On the following morning, Baïla, followed by Mariam, again traversed the
garden, under the pretext of erasing the tracks of the unknown, should
he have left any. The wind and the night had caused them to disappear
from the walks which were covered with fine sand. Returning, however,
from the neighborhood of the river, she found the recent mark of a boot
impressed on a flower border. The foot-mark was small, straight, and
graceful.
Baïla hesitated to efface it. Why? Was the stranger speaking decidedly
to her heart? No; it was a woman’s caprice, and among women the odalisks
are perhaps the most enigmatical. After having undertaken this
expedition for the very purpose of effacing all traces of the Frank, she
was now tempted to retain the only one that remained.
This print, which the bostangis, with their large sandals with wooden
soles could not have left, and which the foot of the pacha would have
over-lapped with a large margin, and which consequently might reveal the
adventure of the evening, she was desirous of preserving. Why? Perhaps
her imagination, over-excited by her ideas of gratitude, had, at the
sight of this elegant impress, given the lie to her eyes, by clothing
the stranger with a charm, which, in his first movement of alarm she was
unable to recognize. Perhaps, blinded by passion, Baïla was desirous
that Djezzar might see this denunciatory mark, so that his jealousy
might be alarmed, and he might suffer in his pride and his love as she
had done.
The old negress pointed out to her, that in case the unknown should be
rash enough to return again, the pacha, his suspicions once excited,
would certainly have him seized, and thus both might be compromised.
The Mingrelian then yielded; but she was unwilling, from a new caprice,
that Mariam should remove the earth from this place. She contented
herself with placing her own delicate foot upon it several times, and
with trampling with her imprint in that of the stranger, and this double
mark remained for a long time, protected as it was from inspection by
the superabundant foliage of a Pontic Azalea.
This shrub grew in great abundance on the slopes of the Caucasus, and
Baïla, when a child, had seen them flower in her native country. She
conceived an affection for this spot, which spoke to her of her country,
and of her second and mysterious lover. Her country she had left without
regret; this young Frank, this giaour, he had been to her at first but a
surprise, an apparition, a dream, and now, her wounded heart demands an
aliment for this double recollection. During a whole month she took her
walks in this direction; thither she came to dream of her country and
the stranger, especially of the latter.
Did she then at length love him? Who can tell? Who would dare to give
the name of love to those deceitful illuminations produced in the brain
of a young girl, by a fermentation of ideas, like wills-of-the-wisp on
earth; to those phantoms of a moment, with which solitudes are peopled
by those who abandon themselves to a life of contemplation.
In Europe, _the religious_, though living under a very different rule,
refer all the passionate tenderness of their soul to God; each of them
finds, however, some mode of husbanding a part of it for some holy image
of her choice, some concealed relic, which belongs to her alone; she
addresses secret prayers to it, she perfumes it with incense which she
carries away from the high altar; it is her aside worship. In the East,
those other inhabitants of cloisters, the odalisks, have no worship but
love, and in the endearments of that love they can prostrate themselves
but before one alone; but there, as everywhere else, the idol is
concealed in the shadow of the temple; they have their fetishes, their
dreams, their fraudulent loves, their loves of the head, if we may so
designate them. It is perhaps necessary for human nature thus to give
the most decided counterpoise to its thoughts, in order to preserve the
equilibrium of the soul, to protest in a low tone against that which we
loudly adore, to oppose a shadow to a reality.
It is true that where lovers are concerned, the shadow sometimes assumes
a form and the reality evaporates.
Be this as it may, Djezzar had returned to Baïla, and the latter, more
assured than ever of her power, made him expiate his late infidelity by
her caprices and her extravagances. They wondered in the Harem to see
the Pacha of Shivas, before whom every thing trembled, bow before this
handsome slave, so frail, so white, so delicate, whom he might have
broken by a gesture or a word. The rumor of it spread even to the city,
where it was whispered that Djezzar would turn Jew if Baïla wished it.
