e name of Heaven, can all this be?"
said I. I still thought myself transported into another planet, when the
shriek of a woman struck my ear. "It is Mariam! It is she, by all
that is sacred! Where, where, shall I seek her?" I was roused: I
disencumbered myself of the weight of rubbish that had fallen upon me,
and, once upon my legs again, I sallied forth in search of her. The
scene which presented itself was more terrible than language can
express; for the first object which struck my sight was a Persian
rushing by me, with a drawn sword in one hand, and a human head,
dripping with blood, in another. The blackness of the night was lighted
up at rapid intervals by vivid flashes of lightning, which, quick as
the eye could glance, now discovered the hideous tragedy that was then
acting, and now threw it again into darkness, leaving the imagination
to fill up the rest. By one flash, I saw Persians with uplifted swords,
attacking defenceless Russians, rushing from their beds: by another,
the poor villagers were discovered flying from their smoking cottages
in utter dismay. Then an immense explosion took place, which shook
everything around.[76] The village cattle, loosened from their
confinements, ran about in wild confusion, and mixed themselves with the
horrors of the night: in short, my words fall short of any description
that could be made of this awful scene of devastation; and I must bless
the mercy of that Almighty hand which hath spared me in the destruction
that surrounded me.

'I knew not where to turn myself to seek for my wife. I had heard her
shrieks; and the shivering of despair came over me, when I thought
it might have been her death groans which had struck my ears. I threw
myself into the midst of the carnage, and, armed with a firebrand,
snatched from my burning nuptial chamber, I made my way through the
combatants, more like a maniac at the height of his frenzy, than a
bridegroom on his wedding-night. Getting into the skirts of the village
again, I thought I heard the shrieks of my beloved. I ran towards the
direction, and a flash of lightning, that glanced over the adjoining
hill, showed me two horsemen making off with a woman, whose white
veil was conspicuously seen, mounted behind one of them. Heedless of
everything but my wife, I followed them with the swiftness of a mountain
goat; but as the storm subsided, the lightning flashed no more, and I
was left in utter darkness at the top of the hill, not kno