GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXVII. October, 1850. No. 4.

Table of Contents

Fiction, Literature and Articles

Poetry, Music and Fashion

[Transcriber’s Notes] can be found at the end of this eBook.

THE SLAVE OF THE PACHA.
Painted by W. Brown and Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine by J. Brown

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXVII. PHILADELPHIA, OCTOBER, 1850. No. 4.

THE SLAVE OF THE PACHA.

A TALE OF ASIA MINOR.

———

FROM THE FRENCH OF SAINTINE.

———

I was botanizing lately in the woods of Luciennes, with one of my friends, a distinguished Orientalist and renowned botanist, who had, a few years since, traveled six thousand miles, and risked his life twenty times, in order to obtain a handful of plants from the slopes of the Taurus or the plains of Asia Minor. After we had wandered for some time through the woods, gathering here and there some dry grass and orchis, merely to renew an acquaintance with them, we lounged toward the handsome village of Gressets and the delightful valley of Beauregard, directing our steps toward a breakfast, which we hoped to find a little further on, when, beneath an alley of lofty poplars, on the left of the meadows of the Butard, we saw two persons, a man and a woman, both young, approaching us.

My companion made a gesture of surprise at the sight of them.

“Do you know those persons?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Of what class, genus and species are they?” I used the words merely in their botanical sense.

“Analyze, observe and divine,” replied my illustrious traveler.

I determined then on applying to my individuals, not the system of Linnæus, but that of Jussien, that of affinities and analogies. The latter appeared to me to be more suitable and easier than the former. The young man was dressed in a very simple and even negligent style, wearing those high heeled shoes, three-quarter boots, which have succeeded the half boots, (boots, since the introduction of comfort among us, having steadily lessened,) and had not even straps to his pantaloons. A pearl colored sack, colored shirt, and traveling cap with a large visor, completed his costume.

Near him walked a young woman, of the middle height and finely formed, but with such an air of indolence in her movements, flexibility of the body, and jogging of the haunches, as proclaimed a southern origin or a want of distinction. They advanced with their heads down, speaking without looking up, and walking side by side without taking arms, but from time to time one leant on the shoulder of the other, with a movement full of affection.

It was not until we crossed them that I could see their figures; until then I had been able to study only their costume and general outline.

The young man blushed on recognizing my companion, and saluted him with a very humble air; I had scarcely time, however, to catch a single pathognomic line of his face. The female was very handsome; the elegance of her neck, the regularity of her features, gave her a certain air of distinction, contradicted, however, by something provoking in her appearance.

When they had passed on some distance, my friend said to me:

“Well, what judgment do you pass on our two persons?”

“Well,” replied I, positively, “the young man is your confectioner, who is about to marry his head shop-girl;” but reading a sign of negation on the countenance of my interrogator—“or a successful merchant’s clerk, with a countess without prejudices.”

“You are wrong.”

I asked for a moment’s reflection, and, to render my work of observation perfect, I looked after them.

They had reached, near the place where we were, the side of a spring, called, in the country, the “Priest’s Fountain.” The young female had already seated herself upon the grass, and drawing forth a napkin spread it near her, whilst the young man drew a paté and some other provisions carefully from his basket.

“Certainly,” I said to myself, “there are, evidently, in the face of this beautiful person, traits both of the great lady and the grisette; but, on thinking of her rolling fashion of walking, and especially judging of her by the appearance of her companion, then stooping to uncork a bottle, and whose unstrapped pantaloons, riding half way up his leg, revealed his quarter boots, the grisette type prevailed in my opinion.”

“The lady,” I replied, but with less assurance than at first, “is a figurante at one of our theatres, or a female equestrian at the Olympic circus.”

“There is some truth in what you say.”

“He is a lemonade seller.” I judged so from the practiced facility with which he appeared to open the bottle.

“You are farther from the mark than ever,” said my companion.

“Well, then, let us talk about something else.”

Once at the Butard we thought no more of our two Parisian cockneys. Whilst they were preparing our breakfast, and even whilst we were breakfasting, my friend naturally recommenced speaking of his travels in the Taurus and Anti-Taurus, in the Balkan, the Caucasus, on the banks of the Euphrates, and then, to give me a respite from all his botanical and geological descriptions, he related to me, piece by piece, without appearing to attach the least importance to them, a story, which interested me very much. He had collected the details of it (the scene of which was laid not far from the shores of the Black Sea, between Erzerum and Constantinople) from the lips of one of the principal actors in it.

I endeavored to reduce it to writing when with him, not in the same order, or disorder, as to events, but at least so far as regards their exactness, and availing myself of the knowledge of persons and places acquired by my traveler.

——

CHAPTER I.

