urse. Still he was a
handsome man, and when not tipsy, was good-humoured and generous; but
the bivouacs, even of a general, were very different from the luxuries
to which I had been accustomed. I lived badly, and was housed worse.
It so unfortunately happened, that my protector was a great gambler, as
indeed are all Russians; and one morning to my surprise, a handsome
young officer came into the tent, and the general very unceremoniously
handed me over to him. My beauty had been made known in the camp, and
the Russian general, having the night before lost all his money, had
staked me for one thousand sequins, and had lost. My new master was a
careless, handsome youth, a colonel in the army; I could have loved him,
but I had not time; for I had not been in his tent more than three
weeks, before I was again gambled away, and lost to a major. I had
hardly time to make myself comfortable in my new abode, when I was
staked and lost again. In short, your highness, in that campaign I was
the property of between forty and fifty Russian officers; and what with
the fatigue of marching, the badness of provisions, and my constant
unsettled state of mind and body, I lost much of my good looks--so much,
indeed, that I found out that instead of being taken as a stake of one
thousand sequins, I was not valued at more than two hundred. I can
assure your highness that it is no joke to go through a Russian camp in
that way--to be handed about like a purse of money, out of one man's
pocket into another's. I assure you, that before the campaign was over,
I had had quite enough of the Russians, and only wished that the Turkish
army might rout them, and I could find myself once more in a harem. It
was then that I first lamented over my hard fate, and that of the
sultan. It was then that I first used the expression, when I thought of
my condition, and that I said to myself, "The time has been."

At last the army was ordered to march back, and being then the property
of a Cossack, he put me on a pony, and made me keep up with the
squadron, driving me before him with his long spear, sometimes sticking
the point into the rear of the pony, and sometimes into me, by way of a
joke. But I had not been more than ten days on the retreat, before he
sold me, pony, bridle, saddle, altogether, as a bargain, to an infantry
officer, who, as soon as he had taken possession, made me dismount,
while he got in the saddle, desiring me to lay hold of the