d with blood.

[Footnote 25: "Hurrah" means _strike_ in the Tartar language.]

CHAPTER. V.

LETTER FROM COLONEL VERHOFFSKY TO HIS BETROTHED.

_From Derbend to Smolensk. October_, 1819.

Two months--how easy to say it!--two centuries have past, dearest
Maria, while your letter was _creeping_ to me. Twice has the moon
made her journey round the earth. You cannot imagine, dearest, how
dreary is this idle objectless life to me; with nothing to employ
me--not even correspondence. I go out, I meet the _Kazak_ [26]
with a secret trembling of heart: with what joy, with what exstacy
do I kiss the lines traced by a pure hand, inspired by a pure
heart--yours, my Maria! With a greedy rapture my eyes devour the
letter: then I am happy--I am wild with joy. But hardly have I
reclosed it when unquiet thoughts again begin to haunt me. "All this
is well," I think; "but all this is past, and I desire to know the
present. Is she well? Does she love me yet? Oh! will the happy time
come soon--soon--when neither time nor distance can divide us? When
the expression of our love will be no longer chilled by the cold
medium of the post!" Pardon, pardon, dearest, these black thoughts
of absence. When heart is--with heart, the lover trusts in all; in
separation he doubts all. You command--for such to me is your
wish--that I should describe my life to you, day by day, hour by hour.
Oh, what sad and tiresome annals mine would be, were I to obey you!
You know well, traitress, that I live not without you. My
existence--'tis but the trace of a shadow on the desert sand. My duty
alone, which wearies at least, if it cannot amuse me, helps me to
get rid of the time. Thrown in a climate ruinous to health, in
society which stifles the soul, I cannot find among my companions a
single person who can sympathise with me. Nor do I find among the
Asiatics any who can understand my thoughts. All that surrounds me
is either so savage or so limited, that it excites sadness and
discontent. Sooner will you obtain fire by striking ice on stone,
than interest from such an existence. But your wish to me is sacred;
and I will present you, in brief, with my last week. It was more
varied than usual.

[Footnote 26: The Kazaks are employed in the Russian army
frequently as couriers.]

I have told you in one of my letters, if I remember, that we are
returning from the campaign of Akoush, with the commander-in-chief.
We have done our work; Shah Ali Khan has f