The flight was effected; the bride, although awaiting the coming of the bridegroom in bridal array, offering all due resistance as he led her from her home; indeed, so zealous was she to be faithful to the customs of her country that her cries would have roused the household had not the prudent Fatima interposed. On reaching the caravan a double security seemed to arise from the Armenian proving to be the accepted lover of Fatima; and Zuléikha, although deeming it a degradation for a daughter of Ali to unite her destinies with an unbeliever, was herself too strongly in the bondage of love to withhold her consent. Then how happy were they all! and what precautions were taken for their safety! Nevertheless, they were overtaken by the angry father and the outraged suitor of his choice. Zuléikha and Fatima were rudely snatched from the protection of their lovers, and the learned scribe--we blush to write it--received on the very soles which had borne him to the summit of bliss the ignominious blows of the bastinado. From that day Mirza-Schaffy had felt indisposed to bestow his affections on mortal woman, and since the sun of his hopes had set dwelt serenely in the moonlight of remembrance. As Zuléikha, the embodiment of all virtue and beauty, had loved him, he believed himself to be an object of adoration to all feminine hearts, and grimly resolved that all womankind must suffer in expiation of his own sufferings. During the winter there arrived another student from Germany, who, becoming acquainted with Bodenstedt, arranged to share with him the lessons in Tartar and Persian, which Mirza-Schaffy was pleased to call "hours of wisdom." In course of time other friends joined the circle, so that finally arose a formal divan, where the wise man of Gjändsha discoursed less on personalities, dwelling chiefly on general effusions of wisdom, interspersed with many a song. One of the latter reads as though designed by Bodenstedt to indicate the relation borne by Mirza-Schaffy to his own productions: Thou art of my song the begetter; Its drapery putteth my wand on; Thou yieldest the purest of marble, And I lay the sculpturing hand on. Thou givest the spirit, the essence: Me for utt'rance alone mak'st demand on-- Oft my power's deficient, and madly Thy crude thoughts I haste to expand on. Sundry songs extolling the beneficence of wine and earthly pleasure arose at this period. Of these we find none more attractive than that which owed its origin to a conversation held in the divan of wisdom concerning certain Russians and Georgians who drank wine more freely than the camels drank water, yet had gained no inspiration therefrom: From wine's fiery fascination From the goblet's mystic pleasure, Poison foams, and sweet refreshment, Beauty flows, and degradation, As the drinker's worth may measure, According to his brain's assessment.