Toward the middle of the month of July, in the year 1841, in the pachalick of Shivas, in the vast gardens situated near the Red River, a young girl, dressed in the Turkish costume, was walking slowly, with her head bent down, followed by an old negress. At times she turned her head rapidly, and when her eyes, through the massive maples and sycamores, rested on the angle of a large building, with gilded lattices and balconies of finely carved cedar, her complexion, usually pale, became suddenly suffused, her small foot contracted against the ground, her breast heaved, and she restrained with difficulty the sigh that endeavored to escape.

Silent and pre-occupied she stopped, and with her finger designated a plantain tree to the negress. The latter immediately entered an elegant kiosk, a few paces distant, and returned, bearing the skin of a tiger, which she placed at the foot of the tree. After the old negress had passed and repassed several times from the skin to the kiosk, and from the kiosk to the skin, the young girl seated herself, cross-legged, on the latter, leaning against the plantain tree, on a cushion of black velvet, holding carelessly in her left hand an ornamented pipe, with a tube of Persian cherry, and in her right, in a small stand of filagreed gold, shaped like an egg-cup, a slight porcelain cup, which the old slave replenished from time to time with the fragrant Mocha.

Baïla was seventeen years old; her black and lustrous hair, parted over her temples, resembled the raven’s wing; her eye-brows thin, and forming a perfect arch, though of the same color as her hair, were, as well as her long eye-lashes and the edge of the lids, covered with a preparation of antimony, called sourmah. Still other colors had been employed to heighten the lustre of her beauty; the carnation of her lips had disappeared beneath a light touch of indigo; and, by way of contrary effect, beneath her eyes, where the fine net work of her veins naturally produced a light blue tint, the purple of the henna shone out. The henna, a kind of vegetable carmine, much used in the east, also blushed upon the nails of her hands and feet, and even upon her heels, which peeped out, naked, from her small, beautiful sandals, embroidered with gold and pearls.

Though thus tattooed, in the Asiatic fashion, Baïla was none the less beautiful. Her costume consisted simply of a velvet caftan, muslin pantaloons, embroidered with silver, and a cashmere girdle; but all the knicknackeries of Oriental luxuriousness were displayed in her toilet. The double row of sequins which swung on her head, the large golden bracelets which covered her arms and graced her ankles, the chains, the precious stones which shone on her hands and her corsage, and which shook on the extremities of her long flowing hair and glittered on her very pipe stem, graced in a singular manner her youthful charms.

The better to understand what kind of astonished admiration her appearance might at this time produce, we should add that of the old black slave, who, from her age as well as color, her short, thick figure, her dull and heavy look, formed so striking a contrast with the fresh beauty of Baïla, her fine and supple figure and her glance, still lively and penetrating, notwithstanding the deep thought which then half veiled it.

The better to lighten up this picture we must suspend over the heads of these two females, so dissimilar, the beautiful blue sky of Asia, and describe some incidents of the land, some singularities of the local vegetation which surrounded them.

Some paces in advance of the plantain against which Baïla was reclining, was a small circular basin of Cipolin marble, from which sprang a jet, in the form of a sheaf, causing a delicious freshness to reign around. A little farther on were two palm trees, which, springing up on either hand and mingling their tops, presented the appearance of two columns, forming an arcade of verdure. But before this entrance, judging from appearances, the shadow even of a man should never appear. Baïla belonged to a jealous master; her beauty, heightened by so much art and coquetry, was to grow, blossom and flower for him alone.

From the foot of the palm trees parted a double hedge of purple beeches, of silvery willows, of nopals of strange forms with saffron tints, and of various shrubs with their many colored flowers and fruits. The dog-shades, with their stars of violet colored velvet, the night-shades, with their scarlet clusters involved amidst the mimosas, out of which sprang the golden features of the cassia. Mingling their branches with the lower branches of the plantain, the mangroves hung like garlands above the head of Baïla, their large leaves hollowed into cups, and so strangely bordered with flowers and fruits of orange color mixed with crimson.

Farther back, behind the plantain, on a reddish, sandy spot, grew large numbers of the ice plant, presenting to the deceived vision the appearance of plants caught by the frost during the winter in our northern climes, and the glass work covered the ground with crystalized plates.

The picture was soon to become animated.

The magnificent eastern sun, sinking toward the horizon and throwing his last flames beneath the verdant pediment of the palm trees, caused the earth to sparkle as if covered with diamonds. His rays, broken by the glittering sheaf in the basin, spread across those masses of flower and foliage, rainbows, superb in golden and violet tints; they flashed from the plantain to the variegated cups of the mangrove, and lighted up the whole form of Baïla, from her brow, crowned with sequins, to her spangled slippers; they even mingled with the smoke of her narghila, and with the vapor of the Mocha, which arose like a perfume from the porcelain cup, and glistening on the skin of the tiger on which she was seated, appeared to roll about in small vague circles.

