such was the desperate view I took of
my situation; but my love for Zeenab overcame this resolution; and
in the hope of seeing her again, I continued to drag on a miserable
existence as a dependent on Mirza Ahmak. He had no suspicion that I was
his rival, and that I had been the cause of the late confusion in his
harem; but he was aware that some one must have had access to it, and
therefore took such precautions for the future, that I found great
difficulty in discovering how it fared with my love, or what had been
the consequences of the anger of the khanum. I daily watched the door of
the anderun, in the hope of seeing Zeenab in the suite of her mistress
when she went out, but in vain: there was no indication of her, and
my imagination made me apprehend either that she was kept in close
confinement, or that she had fallen a victim of the violence of her
enemies in the harem. My impatience had risen to the utmost, when I, one
day, perceived that Nur Jehan,[47] the black slave, had issued from the
house by herself, and was making her way to the bazaar. I followed her,
and trusting to the friendship that she formerly entertained for the
mistress of my heart, I ventured to accost her.

'Peace be with you, Nur Jehan!' said I; 'where are you going in such
haste by yourself?'

'May your kindness never be less, Aga Hajji[48], answered she; 'I am
bound to the druggist's for our Curdish slave.'

'What! Zeenab?' exclaimed I, in great agitation. 'What has befallen her?
Is she sick?'

'Ah, poor thing,' replied the good negro girl, 'she has been sick and
sorry too. You Persians are a wicked nation. We who are black, and
slaves, have twice the heart that you have. You may talk of your
hospitality, and of your kindness to strangers; but was there ever an
animal, not to say a human creature, treated in the way that this poor
stranger has been?'

'What have they done to her? For God's sake tell me, Nur Jehan!' said I;
'by my soul, tell me!'

Softened by my manner, and by the interest which I took in what she
said, she informed me, that in consequence of the jealousy of her
mistress, Zeenab had been confined to a small back room, whence she
was prohibited stirring; that the treatment which she had received had
occasioned a violent fever, which had brought her to the brink of the
grave, but that her youth and strength had enabled her to overcome it:
and now that she was quite recovered, her mistress began to relent, and
had per