The King contemplated his vengeance, as a man who has fasted three days
contemplates a bountiful repast. He examined, one by one, all the
dishes, I mean to say all the tortures; he licked his dry lips, but he
knew not where to commence nor what to choose. One would have said that
excess of hunger spoiled his appetite. He struck his head with his fist,
as if he could force out some ideas, but they came so rapidly that it
was not easy to seize one in its passage. "Speak!" he cried to his
subjects. "Advise me! What good are you, if you are not able to give me
advice? Shall I await the coming of the Corfuan, or until Vasile shall
speak from the depths of his tomb? Find for me, beasts that you are,
some torture for the loss of 80,000 francs."
The young pipe-bearer said to his master: "An idea strikes me. Thou hast
one officer dead, another absent, and a third wounded. Put up their
places for competition. Promise us that those who shall tell of the best
way to avenge thee, shall succeed Sophocles, the Corfuan, and Vasile."
Hadgi-Stavros smiled complacently at this stratagem. He stroked the
young boy's chin and said to him:
"Thou art ambitious, my little man! All in good time! Ambition is the
result of courage. Agreed, for a competition! It is a modern idea, a
European idea, that pleases me. To reward thee, thou shalt give thy
advice, first; and if thou findest something very good, Vasile shall
have no other heir but thee."
"I would," said the child, "pull out some of my lord's teeth, put a bit
in his mouth, and make him run, bridled, till he dropped from fatigue."
"His feet are too sore; he would fall down at the first step. And you
others? Tambouris, Moustakas, Coltzida, Milotia, speak, I am listening."
"I," said Coltzida, "I would break boiling hot eggs under his arm-pits.
I tried it on a woman of Magara, and I had much fun."
"I," said Tambouris, "I would put him on the ground with a rock weighing
five hundred pounds on his chest. It thrusts out one's tongue and makes
one spit blood; it is fine!"
"I," said Milotia, "I would put vinegar in his nostrils, and drive
thorns under every nail. One sneezes violently and one does not know
what to do with one's hands."
Moustakas was one of the cooks of the band. He proposed to cook me in
front of a small fire. The King's face expanded.
The monk assisted at the conference, and let them talk without giving
his advice. He, however, took pity on me, according to the measure of
his sensibility, and helped me as far as his intelligence permitted.
"Moustakas," he said, "is too wicked. One can torture milord finely
without burning him alive. If you will give him salt meat without
allowing him to drink he will live a long time, he will suffer a great
deal, and the King will satisfy his vengeance without interfering with
God's vengeance. It is my disinterested advice which I give you; I shall
make nothing by it; but I wish everyone to be pleased, since the
monastery has received its tithe."
"Halt, there!" interrupted the coffee-bearer. "Good old man, I have an
idea which is better than thine. I condemn milord to die of hunger. The
others will do any evil to him which pleases them; I will not hinder
them. But I would place a sentinel before his mouth, and I would take
care that he had neither a drop of water nor a crumb of bread. Weakness
would redouble his hunger; his wounds would increase his thirst, and the
tortures of the others would finally finish him to my profit. What dost
thou say, Sire? Is it not well reasoned and will it not give me Vasile's
place?"
"Go to the devil, all of you!" cried the King. "You would reason less
calmly if the wretch had plundered you of 80,000 francs! Carry him away
to the camp and take your pleasure out of him. But unhappy the one who
kills him by any imprudence! This man must die only by my hand. I intend
that he shall reimburse me, in pleasure, for all that he has taken from
me in money. He shall shed his blood drop by drop, as a bad debtor who
pays sou by sou."
You would not believe, Monsieur, with what struggles the most wretched
man will cling to life. Truly, I longed to die; and the happiest thing
which could happen to me would be to end it all with one blow.
Something, however, rejoiced me at Hadgi-Stavros' threat. I blessed the
extension of my time. Hope sprang up in my heart. If a charitable friend
had offered to blow out my brains I would have looked twice at him.