When the night breeze, rising, gently agitated the flowers and the herbage, mingling in soft harmony all those zones of light and shade, was it not a subject of regret that a human eye could not gaze upon the beautiful odalisk, in the midst of those magical illusions, shining in the triple splendor of her jewels, her youth, and her beauty?

And, yet, a man was to enjoy this bewitching scene, and that man not her master.

Mariam, the old negress, was asleep at the foot of the tree, holding in her hands the small mortar in which she had bruised the coffee to supply the demands of her mistress. Baïla, half dozing, was holding out, mechanically, toward her the china cup, when a man suddenly appeared between the two palm trees.

At the sight of him the odalisk at first thought she was dreaming; then, restrained by a feeling, perhaps of alarm, perhaps of curiosity, remained quiet, immovable, without speaking—only the cup which she held fell from her hands.

The stranger, who was a young Frank, having first made a motion as of flight, became emboldened and approached her, with a heightened color and trembling lips, arising from a too lively emotion or from an excess of prudence on account of the negress. He merely inquired from Baïla the way to the city.

He expressed himself very well in Turkish; she did not appear, however, to understand him. What! a stranger, eluding the vigilance of guards, had crossed the double circuit of the gardens which enclosed her—had braved death—merely to ask his way!

Restored to a feeling of her situation, she rose, with an offended air, drew from her girdle a small dagger, ornamented with diamonds—a plaything, rather than offensive or defensive arms—and made an imperious sign to him to retire.

The young man recoiled before the beautiful slave, with an appearance of contriteness and embarrassment, but without ceasing to regard her earnestly. He appeared to be unable to remove his eyes from the picture which had riveted his attention; still, however, undecided and muttering confused words, he was crossing the porch of the palm trees, when the negress suddenly awoke.

At the sight of the shadow of a man, which reached into the enclosure, she sprang up, uttering a cry of alarm.

“What are you doing?” said Baïla, placing herself before her, doubtless from a feeling of pity toward the imprudent youth.

“But that shadow—do you not see it? It is that of a man!”

“Of a bostangy! Who else would have dared to enter here?”

“But the bostangis should be more careful. Has not our master prohibited them from entering the gardens when we are here—when you are here? A man has entered, I tell you; I saw his shadow.”

“Of what shadow are you speaking? Stop—look!” and Baïla stopped before the negress.

“I saw it,” repeated the negress.

“The shadow of a tree—yes, that is possible.”

“Trees do not run, and it appeared to run.”

“You have been dreaming, my good Mariam,” and Baïla maintained so well that no one had been there, that she had seen nothing, but in a dream, that Mariam submissively feigned to believe her, and both prepared to return to the house.

They were half way there when, on turning an alley, the negress uttered a new cry, pointing to an individual who was escaping at full speed.

“Am I dreaming this time?” she said, and she was about to call for assistance, when the odalisk, placing her hand on her mouth, ordered her to keep silence. Mariam, who was devoted to her mistress, obeyed her.

Having returned to her apartment, Baïla reflected on her adventure. Adventures are rare in a harem life. She was intriguing there desperately, and would have been disquieted had she not had other cares. These, in their turn, occupied her thoughts.

In thinking of them she became fretful, angry; she crushed the rich stuffs which lay beside her. She even wept, but rather from passion than grief.

Since the preceding evening Baïla was doubtful of her beauty; since then she cursed the existence to which she had been condemned, and regretted the days of her early youth. To remove from her mind the incessant idea which tormented her, she essayed to remount to the past. She found there, if not consolation, at least distraction.

The past of a young girl of seventeen is frequently but the paradise of memory—a radiant Eden, peopled with remembrances of her family, and sometimes of a first love. It was not so with Baïla; her family were indifferent to her, and her first love had been imposed upon her.

She was born in Mingrelia, of a drunken father and an avaricious mother. They, finding her face handsome and her body well proportioned, had destined her, almost from the cradle, for the pleasures of the Sultan. Her education had been suitable for her destined state. She was taught to dance and sing, and to accompany herself in recitative; nothing more had ever been thought of.

Although her parents professed externally one of the forms of the Christian religion, had they sought to develop the slightest religious instinct in her? What was the use of it? The morality of Christ could but give her false ideas and be entirely useless to her in the brilliant career which was to open before her.

But if the beautiful child only awakened toward herself feelings of speculation, if she was, in the eyes of her parents, but a piece of precious merchandise, she, at least, profited in advance by the privileges it conferred upon her.

