ape.
Descending the mountain, the detachment seemed to be swallowed up in the
steaming river, like the army of Pharaoh, and anon, with a dull sound,
the bayonets glittered again from the misty waves. Then appeared heads,
shoulders; the men seemed to grow up, and then leaping up the rocks,
were lost anew in the fog.

Ammalat, pale and stern, rode next to the sharpshooters. It appeared
that he wished to deafen his conscience in the noise of the drums. The
colonel called him to his side, and said kindly: "You must be scolded,
Ammalat; you have begun to follow too closely the precepts of Hafiz:
recollect that wine is a good servant but a bad master: but a headache
and the bile expressed in your face, will surely do you more good than a
lecture. You have passed a stormy night, Ammalat."

"A stormy, a torturing night, Colonel! God grant that such a night be
the last! I dreamed dreadful things."

"Aha, my friend! You see what it is to transgress Mahomet's
commandments. The conscience of the true believer torments you like a
shadow."

"It is well for him whose conscience quarrels only with wine."

"That depends on what sort of conscience it is. And fortunately it is as
much subject to prejudice as reason itself. Every country, every nation,
has its own conscience; and the voice of immortal, unchangeable truth is
silent before a would-be truth. Thus it is, thus it ever was. What
yesterday we counted a mortal sin, to-morrow we adore. What on this bank
is just and meritorious, on the other side of a brook leads to the
halter."

"I think, however, that treachery was never, and in no place, considered
a virtue."

"I will not say even that. We live at a time when success alone
determines whether the means employed were good or bad; where the most
conscientious persons have invented for themselves a very convenient
rule--that the end sanctifies the means."

Ammalat, lost in his reflections, repeated these words, because he
approved of them. The poison of selfishness began anew to work within
him; and the words of Verkhoffsky, which he looked on as treacherous,
poured like oil on flame. "Hypocrite!" said he to himself; "your hour is
at hand!"

And meanwhile Verkhoffsky, like a victim suspecting nothing, rode side
by side with his executioner. At about eight versts from Kiekent the
Caspian Sea discovered itself to them from a hill; and the thoughts of
Verkhoffsky soared above it like a swan. "Mirror of eternity!" said he,
s