CHAPTER XXIII. IMAR'S TALE—LOVE
"Perhaps you have gathered from my words already some idea of the character of Shamyl. An idea, and not a perception, was all that his dearest friends could have of him, because he had no dear friends at all. And yet he was a man of warm nature, and kept nobody at a distance from him; neither was there any haughtiness, though abundance of rudeness, about him. Men put up with the latter, and even like it (when shown to their friends) and talk pleasantly about it, and the little ruffle passes over, every one expecting that his friend will be the next to get it. But cold universal arrogance makes the greatest of mankind—if such can show it—universally detested.
"I believe that Shamyl was by nature kind,—though he did some abominably brutal things,—and that