Whilst her brothers were unceasingly occupied with the culture of their vineyard, with the gathering of grapes and honey—whilst her sister, as beautiful as herself, but slightly lame, was condemned to assist her mother in household cares, Baïla led a life of indolence. Could they allow her white and delicate hands to come in contact with dirty furnaces, or her well-turned nails to be bruised against the heavy earthen ware, or her handsome feet to be deformed by the stones in the roads? No—it would have been at the risk of injuring her, and of deteriorating from her value.

Thus, under the paternal roof, where all the rest were struggling and laboring, she alone, extended in the shade, having no other occupation than singing and dancing, passed her life in indolence, or in regarding with artless admiration the increase and development of her beauty, the wealth of her family.

The common table was covered with coarse food for the rest; for her, and her alone, are reserved the most delicate products of fishing and hunting. Her brothers collected carefully for her those delicate bulbs, which, reduced to flour, make that marvelous salep, at once an internal cosmetic and a nutritive substance, which the women of the East use to aid them in the development of their figures, and to give to their skin a coloring of rosy white.

If they were going to any place, Baïla traveled on the back of a mule, in a dress of silk, whilst the rest of the family, clothed in coarse wool or serge, escorted her on foot, watching over her with constant solicitude. Truly, a stranger meeting them by the way, and witnessing all these cares and demonstrations, would have taken her for an idolized daughter, guarded against destiny by the most tender affections.

If her father, however, approached her, it was to pinch her nose, the nostrils of which were a little too wide; and her mother, as an habitual caress, contented herself with pulling her eyebrows near the temples, so as to give the almond form to her eyes.

Sometimes the husband, seized suddenly with enthusiasm on seeing Baïla exhibit her grace when dancing by starlight, would say in a low voice to his wife—

“By Saint Demetrius, I believe the child will some day bring us enough to furnish a cellar with rack and tafita enough to last forever;” and a laugh of happiness would light up his dull face.

“If we should be so unfortunate as to lose her before her time, it will be ten thousand good piastres of which the Good God will rob us,” replied his worthy companion; and she shed a tear of alarm.

Baïla was thirteen years old, when a barque ascending the Incour, stopped at a short distance from the hut of the Mingrelian. A man wearing a turban descended from it. He was a purveyor for the harem, then on an expedition.

“Do you sell honey?” he said to the master of the hut, whom he found at the door.

“I gather white and red.”

“Can I taste it?”

The honest Mingrelian brought him a sample of both kinds.

“I would see another kind,” said the man with a turban, with a significant glance.

“Enter then,” replied the father of Baïla, and whilst the stranger was passing the threshold, hastening to the room occupied by his wife, he said to her—

“Be quick; the nuptials of thy daughter are preparing; the merchant is here; he is below; arrange her and come down with her.”

At the sight of Baïla, the merchant could not restrain an exclamation of admiration; then almost immediately, with a commercial manœuvre he threw up her head, preparing to examine her with more attention.

During this inspection the young girl blushed deeply; the father and mother seeking to read the secret thoughts of the merchant in his eyes and face, kept a profound silence, beseeching lowly their patron saint for success in the matter.

The man in the turban changing his course, and as if he had come merely to lay in a supply of honey, took up one of the two samples deposited on a table, and taking up some with his finger tasted it.

“This honey is white and handsome enough, but it wants flavor. How much is the big measure?”

“Twelve thousand,” the mother hastened to reply.

“Twelve thousand paras?”

“Twelve thousand piastres.”

The merchant shrugged his shoulders—“You will keep it for your own use then, my good woman.” He then went toward the door.

The woman made a sign to her husband not to stop him. In fact, as she had foreseen, he stopped before reaching the door, and turning toward the master of the house said—

“Brother in God, I have rested beneath your roof. In return for your hospitality, I give you some good advice. You have children?”

“Two daughters.”

“Well, have an eye to them, for the Lesghis have recently descended from their mountains and carried off large numbers in Guriel and Georgia.”

“Let them come,” replied the Mingrelian, “I have three sons and four guns.”

The merchant then made a movement of departure, but having cast a rapid glance on Baïla, he raised his right hand with his five fingers extended.

Baïla, red with shame, cast on him a look of contempt and took the attitude of an insulted queen. Thanks to that look and attitude, in which he doubtless found some flavor, the merchant raised a finger of his left hand.

The Mingrelian showed his ten fingers, not however without an angry glance from his wife, who muttered, “it is too soon.”

“Honey is dear in your district,” said the man with the turban; “I foresee I shall have to buy it from the Lesghis against my will. Farewell, and may Allah keep you.”

“Can we not on the one hand sell any thing, nor on the other buy any thing without your turning your back so quickly on us on that account?” replied the father. “Repose still, the oar has doubtless wearied your hands.”

“That is why they are so difficult to open,” growled the housewife.

