bed had been spread, when a stranger unceremoniously walked
into the room, and stood before me. I remarked that he was a Persian,
and, by his dress, a servant. At any other moment I should have been
happy to see and converse with him; because having lived so long in
Persia, I felt myself, in some measure, identified with its natives, and
now in a country where both nations were treated with the same degree of
contempt, my fellow-feeling for them became infinitely stronger.

I discovered that he had a tale of misery to unfold, from the very
doleful face that he was pleased to make on the occasion, and I was not
mistaken. It was this,--that his master, one Mirza Hajji Baba, now on
his return from Constantinople, where he had been employed on the Shah's
business, had fallen seriously ill, and that he had been obliged to stop
at Tocat; that he had taken up his abode at the caravanserai, where he
had already spent a week, during which time he had been attended by a
Frank doctor, an inhabitant of Tocat, who, instead of curing, had, in
fact, brought him to his last gasp,--that having heard of my arrival
from Persia, he had brightened up and requested, without loss of time,
that I would call upon him, for he was sure the presence of one coming
from his own country would alone restore him to health. In short, his
servant, as is usual on such occasions, finished his speech by saying,
that, with the exception of God and myself, he had nothing left to
depend upon in this life.

I immediately recollected who Mirza Hajji Baba was; for though I had
lost sight of him for several years, yet once on a time I had seen much
of him, and had taken great interest in everything that regarded him,
owing to his having been in England, whither, in quality of secretary,
he accompanied the first ambassador which Persia had sent in modern
times. He had since been employed in various ways in the government,
sometimes in high, and sometimes in lower situations, undergoing the
vicissitudes which are sure to attend every Persian; and at length had
been sent to Constantinople, as resident agent at the Porte on the part
of the Shah.

I did not hesitate an instant, tired and jaded as I was, immediately
to accompany his servant; and in the same garb in which I was, only
throwing a cloak over my shoulders, I walked in all haste to the
caravanserai.

There, on a bed spread in the middle of a small room, surrounded by
several of his servants, I found the s