She drops from her height and alights beside him: Sebastian seizes her hastily, but his trembling hand almost fears to grasp his prize; he covers her head, her wings, with kisses, he feels the letter beneath them, yet, as if afraid of too much joy, is unable to do more than to renew those kisses and to call on Heaven as the witness of his gratitude! Having at last secured his treasure, neither humanity nor justice would permit him to enjoy it, till he had rewarded its carrier; he ran with the little creature in his bosom to his own chamber where he gave it food and water, caressing it all the time with a fondness which excited Barémel’s jealousy; he barked, and leaped upon his master as if to remind him that he too had served him. “What a change!” exclaimed Sebastian, musing, “from a court and crowds of serving nobles, to this Moorish hovel; and these two mute creatures! ah well, they love me, and are faithful.” He now placed the pigeon in a cage of oziers which he had before prepared for her, and while her weary eyes closed in sleep, and Barémel was comforted by licking his master’s hand unchidden, the momentous letter was opened and read. All that the tenderest and freeest of hearts could dictate when addressing the object dearest to it on earth, that letter contained; it repeated vows of eternal constancy, and assured him that his freedom would immediately be attempted: but the joy diffused over Sebastian’s mind by this promise was blighted at once by learning, that a lamentable disorder had seized El Hader, and that in consequence of it, Aziek believed herself bound to remain with him. “Thou wilt quit Barbary,” she wrote, “alas! thou wilt then have to quit it alone, (for how can I clandestinely desert a dying father who has indulgently heard my prayer of being released from the Basha?) but thoughts of Kara Aziek’s love will live in thy generous soul, and thou wilt claim her after thy return to Portugal.” “Yet O! think not my beloved, that I will not follow thee to the remotest corner of the globe, should the angel of death summon away my kind parent: my soul is inseparable from thine; it is lost, confounded, mixed with thine for ever. Whatever be thy destiny I have a precious right to share it: in happiness or in misery art thou not _my_ Sebastian?” In another part she described in the most affecting language her emotions on receiving the proof of his preservation Sebastian did not require so lively a picture of Kara Aziek’s devotedness to be convinced that she lived only in him, and that while a sacred duty withheld her from sharing his fate immediately, she was rending her heart to obey its dictates. Alas! if he were to quit Barbary without her, how many years might pass ere he could return to claim her!