“Since you permit it,” said the merchant, “I will remain here until the sun has lost a little of its power.”

“I cannot offer you any thing but the shade. I know that the children of the prophet avoid food beneath the roof of a Christian; but instead of that you can indulge in a permitted pleasure; as my daughter is still here, she can sing for you.”

Baïla sang, accompanying herself with an instrument. The man with the turban, seated on his heels, his arms crossed on his knees, his head resting on his arms, listened with a profound and immovable attention, and when she finished, in testimony of his satisfaction, he contented himself with silently raising one finger more.

Baïla, to the sound of ivory castanets and small silver bells, then performed an expressive dance, imitating the voluptuous movements of the bayaderes of India and the Eastern almas, but with more reserve however.

Forced this time to look at her, the man with the turban was unable to disguise the impression made upon him by so much grace, suppleness and agility, and, in an irrestrainable outbreak of enthusiasm, he raised two fingers at once. They were near to a conclusion.

In this mysterious bargaining, this language of the fingers, these mutes signs were used to enable the parties to swear, if necessary, before the Russian authorities, by Christ or Mahommed, that there had been no conversation between them except about honey, furs or beaver skins.

After some more bargaining on both sides, the mother finally received the ten thousand piastres in her apron, and disappeared immediately, to conceal it in some hiding-place, careless whether she should see her daughter again or not.

Whilst she was gone the merchant glanced on the elder sister of Baïla, who had assisted at the bargaining, whilst she was kneading bread in a kneading trough.

“And she,” said he; “shall I not carry her off also?”

The elder sister, flattered in her vanity, made him a reverence.

“She is lame,” said the father.

“Oh, oh!” said the other, “let us see—it does not matter.”

They bargained anew, and the Mingrelian, taking advantage of his wife’s absence, ended by selling his oldest daughter for six English guns, a large supply of powder and lead, some smoking materials and two tuns of rack. Whilst he was in the humor, he would cheerfully have sold his wife, still in fine preservation, if custom, agreeing this time with the new Russian code, had permitted him to do so.

The two men were touching hands in conclusion of this new bargain when the mother returned. She uttered at first loud cries, thinking that all the household cares were henceforth to devolve on herself alone. The merchant was enabled to quiet her by a present of a necklace of false stones, and some ornaments of gilded brass.

On the following day the two Mingrelian sisters reached a small port on the shores of the Black Sea, whence they soon embarked for Trebizond. A month afterward, the man with the turban being suddenly seized with a desire to have a wife for himself, after having furnished so many to others, married the eldest sister, who had won his affections by her skill in making cake.

Such were the remembrances of her family which were awakened in the mind of the young odalisk, when retired and alone in her apartment, pouting and jealous.

She then called up the images of that other portion of her life, in which love was to play a part. She returned in imagination to Trebizond, to the house of her purchaser, become her brother-in-law. There, like the companions of her captivity, surrounded by attention and care, under a superintendence minute but not severe, she passed a year, during which she had acquired the Turkish language and skill in the toilette, at the same time perfecting herself in singing and dancing.

A year having passed, the brother-in-law of Baïla embarked with her and several of her companions for Constantinople. One fine morning he had dressed his graceful cargo in white, their hair had been anointed and perfumed, and after having passed the walls of the old seraglio and traversed some narrow and crooked streets, merchant and merchandise were installed in a chamber of the slave bazaar.

European ideas concerning the sales of females in the East are generally erroneous. Our knowledge on this subject rests essentially on what we have seen in the theatres and in pictures. But dramatic authors and painters desirous of obtaining the picturesque above all else, do not regard exactness very closely.

The latter, in order not to divide their pictures into apartments, have shown us a great common room, in which all, males and females, all young, all handsome and half naked, divided into groups, pass under the inspection of the first comers. The promenaders make the circuit of the galleries; huge Turks, crushed beneath their turbans, and muffled in their cashmere robes, their silk caftans and their furs, smoke tranquilly, seated in the corner as in a coffee-house. Sometimes, in these fantastic sketches, a slender greyhound, with his sharp muzzle, or a beautiful spaniel, with a flowing tail, figures as an accessory, as in the great compositions of Reubens or Vandyke; but in Turkey dogs are prohibited from entering.

The former, dramatic poets or authors, have boldly established their markets on the public square, before a crowd of chorus singers, with pasteboard camels to add to the local coloring. It is true, that, thanks to the convenience of the scene, the costume of the beautiful slaves for sale has been increased. The purchasers of women at the opera are forced to be content with a very superficial examination.

