"Door-painting of great loveliness! I do not remember to have seen that; my father has never concealed from me--I will ask him--" "Door-nailing is what I should have said, of course, Fleur de Lis flourishes, classic patterns. But what is all that in comparison with him? A man of majestic appearance, and a smile--have you ever beheld such a smile?" "Never!" cried Dariel, with great delight, "but I expected not that you would already be captured with that demonstrance. It shows how good he was to be pleased with you, for he is not taken in with every one. But now please to listen, while I tell you, so far as my acquaintance of your language goes with me, what the condition is of circumstances tending about my father. Only I know not the half of it myself, for he fears to make me so solicitous; and it would not be just for me to ask questions of people of the lower rank, in whom he has placed confidence; though Stepan could tell me many things if he thought proper, and I have proved to him that it is his duty. "My father is the Prince, as they call it in most countries, though he never takes it to himself, of the highest and noblest and most ancient of the tribes belonging to the Lesghian race. The great warrior Shamyl, who contended so long against all the armies of Russia, was of the lower, the Moslem division of the ancient Lesghian race, which is of the first origin of mankind, and has kept itself lofty as the mountains. "But when all the other tribes fell away, with treachery and jealousy, and bribery, and cowardice, and Shamyl himself was betrayed in his stronghold, my father, who had been called to take the place of his father who died in battle, at the head of the Christian and higher division of the race, could not prolong the war. Not that he was vanquished, that could never happen to him; but because all the Mohammedans, who had made what they call a holy war of it, would not go on under the command of a Christian, and they showed themselves so treacherous that they betrayed him, for money no doubt, of which they were too loving, into the hands of the Russian General. Every one expected that he would be destroyed on account of the bitterness between them, and the many times when he had been victorious. But the Russian Commander was much pleased with him, from the nobility of his manners, and treated him very gently, and finding that he was a Christian and descended from English Crusaders, according to the red cross which we always wear, as the badge of our lineage against the Moslem tribes, he obtained permission from Moscow to release him upon very generous conditions. His great extent of property was not taken from him, as was done to most of the other chiefs, who had fought so long against Russia, but was placed in the hands of a kinsman as his steward, and he was only banished for fourteen years, until there should be no chance of any further war.