This Ali-ben-Ali, surnamed Djezzar, or the Butcher, was, however, a
terrible man. Originally a page in the palace of the Sultan, and brought
up by Mahmoud, he had not participated at all in the civilizing
ameliorations the latter had endeavored to introduce into his empire.
The decree of Gulhana had found him the opponent of all reform. Assured
of a protection in the divan, which he knew how to preserve, he
sustained himself as the type of the old pachas, of whom his
predecessors, Ali of Janina and Djezzar of Acre, were the paragons. He
especially redoubled his barbarism when a philosophical breeze from
Europe endeavored to breathe tolerance over his country.
Adjudging to himself the double part of judge and executioner, thanks to
his expeditious justice, decrees emanating from his tribunal were
executed as soon as rendered; sometimes the punishment preceded the
judgment. A thousand examples were cited, tending to prove clearly that
in Turkey, Djezzar was a relique of the old regime. An aga had
prevaricated. The pacha unable to inflict punishment upon the culprit in
person, as the friend of prompt and good justice, had ordered a young
effendi, his secretary, to go at once to the residence of the
prevaricator and deprive him of an eye. The young man hesitating and
excusing himself on the plea of his inexperience, “Come nearer,” said
Djezzar to him; and when the poor effendi approached him, the pacha,
with marvelous dexterity, plunging quickly one of his fingers into the
corner of an eye, drew out the globe from its socket, then with a quick
twist and the assistance of his nail, the operation was performed.
“Slave, thou knowest now how to do it; obey at once,” he said to him;
and the poor victim, with his wound undressed and bleeding, was
constrained, on peril of his life, to inflict on the aga the punishment
he had just undergone.
No one excelled as he did in cutting off a head at a blow of the
yataghan. It is true, no one else had so much practice. There was a
story told at Shivas, of a feat of this kind which did him the highest
credit.
Two Arabian peasants, feulahs, were brought before him, on a charge of
murder, and each of them accusing the other of the crime. Djezzar was
perplexed for a moment. It was possible that one of them was innocent.
Wanting proof of this, and not being in the humor to wait for it, he
thought of an ingenious and prompt means of referring the judgment to
God. By his orders the accused were fastened back to back by their
bodies and shoulders; he draws his sabre—the head which falls is to be
that of the guilty man.
Seeing death so near, the two wretched men struggle to avoid falling
beneath the hand of the executioner; they turn—they shift—each
endeavoring to place his companion on the side where the blow is to
fall. Djezzar regarded this manœuvering for some time with pleasure; at
length, after having pronounced the name of Allah three times, he made
his Damascene blade describe a large circle, and both heads fell off at
a blow.
Notwithstanding his habitual gravity, the pacha could not avoid laughing
at this unexpected result; he laughed immoderately, which he had
probably never before done in his life, and his noisy bursts mingled
with the hoarse roars and panting of a lion, which, confined in a
neighboring apartment, inhaled the odor of the blood.
This lion was his master’s favorite. Custom had for a long time
prescribed to the pachas of Shivas, as to other pachas of the East, that
they should be accompanied by a lion on all solemn occasions. Galib, the
predecessor of Djezzar, and a great partisan of reform, had a monstrous
one which he fed particularly with Janizaries; the story ran, that the
fanatical Djezzar appeased the appetite of his occasionally with
Christian flesh.
And yet this ferocious man, who made a profession of the trade of an
executioner, who laughed only when heads were cut off, who, according to
public rumor, tossed human flesh to his lion, Haïder, felt the power of
love, doubtless not gallant and perfumed love—the love of the boudoir;
but, endowed with an energetic and voluptuous temperament, he passed in
the midst of his harem the time spared from business; and in the East,
whatever may be the complexity of affairs, the administration,
especially under such a mastery, is reduced to such simplicity, that
leisure is never wanting.
Djezzar could say with Orasmanus,
I will give an hour to the cares of my empire,
The rest of the day shall be devoted to Zaïre.
Zaïre, that is, Baïla, awaited him on his quitting the Council.
