This reply was agreeable to the Emir, who put questions to me respecting my journey, and the impression made upon me by Bokhara and Samarcand. My observations, which I incessantly strove to ornament with Persian sentences and verses from the Koran, produced a good effect upon him, for he is himself a Mollah, and tolerably well acquainted with Arabic. He directed that I should be presented with a Serpay (dress) [Footnote 71] and thirty Tenghe, and dismissed me with the command that I should visit him a second time in Bokhara. [Footnote 71: This word means Ser ta pay (from head to foot); it is a complete dress, consisting of turban, over-dress, girdle, and boots.] When I had received the princely present, I hurried, like a man possessed by a devil, back to my friends, who were delighted at my good fortune. I heard (and there is no improbability in the account) that Rahmet Bi had drawn up his report concerning me in ambiguous terms, and that the Emir had consequently conceived suspicions. My triumph was entirely owing to the flexibility of my tongue (which is really impudent enough). In fact, I had every reason on this occasion to appreciate, the truth of the Latin proverb, 'Quot linguas cales tot homines vales.' After this scene, I was advised by my friends to quit Samarcand in all speed, not to make any stay even in Karshi, but to gain as rapidly as possible the further bank of the Oxus, where, amongst the hospitable Ersari Turkomans, I might await the arrival of the karavan for Herat. [Parting from the Hadjis, and Departure from Samarcand.] The hour of departure was at hand. My pen is too feeble to convey any adequate idea of the distressing scene that took place between us; on both sides we were really equally moved. For six long months we {220} had shared the great dangers of deserts, of robbers, and inclement weather. What wonder if all difference of position, age, and nationality had been lost sight of, and if we regarded each other as all members of a single family? Separation was, in our case, equivalent to death. How could it be otherwise in these countries, where there was positively not even a hope of seeing each other again? My heart seemed as if it would burst, when I thought that I was not permitted to communicate the secret of my disguise to these, my best friends in the world, that I must deceive those to whom I owed even my life. I tried to imagine a way--I wished to make trial of them; but religious fanaticism, to be found sometimes even in civilised Europe, has a fearful influence upon the Oriental, and particularly so upon the Islamite.