A bazaar of this kind is much less accessible than these gentlemen would induce us to believe. Divided into private chambers, the women of every color and all ages, especially those whose youth and beauty command a high price, are lodged almost alone, under the custody of their sellers. In order to penetrate the sanctuary one must be a Mussulman, and offer guarantees, either from his position or his fortune; for the first curious person who presents himself is not permitted to see and buy.

Baïla and her companions entered, then, into a saloon of the grand bazaar of Constantinople, to take up their positions in the upper port of a chamber. Each desirous of reigning over the heart of one of the grand dignitaries, sought the most favorable position to show off her attractions to the greatest advantage, and was disposing herself so as to arm herself with all her natural or acquired graces, when a small old man, with a meager and mean turban, a caftan without embroidery or furs, as old-fashioned as its master, entered the room almost furtively. It was an Armenian renegade, who had made his fortune by superintending the affairs of an old vizier, whose treasurer or khashadar he was.

Whilst he was in the service of the latter, he had carefully increased his wealth, and his wife, espoused by him before his apostacy, had never permitted him to give her a rival. By a double fate, his wife died about the same time his vizier was sent into exile in disgrace. Become free on both sides, the Armenian feared no longer to exhibit his gold and his amorous propensities, both of which he had concealed so well for thirty years.

Although it was a little late, he determined to recommence his youth, to live for pleasure, and to organize a harem. Thus, at this moment, rubbing his hands, his figure inflamed, his small, red eyes glistening like carbuncles, he glided round the chamber, like a hungry fox around a poultry-yard.

The beautiful young girls were enraged at the sight. In their dreams of love, each of them had doubtless seen in her happy possessor, a handsome young man, with a capacious brow, majestic carriage, and black and glistening beard; and the ex-treasurer of the vizier did not appear to have ever possessed any of these fortunate gifts of nature.

Not being desirous of such a customer, instead of sweet smiles and their premeditated graceful postures, they assumed frowning and cross looks, when the old man stopped before Baïla, who at once trembled and was seized with an immoderate desire to cry. She was, however, forced to rise up, to walk about, and notwithstanding all the want of grace she could assume, the khashadar found her charming; he approached her, looked at her feet and hands, and examined her teeth, then taking the merchant aside, said, “Thy price?”

“Twenty thousand piastres.”

The khashadar made a bound backward; his lips puckered up like those of a baboon who has bitten a sharp citron; he recommenced walking around the room, examined all those beautiful fruits of Georgia and Circassia submitted to his inspection; he then stopped again before Baïla. She feigning to think that he wished to examine her mouth again, put out her tongue and made a face at him.

This demonstration did not appear to cool his fire. He reapproached the merchant, and when they had bargained for some time, seated cross-legged, the latter rose, saying,

“By the Angel Gabriel, I promised my wife, whose own sister she is, not to part with her for less than twenty thousand, for the honor of the family.”

Baïla, who had drawn her veil around her figure, perceived that the bargain was concluded; and, unable to restrain herself, burst into sobs. The door of the room was at that moment opened roughly. A man of lofty stature and imperious look, walked straight up to the desolate girl; he raised her veil, that veil which, though it concealed her tears, could not drown her sobs.

“How much for this slave?” he asked.

“She is mine,” said the khashadar.

“How much?” he repeats.

“But I am her purchaser, and not her seller,” said the little old man, rising on his toes, so as to approximate his length toward that of the interlocutor.

The latter thrust him aside with a glance of contempt. “I came here,” he said, “to make a purchase to the amount of nineteen thousand piastres.”

“Twenty thousand is her price,” observed the seller.

“I offer twenty-five thousand for her,” he replied, throwing the veil over the figure of Baïla.

The merchant bent himself; the khashadar, though pale with rage, restrained himself, for he had recognized in his rival Ali-ben-Ali, surnamed Djezzar, or the Butcher, the pacha of Shivas.

Thus the young girl having been once sold by her father, was again sold by her brother-in-law.

Djezzar Pacha, whom a slight difficulty with the divan had called for a short time to the capital of the empire, took his beautiful slave back with him to his usual residence, and she at once occupied the first place in his heart. The joy which she felt at seeing herself elevated above all her rivals, was not confined to a feeling of pride; she thought she loved Djezzar.

Although he was no longer in his first youth, and the severity of his glance sometimes inspired Baïla with a feeling of terror rather than of love, yet the first look she had cast on him in the bazaar of Constantinople, the comparison she had then made between him and the old khashadar, had been so much to his advantage, that she thought him young and handsome. He had since shown himself to be so generous, so much in love, had complied with her caprices and fancies with such tender indulgence, that closing her ears to the stories in circulation about him, she thought him good and patient.

If, however, she is first in the love of the pacha, she is not alone; Djezzar does not pique himself on an unalterable fidelity. At this very time a daughter of Amasia has entered the harem; and the women of Amasia are regarded as the most beautiful in Turkey. Who knows whether the scepter of beauty is not about to change hands? May not another inspire in Djezzar a love still stronger than that he has shown for Baïla?