Especially in his summer palace of Kizil-Ermak did he spend the greater
part of the day, extended on cushions at the feet of his beautiful
slave, smoking the roses of Taif or Adrianople, mingled with the tobacco
of Malatia or Latakia, sometimes chewing a leaf of haschich, or a grain
of opium, or even of arsenic to exalt his imagination.
Baïla sometimes smoked the hooka; and as they reclined there together,
plunged into a dreamy state, full of reveries, caused by the juice of
the yucca or the poppy of Aboutig, the one opening for himself in
advance a sojourn among the celestial houris, the other thinking,
perchance, of the audacious stranger, Haïder, the lion, drawing in his
claws, would stretch, himself familiarly beside them.
Baïla would then lean carelessly on her elbow against this terrible
creature, whilst the pacha would listlessly permit his head to recline
on the lap of the odalisk. It was a sight to behold this beautiful young
female, robed in light draperies, reposing thus quietly between these
two ferocious beasts. She feared neither of them; the lion was tamed as
well as the man; both obeyed her voice, her look.
At first, notwithstanding the violent passion of Djezzar, Baïla had
doubts as to the duration of her power, especially when she thought of
the favorite who had preceded her.
This favorite, after a reign of three years, having dared to persist in
soliciting pardon for a bostangi, who was condemned to lose his hand for
having fished fraudulently, during the night, in the fish-ponds of the
pacha, the latter, in a moment of rage, had cut off the nose of his
beautiful Aysche, and then not desiring to keep her in that state, he
had completed the punishment of the trustless bostangi and the
refractory slave by uniting them in marriage. A piece of ground,
situated on the confines of the city, had been given them as a dowry.
Aysche now sold vegetables in the market, where she was known by the
name of _Bournouses_ (the noseless.)
This example of the instability of the power of favorites had ceased to
disturb Baïla, since the Christian had revealed to her the secret of her
power. Besides, at the time of the events Aysche was no longer young,
which might give rise to the thought, that her decreasing beauty, rather
than any other cause, had excited the wrath of her master.
Baïla was seventeen years old, with a Georgian head on a Circassian
body, the voice of a syren, and the tread of a nymph—what had she to
fear? Her will had become that of the pacha. Entirely cemented by habit
to her love, he appeared never to think of his other odalisks, except
when the Mingrelian, from caprice or petulance, revolted openly against
his desires. Then, in the presence of the rebellious beauty, Djezzar
would order a slave to carry to an odalisk, whom he designated, a piece
of goods, which, according to the Oriental custom, announced the
approach of the master, and which in accordance with our method of
translating Turkish manners, we have naturalized among us by the phrase
of “_throwing the handkerchief_.”
Formerly, at the idea of the infidelity which was to be practiced toward
her, Baïla fretted and pouted in a corner with a bereaved air. Her small
mouth drawn down at the corners, muttered unintelligible complaints and
threats; her beautiful black eyes, with their long, vibrating lashes,
were half closed, and with her head bent, and the pupils drawn back to
the angle of the eyelids, she cast upon the slave, the master, and the
brilliant piece of goods, a look full of anger and jealousy. There her
audacity ceased.
But now, when Djezzar, to avenge himself on her, takes a fancy to be
inconstant, she falls upon the stuff and the slave, tears the one and
cuffs the other; and if the omnipotent pacha carries out his plan of
vengeance, it frequently happens on the next day that as the price of
submission, the slave is, on some pretext, bastinadoed, and the favorite
of a day driven away in disgrace, too happy to escape, without, like
Aysche, leaving her nose within the palace, is sent to the bazaar to
become the property of the highest bidder.
Such had lately been the fate of the beautiful daughter of Amasia.
Proud in the empire she exercised over her master, Baïla became
intoxicated in the triumph of her vanity. In the midst of its smoke, the
remembrance of the stranger, the giaour, no longer reached her but at
distant intervals.
She had remained shut up for a whole week without descending into the
gardens, when one day that Djezzar had gone to raise some taxes,
resuming her old promenades, she found herself unconsciously near the
Azalea of Pontus.
