Djezzar, left alone with Baïla, gave vent at first to all his jealous
passions; but with him the favorite had nothing to dread but an
explanation, commencing with a blow from his dagger. As soon as she
found him confine himself simply to threats and reproaches, she ceased
to fear for her life. Assuming an attitude of surprise, a look of
disgust, whilst still endeavoring to appear as handsome as possible, she
sought to make use of all her advantages and to employ in her favor with
the Turk that toilette of carelessness prepared coquettishly for the
Christian.
Djezzar, who had on that day returned from Tocata to Shivas, had been
informed in the latter city of the intention of the Frank to penetrate
into the interior of his harem; but he had no proof of the complicity of
his beautiful slave. Baïla perceived it. He who could have given those
proofs was, doubtless, expiring at that very moment. Were there not also
to assist her, her imprecations against the giaour and her movement of
terror and flight, of which the pacha himself was a witness. Thus, the
latter was soon convinced and the tables turned; it was now the master
who, humble and suppliant, lowly implored her pardon.
He was, however, preparing a terrible proof for the influence of the
Mingrelian. Baïla, irritated at having been suspected, was already
raising her voice higher.
“Listen,” said the pacha, imposing silence by a gesture, and appearing
himself to hearken to a certain movement which was manifested without.
She listened, but heard nothing but a low, confused, monotonous and
regular sound, like that of threshing.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing—nothing at all,” he replied.
Both remained thus, for a time, attentive; the noise was repeated, but
did not increase. Djezzar became impatient, and, yielding to the
feeling, struck his hands.
“Have not my orders been executed?” he demanded of the Mangrebian slave
who appeared.
“They have, son of Ali; but in vain have we used on this Christian cords
armed with lead and thongs of the skin of the hippopotamus; in vain have
we moistened and sprinkled his gaping wounds with pimento and lemon
juice; he has not uttered a cry or a groan.”
“What does he, then?” asked the Pasha.
“He prays,” replied the slave.
“Has he revealed nothing!”
“Nothing, son of Ali.”
“If my chastisements cannot loose his tongue, my clemency may,” said
Djezzar, with a sinister smile. “Let him be brought before me, and let
Haïder come also. By Allah, I will myself teach him to speak.”
When the Mangrebian had departed, Djezzar, alone with Baïla, became at
once the man of the harem—the effeminate, the voluptuous pacha; he
caused her to resume her seat on the divan, and he himself stretched at
her feet, smoking his hooka, engaged, apparently alone, in watching the
smoke from his Persian pipe escape on one side in massive clouds to
remount from the other, purifying itself in a crystal flask full of
perfumed water. He awaited, in this indolent posture, the arrival of his
captive.
This captive was named Ferdinand Laperre. Born at Paris, of a good
family of the middle classes, of a character addicted to exaltation and
revery, an orphan from his cradle, he had been unable to give a natural
course to his sensibilities. Notwithstanding his university education,
the religious sentiment had germinated and developed itself in him. In
the want of those tender affections of which he was ignorant, holy and
ardent belief had filled the void in his soul. He held a small
employment in the office of the minister of foreign affairs, when one
day at the close of a sermon, by the Abbé La Ardaire, he determined to
become a priest.
His only remaining relative, an uncle, recently appointed to a consulate
in one of the important cities of Asia Minor, thought it best to take
him with him in the capacity of a cadet. He hoped to divert him from his
pious abstractions, to induce him to renounce his plans, and to lead him
even to doubting, by the sight of those numerous sects of schismatic
Christians who inhabit the east. The uncle was a philosopher.
But faith was more brightly kindled in the heart of the neophyte as he
approached those holy places in which evangelical truths had borne their
first branches and produced their most savory fruits. The summits of
Taurus were for him illuminated by the lightnings of Tabor and Sinai.
More than ever strengthened in his first calling, he wore hair-cloth
beneath his diplomatic dress, and promised himself, should the occasion
offer, to accomplish, in despite of his relative, a novitiate signalized
by apostolic labors.
After having perfected himself in the Turkish and common Arabian
languages, he went to Shivas and its environs, on a visit to the
followers of the different dissenting churches—Armenians, Greeks,
Maronites, Nestorians, Eutycheans and even Latin Catholics, separated
from Rome only by the marriage of their priests. He went among them to
effect conversions; he was more alarmed at their misery than their
ignorance, and, like a true apostle, he returned among them less to
preach to them than to succor them.
He was passing down the Red River one day, on a small skiff, which he
had learned to manage in the eastern style, dreaming of the desert and
of an hermitage in some Thebais, and was creating in the future an
ascetic happiness, tempered with clear water, when the oar broke. His
barque stranding, cast him upon a small spot, a delta, located as an
island, between Kizil-Ermak and a regular ditch. Ferdinand was not a
skillful swimmer, but, notwithstanding the usual sedateness of his
thoughts, he was a good jumper. He measured with his eye the river and
the ditch by turns, and the question being decided in favor of the
latter, he crossed it at a bound. The ditch passed, he perceived a low
wall, which had been hidden from his view by a thick copse of nopals and
wild apricot trees. Had he jumped back, to regain his delta, it would
have been at the risk of his neck, for he had now no room to take a
start; and should he succeed, he would still have an impassable river
before him.
