[Footnote 30:  The Tartars, to preserve their weapons, and to produce a black colour on them, smoke the metal, and then rub it with naphtha.]

I am sure, my dear Maria, that you will keep me, for this, one of your sweetest kisses.  Ever, ever, when feeling or acting generously, I console myself with the thought, “My Maria will praise me for this!” But when is this to happen, my darling?  Fate is but a stepmother to us.  Your mourning is prolonged, and the commander-in-chief has decidedly refused me leave of absence; nor am I much displeased, annoying as it is:  my regiment is in a bad state of discipline—­indeed, as bad as can be imagined; besides, I am charged with the construction of new barracks and the colonization of a married company.  If I were absent for a month, every thing would go wrong.  If I remain, what a sacrifice of my heart!

Here we have been at Derbend three days.  Ammalat lives with me:  he is silent, sad, and savage; but his fear is interesting, nevertheless.  He speaks Russian very well, and I have commenced teaching him to read and write.  His intelligence is unusually great.  In time, I hope to make him a most charming Tartar. (The conclusion of the letter has no reference to our story.)

Fragment of another letter from Colonel Verhoffsky to his fiancee, written six months after the preceding.

From Derbend to Smolensk.

Your favourite Ammalat, my dearest Maria, will soon be quite Russianized.  The Tartar Beks, in general, think the first step of civilization consists in the use of the unlawful wine and pork.  I, on the contrary, have begun by re-educating the mind of Ammalat.  I show him, I prove to him, what is bad in the customs of his nation, and what is good in those of ours; I explain to him universal and eternal truths.  I read with him, I accustom him to write, and I remark with pleasure that he takes the deepest interest in composition.  I may say, indeed, that he is passionately fond of it; for with him every wish, every desire, every caprice, is a passion—­an ardent and impatient passion.  It is difficult for a European to imagine, and still more difficult to understand, the inflammability of the unruly, or rather unbridled, passions of an Asiatic, with whom the will alone has been, since childhood, the only limit to his desires.  Our passions are like domestic animals; or, if they are wild beasts, they are tamed, and taught to dance upon the rope of the “conveniences,” with a ring through their nostrils and their claws cut:  in the East they are free as the lion and the tiger.

It is curious to observe, on the countenance of Ammalat, the blush with which his features are covered at the least contradiction; the fire with which he is filled at any dispute; but as soon as he finds that he is in the wrong, he turns pale, and seems ready to weep.  “I am in the wrong,” says he; “pardon me:  takhsirumdam ghitch, (blot out my fault;) forget that I am wrong, and that you have pardoned