Four brigands took me by the shoulders and legs and carried me, a
shrieking mass, to the King's cabinet. My voice awakened Sophocles on
his pallet. He called his companions and made them tell him the news,
and asked to look at me closely. It was the caprice of a sick person.
They threw me down by his side.
"Milord," he said to me, "we are both very weak, but the odds are that I
shall get well sooner than you do. It appears that they are already
talking of my successor. How unjust men are! My place is up for
competition. Oh, well! I wish to compete and to put myself in the race.
You will bear witness in my favor and your groans will testify that
Sophocles is not yet dead. You shall be bound, and I take upon myself
the pleasure of tormenting you with one hand, as spiritedly as the
strongest of the band."
In order to please the unfortunate fellow they bound me. He turned over
towards me and began to pull out hairs, one by one, with the patience
and the regularity of a professional hair remover. When I saw what this
new punishment was to be, I believed that the wounded man, touched by my
misery, and sympathizing with me because of his own sufferings, wished
to shield me from his comrades, and give me an hour's respite. The
extraction of one hair is not so painful, by a good deal, as the prick
of a pin. The first twenty came out, one after the other, without any
discomfiture. But soon I changed my tune. The scalp, irritated by a
multitude of imperceptible lesions, became inflamed. A dull itching
began on my head; it became a little livelier; and at last it was
intolerable. I would like to have raised my hands to my head; I
understood with what intuition the wretch had had me bound. Impatience
but aggravated the trouble; all the blood in my body rushed to my head.
Every time Sophocles approached his hand to my scalp, a woful shivering
seized my whole body. A thousand inexplicable stingings tormented my
arms and legs. The nervous system, irritated at every point, enveloped
me in a network more exasperating than Dejanire's tunic. I rolled over
on the ground, I groaned, I cried for mercy, I regretted the bastinado.
The executioner had pity on me only when he had completely exhausted
himself. When he felt his eyes become dim, his head heavy, and his arm
weary, he made a last effort, plunged his hand into my hair, seized a
fist full, and fell over on his pallet, drawing from me a despairing
cry.
"Come with me," said Moustakas. "Thou shalt decide, in a corner by the
fire, if I can compete with Sophocles, and whether I merit a
lieutenancy."
He raised me like a feather and carried me to the camp, in front of a
heap of resinous wood and piled up brushwood. He took off the bonds, he
stripped me of my clothes, leaving me only my trousers. "Thou shalt be
my under-cook," he said. "We will make the fire and we will prepare the
King's dinner, together."
He lighted the stack of wood and laid me out on my back, about two feet
from the mountain of flames. The wood crackled, the red cinders fell
like hail around me. The heat became unbearable. I hitched along with my
hands a little distance, but he came with a frying-pan in his hand, and
pushed me back with his foot to the place where he had first laid me.
"Look well, and profit by my lessons. Here are the heart, liver, and
kidneys from three sheep; there is enough to feed twenty men. The King
will choose the most delicate morsels; he will distribute the remainder
to his men. Thou wilt have none of it for the present, and if thou
tastest my cooking, it will be with the eyes only."
I soon heard the bubbling in the sauce pan, and it reminded me that I
had been fasting since the evening before. My hunger added one more
torment. Moustakas held the pan under my eyes and made me look at the
appetizing color of the meat. He thrust it under my nose and I smelled
the steam of the food. Suddenly he perceived that he had forgotten the
seasoning, and he hurried away to find the salt and pepper, leaving the
sauce pan to my care. The first idea which came to me was to steal a
piece of the meat, but the brigands were only ten feet away; they would
stop me at once. "If I only had my package of arsenic," I thought. What
could I have done with it? I had not put it back in my box. I thrust my
hands into my pockets. I drew out a soiled paper and a handful of that
beneficent powder, which would save me, perhaps, or at least avenge me.
Moustakas returned at the instant when I was holding my open hand above
the sauce pan. He seized me by the arm, looked me straight in the eye,
and said in a menacing tone: "I know what thou hast done."