Whilst in this position, very much embarrassed what to do, and not
doubting that he was in the neighborhood of the summer gardens of the
pacha, he perceived a low door in the wall; he tried it, and to his
great joy it opened.
There are about Shivas, and especially on the banks of the river,
enclosures in which the cultivators, chiefly Christians, from the great
abundance of water, raise vegetables for the market, and enormous
citrons, savory water-melons, dates, and pistachios which rival those of
Aleppo and Damascus. Ferdinand thought he had reached one of those
Christian enclosures; the carelessness evinced in closing the gate
strengthened the idea. He entered. Then, for the first time, he found
himself face to face with Baïla, who was seated carelessly beneath the
plantain tree. More surprised than charmed at the sight of the graceful
odalisk, bedaubed with red and black, he could only stammer forth a few
words, expressive of his eager desire to escape, safe and sound, from
this perilous adventure, which he had not sought. Entrapped in the
windings of the garden, he had again found himself in the presence of
Baïla and the negress. Regaining at last, with difficulty, the little
gate, which was still open, he was again alarmed at the double obstacle
of the ditch and the river, when, in the midst of the shades of the
evening, he saw a man advance, mysteriously, toward the delta,
traversing the Kizil-Ermak by a ford, of which Ferdinand was quite
ignorant.
This man, one of the bostangis of the pacha, stole his master’s fruit to
sell in the city. It was he who had left open the little gate, which was
only used when the ditch was repairing. After having, on that day,
pointed out to Ferdinand a mode of escaping from his embarrassment, it
was he afterward, who, held by Baïla between the fear of denunciation
and the hopes of reward, had introduced the Frank into the gardens, and
even into the pavilion of the favorite.
Having reached the delta, the bostangi drew from beneath a mass of
overhanging rock, a long plank, which he used to cross the ditch; he
then deposited it beneath the mass of nopals and wild apricots, in which
Ferdinand was concealed.
He saw a miracle from heaven in this concourse of unhoped for
circumstances, co-operating in his deliverance. This plank became an ark
of safety for him; he used it in his turn, and, thanks to the ford which
the bostangi had revealed to him, after having wandered for some time in
its unknown paths, after having struggled anew with the Kizil-Ermak,
which, like a serpent in pursuit of its prey, he found everywhere on his
path, and which appeared to wish to envelop him in its twistings and
windings, he escaped finally all the dangers of his eventful walk.
Having returned to the consulate in Shivas he had double cause to
congratulate himself on having arrived there safe and sound, when he
learned that the gardens into which he had so foolishly adventured were
none other than those of Djezzar.
But this woman whom he had seen—who could she be? When he thought of
his meeting with her, he thought he had dreamed or had seen a vision.
She reappeared before him in a multitude of forms; he saw her resembling
a Bacchante, her cup in her hand, reclining indolently on a tiger’s
skin; then, like a Peri or an Undine, when appearing to him through the
gilded reflection of the sun and the rainbows of the small marble basin;
and, finally, in her third transformation, erect, severe, irritated,
ordering him to fly and threatening him with a dagger.
His calm and chaste imagination lent, however, no charm to this
triplicity of forms. He asked himself, on the contrary, if this vision
did not present to him an emblem of all the vices united—intoxication,
licentiousness, idleness, anger? He found means to complete the seven
cardinal sins. In those accursed gardens, which were inhabited by the
persecutor of the Christians, was it not the demon himself that had
appeared to him?
Thus, whilst Baïla was making of him a being apart—a marvelous
being—whose traces she was honoring, an idol to which she was rendering
the homage of love, he was piously entertaining a holy horror of her
remembrance.
This demon, however—this frightful assemblage of the seven cardinal
sins, was essaying every means to approach him.
Ferdinand, whilst sojourning with his uncle in this province of
Anti-Taurus, was but little concerned about what was taking place in the
harem of Djezzar. His thoughts were elsewhere. But after his involuntary
visit to the gardens, he lent a more attentive ear to what was said
about the pacha. He learned that the latter, abandoned entirely to
voluptuousness, submitted to the control of a favorite Mingrelian. Soon,
without knowing his own share in increasing the sway of the beautiful
slave, he heard it repeated every where around him that, did she will it
firmly, Baïla could make a Jew of her master, Ali-ben-Ali.
“Why not a Christian?” he said to himself.
All his thoughts were, from that day, concentrated on this single
one—“She is a Christian, and can do any thing with Djezzar.”
Oh, how did his divine mission aggrandize in his eyes that toy, which
was a small golden cross, which his mother had worn and which never left
him.
We know the result of the execution of this holy and bold enterprise,
the first terrible consequences of which Ferdinand was now undergoing,
and the conclusion of which he foresaw, when, after his preparatory
punishment, he was led before the pacha, with his hands bound tightly
behind his back. The latter was still extended upon his cushion; his
head and the arm which held his pipe reposed on the knees of the
Mingrelian and his lion Haïder, crouched upon his paws, with his muzzle
to the floor and his eyes half closed, was by his side.
The slaves retired at a gesture from their master; the scene which was
to follow needed no witnesses. The pacha, the Mingrelian, the Christian
and the lion alone remained.