What had become of that young Frank? Was he still in the pachalick of
Shivas? Did he still entertain the plan of a second attempt, as Mariam
had thought he would? He had doubtless gone, returned to his country,
that singular country called France, where they say the women rule the
men; she should see him no more. So much the better for both him and
her.
Whilst she was in this train of reflection a roar of Haïder was heard
without; it announced the return of the pacha. The latter had taken him
with him, for the pleasure of letting him loose at some jackall by the
way. She was preparing to return to her apartments to await there the
arrival of Djezzar, when a report of fire-arms, followed by a low noise,
was heard by the side of Red River.
Baïla trembled without being able to explain the cause of her emotion.
“Have you been successful in hunting?” she said to Djezzar, when they
were alone.
“So, so,” he replied; “my falcon struck three pheasants, and I killed a
_dog_.”
Baïla dared not interrogate him as to the doubtful sense which this word
might have in the mouth of so orthodox a Mussulman as Ali-ben-Ali.
That evening, when Mariam came to her mistress, after hesitating as to
the information she was about to give her, and after ten preparatory
exclamations, she informed her of the event of the day.
As the pacha was returning to his palace, and his hunting train was
straggling along by the woods of Kizil-Ermak, near the place where they
entered the second enclosure, Haïder, whom a slave held by a leash,
stopped obstinately before a copse, growling in low tones, which
attracted the attention of Djezzar. The copse having been beaten by the
train, a man sprung out from it, flying rapidly toward the river, across
which he endeavored to swim, but before he could reach the opposite
bank, the pacha, snatching a gun from the hand of one of his delhis, had
drawn on the flyer with such certainty of eye and hand, that, struck in
the head, he had disappeared immediately, carried down by the current.
This man was a Christian, but an Asiatic Christian, as his head-dress of
blue muslin proved. Besides, the pacha said that the roar of Haïder of
itself showed what his religion was.
“Be his country or religion what they may,” said Mariam, finishing her
story, “he is dead, dead without any one being enabled to divine what
motive could have induced him to secrete himself on this side of the
river by the very verge of the palace.”
“At the verge of the gardens,” then interrupted Baïla, who had listened
to the recital of her old negress without interrupting her for a moment,
or even without appearing to be greatly moved by it. “It was into the
gardens that he wished to penetrate, as he had done before.”
Mariam looked at her with surprise.
“Yes,” pursued the Mingrelian, “the man whom they have killed is the
young Frank, who had doubtless changed his dress, so as not to attract
too much attention to himself by his European costume.”
Mariam remained silent.
“Do you not think so also?”
After some inarticulate words the negress said, “Who can tell?”
“Thyself,” replied Baïla, “thou knowest more than thou hast told me.”
“I avow,” added Mariam, after a little hesitation, “that one of the
delhis, who witnessed the affair, said in my presence, that the fugitive
appeared to have a very white complexion for an Asiatic.”
“Thou seest it all well, Mariam,” said Baïla, carelessly, still playing
with the fan she held in her hand.
“If it is so,” replied the negress, “I am sorry for the fate of the poor
young Christian; but we at least are out of the reach of danger in
consequence of it, and I can now sleep, for, since his double apparition
in the garden, I have but half closed my eyes. I feared constantly some
imprudence on your part or his.”
“Faint-hearted;” and Mariam assisted Baïla in arranging her toilet for
the night.
Soon after daylight the Mingrelian left her solitary couch, for Djezzar
fatigued by the chase had also slept alone, woke her old negress, and
both descended into the gardens. Baïla gave as a pretext for her walk,
her desire to breathe the fresh air of the gardens.
She went first to the kiosk, then to the plateau, on which she had
formerly seated herself; she cast a glance around her on the masses of
flowers and shrubs, upon the small marble basin, and fixed for some time
an attentive look upon the two palm-trees, as if some one was about to
appear between their columns, under their green canopy. She went then to
the spot where the Azalea covered with its shade and its flowers the
last trace of the stranger; she broke off one of the branches, stripped
it of its foliage, broke it into two, fastened together the pieces in
the form of a cross, by means of a cord taken from a pelisse which she
wore; she then set up this cross upon the foot-print, which was almost
effaced. All this was done without any affectation of sentiment, and
with a calm and almost listless air.
