The sudden and noisy arrival of Ammalat aroused the sad society present.  Seltanetta, whose existence death was already overpowering, seemed as if awakening from the deep forgetfulness of fever; her cheeks flushed with a transient colour, like that on the leaves of autumn before they fall:  in her clouded eye beamed the last spark of the soul.  She lad been for several hours in a complete insensibility; she was speechless, motionless, hopeless.  A murmur of anger from the bystanders, and a loud exclamation from the stupefied Ammalat, seemed to recall the departing spirit of the sick, she started up—­her eyes sparkled....  “Is it thou—­is it thou?” she cried, stretching, forth her arms to him:  “praise be to Allah! now I am contented, now I am happy,” she added, sinking back on the pillow.  Her lips wreathed into a smile, her eyelids closed, and again she sank into her former insensibility.

The agonized Asiatic paid no attention to the questions of the Khan, or the reproaches of the Khansha:  no person, no object distracted his attention from Seltanetta—­nothing could arouse him from his deep despair.  They could hardly lead him by force from the sick chamber; he clung to the threshold, he wept bitterly, at one moment praying for the life of Seltanetta, at another accusing heaven of her illness!  Terrible, yet moving, was the grief of the fiery Asiatic.

Meanwhile, the appearance of Ammalat had produced a salutary influence on the sick girl.  What the rude physicians of the mountains were unable to accomplish, was effected by his arrival.  The vital energy, which had been almost extinguished, needed some agitation to revivify its action; but for this she must have perished, not from the disease, which had been already subdued, but from languor—­as a lamp, not blown out by the wind, but failing for lack of air.  Youth at length gained the victory; the crisis was past, and life again arose in the heart of the sufferer.  After a long and quiet slumber, she awoke unusually strengthened and refreshed.  “I feel myself as light, mother,” she cried, looking gaily around her, “as if I were made wholly of air.  Ah, how sweet it is to recover from illness; it seems as if the walls were smiling upon me.  Yet, I have been very ill—­long ill.  I have suffered much; but, thanks to Allah!  I am now only weak, and that will soon pass away.  I feel health rolling, like drops of pearl, through my veins.  All the past seems to me a sort of dark vision.  I fancied that I was sinking into a cold sea, and that I was parched with thirst:  far away, methought, there hovered two little stars; the darkness thickened and thickened; I sank deeper, deeper yet.  All at once it seemed as if some one called me by my name, and with a mighty hand dragged me from that icy, shoreless sea.  Ammalat’s face glanced before me, almost like a reality; the little stars broke into a lightning-flash, which writhed like a serpent to my heart:  I remember no more!”