Such were the ideas that so sadly preoccupied the young Odalisk, when walking in the garden, she cast by stealth those jealous looks toward the building with gilded lattices which contained her new rival.

Now her courage is strengthened, her mind lit up by sweeter lights. Did not the picture of her whole life, which passed before her, show her that her beauty must be incomparable, since after having dwelt at her ease in her father’s house, she had been an object of speculation for her brother-in-law surpassing his extremest hopes? In the bazaar of the women two purchasers had alone appeared, and they, notwithstanding the choice offered them, had disputed for her possession. But that which above all appeared to prove her power, was the boldness of the young Frank, who at the risk of his life had passed the dreaded entrance of the palace of Djezzar; who at the sight of her was so overcome as to lose his presence of mind; who, after having seen her, had again wished to behold her, and had anew placed himself in her way.

Did he not fear death as the price of his temerity? He did not fear because he loves—and it is thus the Franks love. Had they not seen the most celebrated of them, Napoleon, then Sultan, conquer Egypt with an army, in order to seek there for a beautiful female, whose beauty and whose country had been revealed to him in a dream sent by God.[^[1]] Is it not also in a dream that this young Frank has received a revelation of the charms of Baïla? Perhaps he had seen her during her residence at Trebizond, or on her voyage to Constantinople? What matters it; she owes it to him that she now feels confident and reassured. Let Djezzar bestow his affections for one night on the daughter of Amasia; to-morrow he will return to the Mingrelian. And Baïla went to sleep thinking of the young Frank.

Did she feel already for him one of those inexplicable affections that sometimes spring up in the hearts of recluses? By no means; his scanty costume and beardless chin did not render him very seductive in her eyes, and he had not been enabled to charm her by his eloquence. But she thought she owed him gratitude; besides, she perhaps wished to try to avenge herself on Djezzar, even during her sleep.

——

CHAPTER II.

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.

——

CHAPTER III.

Shut up in her palanquin, in the suite of the master, as she was passing with the escort through one of suburbs of Shivas, on their return to the Red River, and was amusing herself with looking at the inhabitants, Turks and Christians, fly, pell-mell, in disorder, so as to hide or prostrate themselves at the sight of the pacha, she remarked one, who, remaining erect and motionless, did not appear to participate in the emotions of the crowd.

Baïla was at first astonished that the guards, the cawas, did not force him to assume a more humble posture; she examines him with more attention and starts. He wears the dress of a Frank, and as far as she can judge through her double veil, and the muslin curtains of the palanquin, which were spangled with gold, his features are those of the unknown.

By a movement quicker than thought, veil, curtains, all are at once thrown aside. It is he—their looks meet. The stranger is troubled. He is doubtless again overcome by the resplendent lustre of so much beauty; then, with an expression full of love, he raises his eyes to heaven, and places one hand upon his heart; he moves quickly in this hand a small brilliant, gilded object which Baïla could not distinguish, for the curtains had already fallen.

This imprudent, daring scene, which occurred in the midst of a crowd, had no witnesses, all were flying or were prostrate on the ground.

During the remainder of the route Baïla believed she had dreamed. What, this stranger, then, was not dead; he had not been denounced by Haïder, and slain by Djezzar. Had she then been unjust and cruel toward these? She owed them a reparation. Perhaps the Frank had been only wounded. This was very light, then, for it had not prevented him from encountering her. Why light? Was not he who feared not to brave every thing to reach her, capable of enduring pain, in order to see her? But what object had he held before her, with his hand on his heart, and his eyes turned toward heaven? Doubtless a present which he wished to make her, which he desired to throw into her palanquin as a souvenir. She had let her spangled curtains fall too quickly. Or rather, is it not some jewel of her own, something which had fallen from her dress, and been found by him at the foot of the plantain, or in the alleys of the garden? Yes, he preserves it as a precious relic, as his guardian amulet which he wears above his heart; for it was from thence he drew it—it was there she saw him replace it in his transport of love.

She then asked, what could this young man be among the Franks, who had remained erect and standing with so bold a look during the passage of the pacha, and whom the cawas had, notwithstanding, appeared to respect? Yes, there were secrets connected with him yet to be discovered. No matter! Whatever the rank or power of this mysterious unknown might be, she is to him an object of frenzied love. Could she doubt it? Her vanity is gratified by it, and in her revery, remembering Egypt and Napoleon a second time, she came to the conclusion that should the unknown ever command an army in the country of the Franks, they might on some fine day invade the pachalick of Shivas.

