immortal feeling which I possess.  Its spark lights and warms me in the winter of my sorrows, in the midnight of my doubts.  Then I love so blindly!  I believe so ardently!  You smile at my fantasy, friend and companion of my soul.  You wonder at this dark language; blame me not.  My spirit, like the denizen of another world, cannot bear the chill and frosty moonlight—­it shakes off the dust of the grave; it soars away, and, like the moonlight, dimly discovers all things darkly and uncertainly.  You know that it is to you alone that I write down the pictures which fall on the magic-glass of my heart, assured that you will guess, not with cold criticism, but with the heart, what I would describe.  Besides, next August, your happy bridegroom will himself explain all the dark passages in his letters.  I cannot think without ecstasy of the moment of our meeting.  I count the sand-grains of the hours which separate us.  I count the versts which lie between us.  And so in the middle of June you will be at the waters of the Caucasus.  And nought but the icy chain of the Caucasus will be between two ardent hearts....  How near—­yet how immeasurably far shall we be from each other!  Oh! how many years of life would I not give to hasten the hour of our meeting!  Long, long, have our hearts been plighted....  Why have they been separated till now?

My friend Ammalat is not frank or confiding.  I cannot blame him.  I know how difficult it is to break through habits imbibed with a mother’s milk, and with the air of one’s native land.  The barbarian despotism of Persia, which has so long oppressed Aderbidjan, has instilled the basest principles into the Tartars of the Caucasus, and has polluted their sense of honour by the most despicable subterfuge.  And how could it be otherwise in a government based upon the tyranny of the great over the less—­where justice herself can punish only in secret—­where robbery is the privilege of power?  “Do with me what you like, provided you let me do with my inferior what I like,” is the principle of Asiatic government—­its ambition, its morality.  Hence, every man, finding himself between two enemies, is obliged to conceal his thoughts, as he hides his money.  Hence every man plays the hypocrite before the powerful; every man endeavours to force from others a present by tyranny or accusation.  Hence the Tartar of this country will not move a step, but with the hope of gain; will not give you so much as a cucumber, without expecting a present in return.

Insolent to rudeness with every one who is not in power, he is mean and slavish before rank or a full purse.  He sows flattery by handfuls; he will give you his house, his children, his soul, to get rid of a difficulty, and if he does any body a service, it is sure to be from motives of interest.