“Strates, said I, my good friend, lay aside that long gun, for you will fall and break it, besides, it hath not been charged since it was fired at Guebra Mehedin. If you carry it to strike terror, it is altogether unnecessary; for, if we had dressed you as you are now accoutred, when we sent you forward with the baggage to Dara, there is not a thief in all Begemder would have ventured to come near you.” He looked at me with a countenance full of anger and contempt, though he said nothing; but, in Greek, pronounced anathemas against the father of Guebra Mehedin, according to the Greek form of cursing. “Curse himself and his brother, said I, and not his father, for he has been dead these twenty years.”--“I will curse whom I please, says he, in a great passion, I curse his father, himself, and his brother, the Ras, and the king, and everybody that has brought me into such a scrape as I have been to-day. I have been stripped naked, and within an inch of having my throat cut, besides being gelded; and well may you laugh now at the figure I make. If you had seen those damned crooked knives, with their black hands, all begging, as if it had been for charity, to be allowed to do my business, you would have been glad for my making no worse figure to-night than I do with this carpet upon my head.” “My dear Strates, said I, it is the fortune of war, and many princes and great men, who, at this moment I am speaking to you, live in the enjoyment of every thing they can desire, before a month expires, perhaps, will be stretched on the cold ground, a prey to the birds and wild beasts of the field, without so much as a carpet to cover them such as you have. You as yet are only frightened; though, it is true, a man may be as well killed as frightened to death.” “Sir, says he, in a violent rage, that I deny, it is not the same? a man that is killed feels no more, but he that is frightened to death, _as I have been to-day_, suffers ten thousand times more than if he had been killed outright.”--“Well, said I, Strates, I will not dispute with you; I believe they suffer much the same after they are dead; but you, I thank God, have only lost your cloaths, and you are now most comfortably, though not ornamentally, wrapped up in my carpet; as soon as we get to Dara, you shall be dressed from head to foot, by Negadé Ras Mahomet, at the expence of the king, in better cloaths than you ever wore in your life, at least since I knew you; only give me your gun till your passion is allayed; you know it is a valuable one; which I never quit.”