“Let me recollect myself,” answered Saphir Ali.  “Let me take breath.  You have put so many questions, and I myself are charged with so many commissions, that they are crowding together like old women at the door of the mosque, who have lost their shoes.  First, at your desire, I have been to Khounzakh.  I crept along so softly, that I did not scare a single thrush by the road.  Sultan Akhmet Khan is well, and at home.  He asked about you with great anxiety, shook his head, and enquired if you did not want a spindle to dry the silk of Derbend.  The khansha sends you tchokh selammoum, (many compliments,) and as many sweet cakes.  I threw them away, the confounded things, at the first resting-place.  Sourkhai-Khan, Noutzal-Khan”——­

“The devil take them all!  What about Seltanetta?”

“Aha! at last I have touched the chilblain of your heart.  Seltanetta, my dear Ammalat, is as beautiful as the starry sky; but in that heaven I saw no light, until I conversed about you.  Then she almost threw herself on my neck when we were left alone together, and I explained the cause of my arrival.  I gave her a camel-load of compliments from you—­told her that you were almost dead with love—­poor fellow!—­and she burst into tears!”

“Kind, lovely soul!  What did she tell you to say to me?”

“Better ask what she did not.  She says that, from the time that you left her, she has never rejoiced even in her dreams; that the winter snow has fallen on her heart, and that nothing but a meeting with her beloved, like a vernal sun, can melt it....  But if I were to continue to the end of her messages, and you were to wait to the end of my story, we should both reach Derbend with grey beards.  Spite of all this, she almost drove me away, hurrying me off, lest you should doubt her love!”

“Darling of my soul! you know not—­I cannot explain what bliss it is to be with thee, what torment to be separated from thee, not to see thee!”

“That is exactly the thing, Ammalat; she grieves that she cannot rejoice her eyes with a sight of him whom she never can be weary of gazing at.  ‘Is it possible,’ she says, ’that he cannot come but for one little day, for one short hour, one little moment?’”

“To look on her, and then die, I would be content!”

“Ah, when you behold her, you will wish to live.  She is become quieter than she was of old; but even yet she is so lively, that when you see her your blood sparkles within you.”

“Did you tell her why it is not in my power to do her will, and to accomplish my own passionate desire?”

“I related such tales that you would have thought me the Shah of Persia’s chief poet.  Seltanetta shed tears like a fountain after rain.  She does nothing else but weep.”

“Why, then, reduce her to despair?  ‘I cannot now’ does not mean ’it is for ever impossible.’  You know what a woman’s heart is, Saphir Ali:  for them the end of hope is the end of love.”