This print, which the bostangis, with their large sandals with wooden soles could not have left, and which the foot of the pacha would have over-lapped with a large margin, and which consequently might reveal the adventure of the evening, she was desirous of preserving. Why? Perhaps her imagination, over-excited by her ideas of gratitude, had, at the sight of this elegant impress, given the lie to her eyes, by clothing the stranger with a charm, which, in his first movement of alarm she was unable to recognize. Perhaps, blinded by passion, Baïla was desirous that Djezzar might see this denunciatory mark, so that his jealousy might be alarmed, and he might suffer in his pride and his love as she had done. The old negress pointed out to her, that in case the unknown should be rash enough to return again, the pacha, his suspicions once excited, would certainly have him seized, and thus both might be compromised. The Mingrelian then yielded; but she was unwilling, from a new caprice, that Mariam should remove the earth from this place. She contented herself with placing her own delicate foot upon it several times, and with trampling with her imprint in that of the stranger, and this double mark remained for a long time, protected as it was from inspection by the superabundant foliage of a Pontic Azalea. This shrub grew in great abundance on the slopes of the Caucasus, and Baïla, when a child, had seen them flower in her native country. She conceived an affection for this spot, which spoke to her of her country, and of her second and mysterious lover. Her country she had left without regret; this young Frank, this giaour, he had been to her at first but a surprise, an apparition, a dream, and now, her wounded heart demands an aliment for this double recollection. During a whole month she took her walks in this direction; thither she came to dream of her country and the stranger, especially of the latter. Did she then at length love him? Who can tell? Who would dare to give the name of love to those deceitful illuminations produced in the brain of a young girl, by a fermentation of ideas, like wills-of-the-wisp on earth; to those phantoms of a moment, with which solitudes are peopled by those who abandon themselves to a life of contemplation.