ibrahim, received the medicinal herb according to the Khan's prescription, and in an hour Ammalát Bek, with four noúkers, rode out of Derbénd.
And so the riddle is guessed—he loves. This is unfortunate, but what is yet worse, he is beloved in return. I fancy, my love, that I see your astonishment. "Can that be a misfortune to another, which to you is happiness?" you ask. A grain of patience, my soul's angel! The Khan, the father of Seltanetta, is the irreconcilable foe of Russia, and the more so because, having been distinguished by the favour of the Czar, he has turned a traitor; consequently a marriage is possible only on condition of Ammalát's betraying the Russians, or in case of the Khan's submission and pardon—both cases being far from probable. I myself have experienced misery and hopelessness in love; I have shed many tears on my lonely pillow; often have I thirsted for the shade of the grave, to cool my anguished heart! Can I, then, help, pitying this youth, the object of my disinterested regard, and lamenting his hopeless love? But this will not build a bridge to good-fortune; and I therefore think, that if he had not the ill-luck to be beloved in return, he would by degrees forget her.
"But," you say, (and methinks I hear your silvery voice, and am revelling in your angel's smile,) "but circumstances may change for them, as they have changed for us. Is it possible that misfortune alone has the privilege of being eternal in the world?"