The ÁrminiusVambémoment was a very exciting and a very critical one. It is but a sorry jest to be turned out of a warm shelter, where one is perfectly comfortable, and to have to pass a bitterly cold winter's night in the open air. It was not, perhaps, so much the fear of harm from exposure to the cold as the suddenness of the surprise and the shock of the unwelcome disturbance, which suggested to me the bold thought not to yield, but fearlessly to accept the challenge. My Tartar, who was in the room with me, turned pale. I sprang from my seat, seized gun and sword, while I handed my pistols to him, with the order to use them as soon as I gave him a sign to do so. I then took up a position near the door, firmly resolved to fire at the first person who would intrude. My martial preparations seemed to have been observed by those without, for they began to parley. Indeed I remarked that the elegance of the Persian which I employed in talking with them rather staggered them into a suspicion that they might be mistaken after all in supposing me to be a Bokhariot. "Who art thou, then? Speak, man, it seems thou art no hadji," was now heard from without. "Who talks about hadjis?" I cried; "away with that abusive word! I am neither Bokhariot nor Persian. I have the honour to be a European, and my name is Vambéry Sahib."
Silence followed this speech of mine. My assailants seemed to be utterly dumbfounded. Its effect, however, was even more startling on my Tartar, who now, for the first time, heard from his hadji fellow-traveller's own lips that he whom he had looked upon as a true believer was a European and that his real name was Vambéry. Pale as death, and with eyes glaring wildly, he stared at me. I was in fact placed between two fires. A sharp side-glance from me restored his equanimity. The Persians too changed their tactics. The name of European, that word of terror for Orientals, produced a magic effect. Terms of abuse were followed by expressions of politeness; menaces by entreaties; and as they earnestly besought me to allow two of the principal members of the escort to share my room, while the others would resign themselves to occupy the barn and the stable, I opened the door to the trembling Persians. My features convinced them at once of the truth of my assertions. Our conversation soon became very lively and friendly, and in the course of half an hour my guests were reposing in a corner of the room, completely stupified by over-indulgence in arrack. There they lay snoring like horses. I then applied myself to the task of explaining matters to my Tartar, and found him, to my agreeable surprise, quite willing to appreciate my explanations. Next morning when I left the snow-clad hills, and rode over the cheerful plain of Damgan, the recollection of the adventure came back to me in all its vividness, and I own that on sober second thoughts I was disposed to quake somewhat on contemplating the unnecessary danger my rashness had exposed me to the preceding night.