reast, how the waves slide
along her sides. And where is she?... and where am I?... You cannot
imagine, dearest Maria, the sweetly solemn feeling produced in me by the
sound and sight of the sea. To me, the idea of eternity is inseparable
from it; of immensity--of our love. That love seems to me, like it,
infinite--eternal. I feel as if my heart overflowed to embrace the
world, even as the ocean, with its bright waves of love. It is in me and
around me; it is the only great and immortal feeling which I possess.
Its spark lights and warms me in the winter of my sorrows, in the
midnight of my doubts. Then I love so blindly! I believe so ardently!
You smile at my fantasy, friend and companion of my soul. You wonder at
this dark language; blame me not. My spirit, like the denizen of another
world, cannot bear the chill and frosty moonlight--it shakes off the
dust of the grave; it soars away, and, like the moonlight, dimly
discovers all things darkly and uncertainly. You know that it is to you
alone that I write down the pictures which fall on the magic-glass of my
heart, assured that you will guess, not with cold criticism, but with
the heart, what I would describe. Besides, next August, your happy
bridegroom will himself explain all the dark passages in his letters. I
cannot think without ecstasy of the moment of our meeting. I count the
sand-grains of the hours which separate us. I count the versts which lie
between us. And so in the middle of June you will be at the waters of
the Caucasus. And nought but the icy chain of the Caucasus will be
between two ardent hearts.... How near--yet how immeasurably far shall
we be from each other! Oh! how many years of life would I not give to
hasten the hour of our meeting! Long, long, have our hearts been
plighted.... Why have they been separated till now?

My friend Ammalat is not frank or confiding. I cannot blame him. I know
how difficult it is to break through habits imbibed with a mother's
milk, and with the air of one's native land. The barbarian despotism of
Persia, which has so long oppressed Aderbidjan, has instilled the basest
principles into the Tartars of the Caucasus, and has polluted their
sense of honour by the most despicable subterfuge. And how could it be
otherwise in a government based upon the tyranny of the great over the
less--where justice herself can punish only in secret--where robbery is
the privilege of power? "Do with me what you like, provided you let me