I returned to her in two days. I did not speak; I waited in silence the sentence of life or death. “You are loved, my brother,” she said, “and by a Guebre. I have resisted long; but, ye Gods! what difficulties love can overcome! A load had fallen from me! I am no longer afraid that I may love you too much; there is no limit to my pbumion now that excess itself is lawful. Ah! how sweetly that thought chimes with my happy heart! But you, who have found a way to break the chains which my soul had forged for itself, when will you break those which fetter my hands? From this moment I give myself to you: show by the speed with which you take me how dear the gift is. My brother, when I shall embrace you for the first time, I think I shall die in your arms.” I can never fully express the joy which I felt at these words; I believed myself, and actually saw myself, in one instant, the happiest of men: I beheld almost fulfilled all the desires which I had formed in my twenty-five years of life, and the disappearance of all misery which had made it so hard. But, when I had grown somewhat accustomed to these delightful thoughts, I perceived that I was not so near my happiness, as I had on the first blush imagined, although I had overcome the chief obstacle in my path. It would be necessary to evade the watchfulness of her guards; I dared not confide to any one the secret of my life; I had only my sister, and she had only me: if my attempt failed, I ran the risk of being impaled; but no torture seemed so cruel as to be without her. We arranged that she should send to me for a time-piece which her father had left her; and that I should put inside it a file to cut the lattice of the window which opened on the street, and a knotted rope by which to descend; that thereafter I should cease to visit her, but should wait every night under her window until she could execute her design. I pbumed fifteen entire nights without seeing any one, because she had not found a favourable opportunity. At length, on the sixteenth, I heard the rasping of the file: from time to time the work was interrupted, and in the intervals my dread was inexpressible. After an hour’s labour, I saw her fasten the rope; she let herself go, and slid into my arms. All danger was forgotten, and for a long time we stood there motionless. Then I led her out of the city to a spot where I had a horse all ready: I lifted her to the croup behind me, and fled with all imaginable speed from a neighbourhood which might have been so disastrous to us. We arrived before morning at the house of a Guebre, in a lonely place to which he had retired, living frugally on the produce of his own labour. We did not think it wise to stay with him, and by his advice we entered a dense forest, where we lodged in the hollow of an old oak, until the rumour of our flight had died away. We lived together in this out-of-the-way abode, unseen of any, telling our love over and over again to each other, and waiting until the ceremony of marriage, prescribed by our religion, could be performed by a Guebre priest. “My sister,” said I, “how holy is that union! Nature has joined us, and our holy law will join us in another bond.” At last a priest came to quiet the impatience of our love. In the house of the peasant he performed all the ceremonies of marriage; he blessed us, and wished us a thousand times the vigour of Gustaspes, and the holiness of Hohoraspes. Soon after we left Persia, where we were not safe, and retired into Georgia. We lived there a year, and every day increased the pleasure we found in each other’s company. But when my money was nearly done, fearing misery for my sister, not for myself, I left her to seek help from our relatives. Never was a parting more tender. My journey, however, was not only useless, but disastrous. For, having found all our goods confiscated, and my relatives almost powerless to aid me, I brought away with me no more money than sufficed for my return. But imagine my despair! My sister was not to be found. Some days before my arrival the Tartars had invaded the city where she was, and finding her beautiful, had seized her, and sold her to some Jews who were bound for Turkey, leaving me only a little daughter born some months before. I followed these Jews, and overtook them three leagues off. In vain I besought them with tears, they persisted in demanding thirty tomans, and would not bate a single coin.