“In saying this, she wept bitterly; but at the same time exacted a promise from Fatima, that she would never mention the subject to her again.  Finding her thus inexorable, I fell into a settled melancholy, and my health was visibly declining.  The Europeans consider the natives of Hindostan to be feeble and effeminate; but the soul, that which distinguishes man from brutes, acts with an intensity and constancy of purpose of which they can furnish no examples.

“How long I could have withstood the corrosive effects of my hopeless passion, irritated as it was by my being in the vicinity of its object—­by hearing perpetually of her beauty, and sometimes catching a glimpse of it,—­I know not; but the Omrah, after a few months spent with his father-in-law, returned with his bride to his castle in the country.  Yielding now to the wishes of my anxious parents, I consented to travel.  I was at first benefited by the exercise and change of scene; but after a while, my melancholy returned, and my health grew worse.  Though indifferent to life itself, and all that it now promised, I exerted myself for the sake of my parents, especially of my mother, who suffered so acutely on my account:  but I carried a barbed arrow in my heart, and the greater the efforts to extract it, the more they rankled the wound.

“After spending more than a year in travelling, first through the mountainous district of our country, and then along the coast, and finding no change for the better, I determined to try the effect of a sea voyage.  I accordingly embarked at Calcutta, in a coasting vessel that was bound to Madras.  At this time I had wasted away to a mere skeleton, and no one who saw me, believed I could live a month.  Such, indeed, were my own impressions.  In the letter which I wrote to my parents, I endeavoured to prepare them for the worst.  When, after a long voyage, we reached Madras, my health was evidently improved; but a piece of intelligence I here received, had perhaps a still greater effect I learnt that Balty Mahu, who had kept himself concealed from me before I left Benares, had lately visited Madras, on a travelling tour.  This news operated on me like a charm.  The idea of avenging myself on the author of all my calamities, infused new life into my exhausted frame, and from the moment that I determined to pursue him, I felt like another man.

“You must not, however, suppose that I even then entertained the purpose of taking away my enemy’s life.  No, I could not bring my mind exactly to that; but I had a vague, undefined hope, that if we met, some new provocation on his part would afford me just occasion for avenging myself on all; so ingenious, my dear friend, is the sophistry of the passions.