At the sight of the cross, Mariam, who was born a Christian in
Abyssinia, signed herself, after having first cast a cautious glance
around her. Baïla contented herself with breathing a sigh, the sigh of a
child who sees a game on which it has been for some time engaged,
finished. She then returned to the isolated pavilion, in which her suite
of apartments was situated, with her head bent down and pensive, but
thinking, perhaps, of any thing else than the stranger.
From that moment, however, cross and fantastic with Djezzar, she had no
longer for him those soft caresses, nor those melodious songs, nor those
intoxicating dances which accompanied the clicking noise of her
castinets, and appeared to open the gates of the seventh heaven. She
finished by irritating him so much by her redoubled whims, caprices, and
refusals, that he left her in a fury, and remained for three whole days
without wishing to speak to her. On the third day, the attendants came
to him to inform him that a terrible noise was heard in the apartments
of the favorite, the cries of a woman mingled with the roarings of the
lion.
Djezzar sent thither, but was unwilling to go himself. When they
hastened to the assistance of the Mingrelian, they found her shut up
alone with Haïder. The rich carpet of Khorassan, which adorned the floor
of her chamber, was in places rent to pieces, and all strewed over with
bits of switches of the cherry. These shreds and fragments pointed out
the places where the strife had taken place between the lion and the
odalisk.
After having drawn him into her pavilion, Baïla had shut him off from
all retreat, and careless of the result to herself, armed with a light
bunch of rods, she had struck him redoubled blows, resolutely renewing
every stick which was broken on the body of her terrible antagonist. The
latter, accustomed to obey the voice that scolded him, and the arm that
struck him, without thinking of defending himself, bounded from one side
of the chamber to the other, tearing up a strip of carpet with his
curled talons at each bound; but finally his patience and long endurance
exhausted, irritated by grief, groaning and palpitating, lying half on
his croupe and his back, raising up one of his monstrous paws, he
extended his glittering talons, and became in his turn threatening, when
suddenly the bostangis and footmen of the pacha entered, armed with
boar-spears. The door being opened, the lion fled through it in
disgrace, not before the new comers, but from the Mingrelian, who still
pursued him with her last cherry-stick.
On the evening of the day in which Baïla had excited the royal anger of
the lion against herself, that terrible animal, broken and degraded by
his domestic habits, came, like a well-trained dog, confused and
repentant, to couch at the feet of his mistress, imploring pardon.
On the following day Djezzar did the same. The favorite saw him approach
her, humble, and laden with presents. The contest of Baïla with Haïder,
of which a full account had been given to him, filled him with a
singular admiration for the former. Baïla received the two conquered
with a cold dignity, which might pass for some remains of rigor.
This double victory found her indifferent; she had exhausted all the
emotions she could experience; she had so far distanced her rivals, that
triumph over them no longer excited her vanity; the slaves around her
were so submissive that she no longer took pleasure in commanding them.
The pacha was tamed, tamed even to weakness, to cowardice; every one,
even the lion, submitted to the power of the favorite, and with such
unanimous accord, that in this harem, where every thing prostrates
itself before her, and every thing is done in accordance with her will
or her caprice, she has but a single enemy whom she cannot conquer; it
is ennui. That threatened to increase daily, and to strengthen itself by
the weakness of the others.
The pacha went on the same day to the city; Baïla consented to accompany
him; and after having remained a short time at Shivas, they had scarcely
returned to Kizil-Ermak, when she appeared entirely different from what
she had been at her departure. Gayety and vivacity had returned to her;
the smile to her lips, joy to her eyes; she had refound her sweetest
songs, her most graceful dances. She was charming in the eyes of Djezzar
and even of Haïder. It was said she had been spontaneously metamorphosed
by the way.
The good humor of the favorite communicating itself to the pacha, and
spreading from him far and near, all was joy in the palace that night.
Baïla alone possessed the secret of this general joy.