The other companions of Sebastian having been separately re-examined, continued to bear the same testimony to the fidelity of their master--they were therefore honourably discharged, and the Sophi was just about to charge the impatient Shirley with an order for his gallant friend’s release, when a messenger arrived with the news of Prince Abbas’s capture. At the first words spoken by this indiscreet person, the aged Sophi fell into the arms of an attendant, deprived of sense: he breathed again, but he spoke no more; his eyes were for awhile raised with anguish to Heaven, then weighed down by the hand of death, closed for ever! When the officer who narrated these events came to this part of his recital, the young Sophi uttered a cry, and throwing himself on the earth, covered his head with his mantle; no one ventured to disturb his grief:--the tears of a virtuous son for a tender parent are precious in the sight of men and angels. After awhile he raised himself with a serious but desolated air, and looked wishfully round for his friend; but he saw him not. Sebastian had disappeared the moment his own justification began; he had gone in search of Kara Aziek. Trembling at every question he put to the Turks and Syrians, lest their answers should inflict a deadly wound, he hurried from tent to tent: at length one of the Basha’s officers confirmed the account given by Jusuf, and assured Sebastian that the Moorish lady with her attendants were still in the fortress of Ebhn Sait.--There was yet another question to ask, and again the lover’s heart died within him; the inquiry rose to his lips, and fell back. After some efforts he was able to ask whether the Basha’s marriage had yet been solemnized?--“No--the Moorish lady had at first pleaded the rights of mourning; then followed the death of an European woman who accompanied her; and that event, united to the warlike anxieties which forcibly engrossed the Basha, had delayed his happiness; since that period she had suddenly proclaimed herself a Christian, and swore to die rather than unite her soul with that of an infidel.” What became of Sebastian at this information?--a pang of joy (for it was joy even to agony,) seized his passionate and pious heart; he caught the arm of the man who spoke, and closing his eyes, exclaimed in a suffocated voice, “stop--stop--I can bear no more!” A few moments recovered him; he moved his hand from the Mussulman’s arm, and rushing away, to a solitary spot, prostrated himself before that Saviour whose divine mission Aziek had at length acknowledged. He wept in the fullness of virtuous satisfaction: her conversion, her safety, his late perilous situation, the triumph of his arms, the rescue of Abbas, those tumultuous changes of his fate from disgrace to exultation, from despair to transport, changes which had hurried and exhausted his soul--all flowed in these relieving tears. It might be said that this was the most delicious moment of Sebastian’s life.