 torture to him. He
quickly arranged with the Turk, that if the latter should find a favourable
opportunity for escape before Felix could return to Italy, Safie should remain
as a boarder at a convent at Leghorn; and then, quitting the lovely Arabian, he
hastened to Paris, and delivered himself up to the vengeance of the law, hoping
to free De Lacey and Agatha by this proceeding.
    He did not succeed. They remained confined for five months before the trial
took place; the result of which deprived them of their fortune, and condemned
them to a perpetual exile from their native country.
    They found a miserable asylum in the cottage in Germany, where I discovered
them. Felix soon learned that the treacherous Turk, for whom he and his family
endured such unheard-of oppression, on discovering that his deliverer was thus
reduced to poverty and ruin, became a traitor to good feeling and honour, and
had quitted Italy with his daughter, insultingly sending Felix a pittance of
money, to aid him, as he said, in some plan of future maintenance.
    Such were the events that preyed on the heart of Felix, and rendered him,
when I first saw him, the most miserable of his family. He could have endured
poverty; and while this distress had been the meed of his virtue, he gloried in
it: but the ingratitude of the Turk, and the loss of his beloved Safie, were
misfortunes more bitter and irreparable. The arrival of the Arabian now infused
new life into his soul.
    When the news reached Leghorn, that Felix was deprived of his wealth and
rank, the merchant commanded his daughter to think no more of her lover, but to
prepare to return to her native country. The generous nature of Safie was
outraged by this command; she attempted to expostulate with her father, but he
left her angrily, reiterating his tyrannical mandate.
    A few days after, the Turk entered his daughter's apartment, and told her
hastily, that he had reason to believe that his residence at Leghorn had been
divulged, and that he should speedily be delivered up to the French government;
he had, consequently, hired a vessel to convey him to Constantinople, for which
city he should sail in a few hours. He intended to leave his daughter under the
care of a confidential servant, to follow at her leisure with the greater part
of his property, which had not yet arrived at Leghorn.
    When alone, Safie resolved in her own mind the plan of conduct that it would
become her to pursue in this emergency. A residence in Turkey was abhorrent to
her
