Various

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 331, May, 1843

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to shake with terror when my name is heard, and angels to weep to see my deeds!--Seltanetta, save me from the curse of others, from my own contempt—save me from myself! My noúkers are fearless—my horses like the wind; the night is dark, let us fly to benevolent Russia, till the storm be over. For the last time I implore you. Life and death, my renown and my soul, hang upon your word. Yes or no?"

      Torn now by her maiden fear, and her respect for the customs of her forefathers, now by the passion and eloquence of her lover, the innocent Seltanetta wavered, like a light cork, upon the tempestuous billows of contending emotions. At length she arose: with a proud and steady air she wiped away the tears which, glistened on her eyelashes, like the amber-gum on the thorns of the larch-tree, and said, "Ammalát! tempt me not! The flame of love will not dazzle, the smoke of love will not suffocate, my conscience. I shall ever know what is good and what is bad; and I well know how shameful it is, how base, to desert a father's house, to afflict loving and beloved parents! I know all this—and now, measure the price of my sacrifice. I fly with you—I am yours! It is not your tongue which has convinced—it is my own heart which has vanquished me! Allah has destined me to see and love you: let, then, our hearts be united for ever—and indissolubly, though their bond be a crown of thorns! Now all is over! Your destiny is mine!"

      If heaven had clasped Ammalát in its infinite wings, and pressed him to the heart of the universe—to the sun—even then his ecstacy would have been less strong than at this divine moment. He poured forth the most incoherent cries and exclamations of gratitude. When the first transports were over, the lovers arranged all the details of their flight. Seltanetta consented to lower herself by her bed-coverings from her chamber, to the steep bank of the Ouzén. Ammalát was to ride out in the evening with his noúkers from Khounzákh, as if on a hawking party; he was to return to the Khan's house by circuitous roads at nightfall, and there receive his fair fellow-traveller in his arms. Then they were to take horses in silence, and then—let enemies keep out of their road!

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      This was not the only case of compensation made out against this travelling companion. "Milord," says our tourist, "in his quality of bulldog, was so great a destroyer of cats, that we judged it wise to take some precautions against overcharges in this particular. Therefore, on our departure from Genoa, in which town Milord had commenced his practices upon the feline race of Italy, we enquired the price of a full-grown, well-conditioned cat, and it was agreed on all hands that a cat of the ordinary species—grey, white, and tortoiseshell—was worth two pauls—(learned cats, Angora cats, cats with two heads or three tails, are not, of course, included in this tariff.) Paying down this sum for two several Genoese cats which had been just strangled by our friend, we demanded a legal receipt, and we added successively other receipts of the same kind, so that this document became at length an indisputable authority for the price of cats throughout al

1

This was not the only case of compensation made out against this travelling companion. "Milord," says our tourist, "in his quality of bulldog, was so great a destroyer of cats, that we judged it wise to take some precautions against overcharges in this particular. Therefore, on our departure from Genoa, in which town Milord had commenced his practices upon the feline race of Italy, we enquired the price of a full-grown, well-conditioned cat, and it was agreed on all hands that a cat of the ordinary species—grey, white, and tortoiseshell—was worth two pauls—(learned cats, Angora cats, cats with two heads or three tails, are not, of course, included in this tariff.) Paying down this sum for two several Genoese cats which had been just strangled by our friend, we demanded a legal receipt, and we added successively other receipts of the same kind, so that this document became at length an indisputable authority for the price of cats throughout all Italy. As often as Milord committed a new assassination, and the attempt was made to extort from us more than two pauls as the price of blood, we drew this document from our pocket, and proved beyond a cavil that two pauls was what we were accustomed to pay on such occasions, and obstinate indeed must have been the man or woman who did not yield to such a weight of precedent."

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It is amusing to contrast the artistic manner in which our author makes all his statements, with the style of a guide-book, speaking on the manufactures and industry of Florence. It is from Richard's Italy we quote. Mark the exquisite medley of humdrum, matter-of-fact details, jotted down as if by some unconscious piece of mechanism:—"Florence manufactures excellent silks, woollen cloths, elegant carriages, bronze articles, earthenware, straw hats, perfumes, essences, and candied fruits; also, all kinds of turnery and inlaid work, piano-fortes, philosophical and mathematical instruments, &c. The dyes used at this city are much admired, particularly the black, and its sausages are famous throughout all Italy.

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The extreme misery of the paupers in Sicily, who form, he tells us, a tenth part of the population, quite haunts the imagination of M. Dumas. He recurs to it several times. At one place he witnesses the distribution, at the door of a convent, of soup to these poor wretches, and gives a terrible description of the famine-stricken group. "All these creatures," he continues, "had eaten nothing since yesterday evening. They had come there to receive their porringer of soup, as they had come to-day, as they would come to-morrow. This was all their nourishment for twenty-four hours, unless some of them might obtain a few grani from their fellow-citizens, or the compassion of strangers; but this is very rare, as the Syracusans are familiarized with the spectacle, and few strangers visit Syracuse. When the distributor of this blessed soup appeared, there were unheard-of cries, and each one rushed forward with his wooden bowl in his hand. Only there were some too feeble to exclaim, or to run, and who dragged themselves forward, groaning, upon their hands and knees. There was in the midst of all, a child clothed, not in anything that could be called a shirt, but a kind of spider's web, with a thousand holes, who had no wooden bowl, and who wept with hunger. It stretched out its poor little meagre hands, and joined them together, to supply as well as it could, by this natural receptacle, the absent bowl. The cook poured in a spoonful of the soup. The soup was boiling, and burned the child's hand. It uttered a cry of pain, and was compelled to open its fingers, and the soup fell upon the pavement. The child threw itself on all fours, and began to eat in the manner of a dog."—Vol. iii. p. 58.

And in another place he says, "Alas, this cry of hunger! it is the eternal cry of Sicily; I have heard nothing else for three months. There are miserable wretches, whose hunger has never been appeased, from the day when, lying in their cradle, they began to draw the milk from their exhausted mothers, to the last hour when, stretched on their bed of death, they have expired endeavouring to swallow the sacred host which the priest had laid upon their lips. Horrible to think of! there are human beings to whom, to have eaten once sufficiently, would be a remembrance for all their lives to come."—Vol. iv. p. 108.

4

Lar is the Tartar plural of all substantives.

5

Beaters for the

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