Vambéry, divided between the friendship of Hadji Bilal and his daily increasing intimacy with Shukrullah Bay, led a very agreeable life at Khiva. Unhappily this calm was troubled by the secret intrigues of the mehter (minister of the interior), who was a personal enemy of the Khivite ambassador. He persuaded the khan that our traveller was a secret agent of the sultan of Bokhara, and Seid Mehemmed resolved to have a second interview with the would-be dervish, and submit him to a strict examination. Vambéry, exhausted by the extreme heat, was taking a siesta in his cell when he was warned by a messenger to report himself to the sovereign. Surprised at this unexpected order, he departed with some anxiety. In order to reach the palace he was obliged to cross the grand square, where were assembled all the prisoners taken in a recent war against the neighboring tribe of the Tchandors, and the sight of these unfortunate beings impressed him most painfully. The khan in company with the mehter awaited his arrival; he overwhelmed him with artful questions, and said that, knowing how thoroughly versed he was in the worldly sciences, he should like very much to see him write some lines after the manner of Stamboul. The necessary materials having been brought, Vambéry wrote the following epistle, when, under pompous flowers of rhetoric, he slipped in a bit of raillery pointed at the mehter, who was extremely vain of his own beautiful writing: {214} "Most majestic, powerful, terrible, and formidable monarch and sovereign: "Inundated with the royal favor, the poorest and most humble of your servants has, until this day, consecrated little time to the study of penmanship, for he remembers the Arab proverb: 'Those who have a beautiful handwriting have ordinarily very little wit.' But he knows also the Persian adage: 'Every defect which pleases a king becomes a virtue.' This is why he ventures respectfully to present these lines." The khan, charmed with the pompous eloquence of our traveller, made him sit beside him, offered him tea and bread, and had with him a long political conversation, the subject of which had been agreed upon beforehand. In his quality of dervish, the adroit European maintained an austere silence. Seid Mehemmed drew from him with great difficulty some sententious phrases, which offered not the slightest pretext to the malicious designs of the mehter.