each
accent, like a ray of the sun, penetrated his soul. This feeling
resembled pain, but a pain so delicious, that he would have prolonged
it for ages. Little by little the acquaintance between the young
people grew into friendship--they were almost continually together.
The Khan frequently departed to the interior of Avar for business of
government or military arrangements, leaving his guest to the care
of his wife, a quiet, silent woman. He was not blind to the
inclination of Ammalat for his daughter, and in secret rejoiced at it;
it flattered his ambition, and forwarded his military views; a
connexion with a Bek possessing the right to the Shamkhalat would
place in his hands a thousand means of injuring the Russians. The
Khansha, occupied in her household affairs, not infrequently left Ammalat
for hours together in her apartments--as he was a relation; and
Seltanetta, with two or three of her personal attendants, seated on
cushions, and engaged in needlework, would not remark how the hours
flew by, conversing with the guest, and listening to his talk.
Sometimes Ammalat would sit long, long, reclining at the feet of his
Seltanetta, without uttering a word, and gazing at her dark,
absorbing eyes; or enjoying the mountain prospect from her window,
which opened towards the north, on the rugged banks and windings of
the roaring Ouzen, over which hung the castle of the Khan. By the
side of this being, innocent as a child, Ammalat forgot the desires
which she as yet knew not; and, dissolving in a joy, strange,
incomprehensible to himself, he thought not of the past nor of the
future; he thought of nothing--he could only feel; and indolently,
without taking the cup from his lips, he drained his draught of bliss,
drop by drop.

Thus passed a year.

The Avaretzes are a free people, neither acknowledging nor suffering
any power above them. Every Avaretz calls himself an Ouzden; and if
he possesses a yezeer, (prisoner, slave,) he considers himself a
great man. Poor, and consequently brave to extravagance, excellent
marksmen with the rifle, they fight well on foot; they ride on
horseback only in their plundering expeditions, and even then but a
few of them. Their horses are small, but singularly strong; their
language is divided into a multitude of dialects, but is essentially
Lezghin for the Avartzi themselves are of the Lezghin stock. They
retain traces of the Christian faith, for it is not 120 years that
they have worship