The Tartar could not speak. He pressed the wife of his bosom to that heart which she had so fondly engrossed, and scalding tears of agony overflowed his cheeks. He threw his arms tenderly round her, his heart throbbing audibly, and buried his bursting temples in the hot sand beside her. She spoke not--she stirred not; he raised his head to kiss her fading lips--her eye was rayless--those lips were slightly parted, but fixed; a faint smile was on her cheek, yet no breath came. She was dead! FOOTNOTES: [33] A counterpane. [34] The coss is about two miles. CHAPTER II. Aiass raised himself from the earth, cast his eye with a look of reproach towards heaven, and gave way to a burst of sorrow; then bringing the strong energies of his mind to resistance, the ebullition shortly subsided, and he bowed to the stroke with the fortitude of a man who looks upon endurance as his province, and upon calamity as his lot. During the whole of this melancholy day he did not quit the body. His wife’s dying request was in his ears and in his memory--“Dig me a grave in the wilderness,” and he resolved to comply with it. He passed twelve lingering hours in a broiling sun, occasionally casting himself under the palampore beside the corpse, close to which his infant slept unconscious of its loss. His thirst became at length so excessive that his throat and tongue swelled, and he began to apprehend suffocation. His face was blistered and sore, his eyes inflamed, from the combined effects of weeping, and the glare of an ardent sun upon the white sand of the desert. Towards evening he was so overcome by his sufferings that he laid him down to die. The infant cried for nutriment, but he had none to give it. Taking the linen from his body, which was saturated with perspiration, he put it to the babe’s mouth: this kept it alive. The tongue of Aiass had by this time enlarged to such an immense size that he could not move it. The inflammation was so great that he was unable to close his lips. Expecting death every moment, he pressed still closer to his bosom the innocent pledge of conjugal affection, when he was unexpectedly relieved by the cracking of his swollen tongue. A copious discharge of blood followed, which passed into his stomach, and somewhat assuaged the fever that burned within him. He was so much relieved by this effort of nature, that he almost immediately sank into a short but refreshing slumber.