"Well, we got a taste of the country, and the people that therein do dwell. My poor friend did not live to tell of it, neither should I, but for Prince Imar. It was in a rocky hole where you said to yourself, 'Never shall I get out of this, and it must have been the Devil that got me into it,'--when suddenly a score or two of thundering savages jumped out from the solid crag almost, and blocked all the horrible place both ways. I am not at all sure that they meant to hurt us; and I dare say they would have been satisfied to strip us, and rob us of our arms and money, and send our guides to the right about. But unluckily my Russian friend lost his head, and sent a bullet into the crowd in front. I cannot tell you, any more than he could now, what happened in the rush that was made on us. Only that my dear friend lay dead upon his back, with his eyes upon the little blink of sky above the chasm, and that I like a fool fell upon him to protect him, when nobody could harm him any more, and a big fellow was going to give me my quietus when another man twice his size sent him spinning. All the others fell away, for he had come among them suddenly, and I heard them muttering 'Sûr Imar.' "'No Englishman shall come to harm, when I can help it. This gentleman looks like an Englishman,' he said, and I never was more ready in my life to acknowledge that. The rest of the lot could not make out what he meant, but they put down their weapons and looked at him. To cut a long story short, he took me to his own mountain-castle, and treated me as if I had been an invited guest, and I never knew such hospitality in all my life. I stayed there a long time, for it was not safe to travel; and there I saw the most beautiful lady that ever trod this earth. Her daughter is very beautiful; but you should have seen the Princess Oria, if you want to know the utmost that the Lord can do in the construction of the human race." "Don't talk to me," I said, for I could not quite stand this; "you are like the rest who always talk of the past as superior to the present. But I beg your pardon, pray go on." "I have seen a great deal of the world. Ah, yes!" continued my new friend Nicolo; "and I have come to this conclusion, from all the instances within my knowledge--no very beautiful woman ever lives a life of happiness. I don't mean pretty girls of course, and all the fair women of ordinary charms. I mean the exceptional, the wonderful creatures, of perfect and enthralling loveliness, of whom there are not six in a century. They are as rare as a brilliant of three hundred carats; as yet I have only seen one, and that one was the Princess Oria." "Then how can you argue about them all?" I enquired very reasonably. "You mean from history, and all that, I suppose. But what became of that wonder of the world?"