Abensallah meanwhile gently spoke of resignation to Heaven’s decrees, of those unexpected turns in our destiny which so often make light spring out of darkness; Sebastian smiled sadly, and again sighed heavily: the dervise then pressed upon him the peculiar mercies which had already been shewn him by the Great Being who thought fit to cloud his sunshine awhile. The young Monarch at that moment despised thrones and courts, too certain, that with Kara Aziek would go all his happiness; ashamed of his weakness he looked aside with a flushed cheek; “O my father!” he said, “think not that I am thus vanquished by selfish regret, no, I call Heaven to witness it is for _her_ my heart is wrung so sorely.” The compassionate Abensallah hastened to alleviate this pain, he informed him that Kara Aziek had but just dispatched her last letter to Riffa, when a numerous cavalcade of camels, horsemen, and presents, headed by an officer of the Basha’s army, had arrived at El Hader’s mansion: the Basha himself was in Syria, where he was detained by a war with the Persians, and having learned from the uncle of Aziek that she still lived, had sent his people to claim her. Callous to her tears, intreaties, and protestations of being released by her father from this hated engagement, her relentless uncle insisted upon her immediate departure; she could not doubt that he was actuated by avarice, as he would inherit that fortune the proud Basha refused to accept, were she to quit Barbary, and she therefore offered to resign every thing into his hands: but her kinsman persisted in his commands, for he mistrusted her sincerity. Narrowly watched, and so precluded from escaping, the unhappy victim could only steal into Benzaide’s hand as she embraced her at parting, a letter for Abensallah, and some directions for her own conduct; the latter enjoined her to dispatch her brother-in-law to Benzeroel with the billet for Abensallah, and the young brood of Babec. Aziek’s tender heart could not disregard even the instincts of a bird; and she well knew that if Sebastian believed her journeying towards the cave of the dervise, he would not release the dove, nor lose sight of it, till he had brought it thither. Babec therefore would come to Benzeroel; to whom then could she bequeath her pretty favorite with its little nestlings, so cheerfully as to Abensallah?