this I drew myself up, and, putting on a face of wisdom, I made the
following speech:--

'By the soul of the serdar! by the salt of the chief executioner! the
Muscovites are nothing. In comparison to the Persians, they are mere
dogs. I, who have seen with my own eyes, can tell you, that one Persian,
with a spear in his hand, would kill ten of those miserable, beardless
creatures.'

'Ah, you male lion!' exclaimed my master, apparently delighted with what
I said, 'I always knew that you would be something. Leave an Ispahani
alone: he will always show his good sense.'

'They are but few Muscovites on the frontier. Five, six, seven, or eight
hundred,--perhaps a thousand or two thousand--but certainly not more
than three. They have some ten, twenty, or thirty guns; and as for the
Cossacks, _putch and_, they are nothing. It is very inconvenient that
they are to be found everywhere when least wanted, with those thick
spears of theirs, which look more like the goad of an ox than a warlike
weapon, and they kill, 'tis true; but then, they are mounted upon
_yabous_ (jades), which can never come up to our horses, worth thirty,
forty, fifty tomauns each, and which are out of sight before they can
even get theirs into a gallop.'

'Why do you waste your breath upon the Cossacks and their horses?' said
the chief executioner; 'you might as well talk of monkeys mounted upon
bears. Who commands the infidels?'

'They call him the _deli mayor_, or the mad major; and the reason why he
is called so, is because he never will run away. Stories without number
are related of him. Among others, that he has got the pocket Koran of
his excellency the serdar in his possession, which he shows to every one
as a great trophy.'

'Aye, that's true,' exclaimed the serdar. 'These bankrupt dogs surprised
me last year, when encamped not five parasangs hence, and I had only
time to save myself, in my shirt and trousers, on the back of an
unsaddled horse. Of course, they pillaged my tent, and among other
things stole my Koran. But I'll be even with them. I have shown them
what I can do at Gavmishlu, and we still have much more to perform upon
their fathers' graves. How many guns, did you say, they had?'

'Four or five, or six,' said I.

'I wrote down twenty or thirty just now,' remarked the Mirza, who was
writing at the edge of the carpet,--'which of the two is right?'

'Why do you tell us lies?' exclaimed the serdar, his eyes becoming
more animated