Until now, in order to rid herself of the narcotic influence of the monotonous life of the harem, Baïla had had recourse to fantasies of all kinds, to her thousand and one caprices, her strifes, her poutings, her revolts, her tyrannies over her master, his lion, and the slaves; now, however, her character appeared to change; she resumed the indolent and equal humor of early days with Djezzar; she tormented her good Mariam and her other serving women less; her taste for dress appeared to be modified; instead of four toilets a-day, she now only made three; she became grave; she reflected; she thought; she thought of the giaour; she reflected on the singular chain of circumstance, which, in despite of her, had mixed up this young man with all her pre-occupations, and all the events of her recluse life.

Without recurring to the dangerous practice of a leaf of haschich bruised in her hookah, or a grain of arsenic dissolved in treacle, her imagination could now create a new and charming world for her. She foolishly pursued her vain reveries about the conquest of Shivas. She saw herself transported to another country—to Paris—where every one could freely admire her beauty, now the property of one only, where she could receive the homage of all, conquering a thousand hearts at once, whilst still reserving her own for the beloved object. Is not that the greatest joy and happiness known on earth to woman?

But could not this revery be realized without the intervention of any army? Baïla waited for some time for some realization of her chimera; then, when she had ceased to think of it, ennui, terrible ennui again took possession of her. Sickly languor succeeded. She sought a cause for her suffering, and that cause she found in the walls of the harem, which oppressed and stifled her.

The Sultan Mahmoud, during the latter part of his life, had permitted his women to leave the seraglio, well escorted and supervised. The younger dignitaries of the Sublime Porte, the avowed partisans of the new order of things, following his example, had in their turn essayed this usage. Baïla knew it, and she determined to conquer this pleasant liberty for herself.

At the very mention of it to the pacha, he regarded her with fierce and flashing eyes, and swore by Mahomet and the four caliphs, it was his dreaded oath, that if any other of his women had made such a proposal to him, her head would have already leaped off at a blow from his yatagan.

Baïla desisted, but the refusal increased the intensity of the desire which she felt. She also swore, not by the four caliphs, but by her woman’s will, to attain her end, whatever road she must travel, or whatever peril she must brave. The mere idea of this new struggle in which she was engaged, cured her of half her languor.

What was this end? She must first examine herself in order to define it.

From the summit of the terraces of the winter palace she had already seen a part of the monuments of the city; she had visited the citadel, the caravansery, the mosque in the train of the pacha. It was not, therefore, for this that she aspired to this phantom of freedom.

The bazaars remained; but had not the pacha caused to be conveyed to the harem whatever they contained precious and rare in brocades, velvets, precious stones, and sculptured gold, that she might see and choose from them? The privation could not then be felt on this account.

Magicians, jugglers, the musicians of Persia and Kurdistan, every pigmy deformity, every curious object which traversed the pachalick, was, at a word from her, admitted into the palace. She arrived at this logical conclusion, that if she desired to visit and traverse Shivas, it was in the hope of finding there again the unknown, of finding the key of the mysteries which surrounded her; and this unknown was certainly the only one of the curiosities of the city, to which Djezzar would refuse permission to enter his harem for the diversion of the favorite.

But could not another make the discovery for Baïla? She thought at once of Mariam.

The latter, who was a partial purchaser of provisions for the harem; freed by her employment, her age, and her color, from the ordinary ceremonial, she traversed the streets and market-places at pleasure. Baïla knew her devotion to her person, and should she refuse to serve her in her researches, she knew that the old negress would not betray her. She spoke to her then about it.

The Abyssinian seized with a sudden trembling, exclaimed,

“By the Holy Christ! do not repeat those words, my dear mistress; resist the temptation, stifle it in your heart; it is an inspiration of the Evil Spirit, or, perhaps, a purpose of Providence, perhaps an inspiration from on high,” she murmured in a low voice, as if apostrophizing herself.

“You will have nothing to fear, Mariam; of what crime will you be guilty, for endeavoring to make some inquiries about this stranger? It is well known that old women are curious.”

“Young ones are no less so,” she replied, casting a reproachful glance at her, “and their curiosity draws more perils after it. Our holy mother, Eve, was young when—”

“Then you refuse to serve me?”

“This time I do; do not exact it, do not insist upon it. I have already had so much to struggle against on the other side.”

“How?”

“This young Frank. He is born to be your destruction and mine. But no; if you knew—”

“You know him then? Are you dreaming?”

“Have I spoken of that? By the black angel I hope it is nothing.”

“Thou wert about to betray thyself; hast thou seen him?”

“Ah! my dear mistress do not destroy me,” exclaimed the old slave, trembling with fright. “Yes, I have seen him to my misfortune.”

“Well, who is he? What keeps him at Shivas? What does he want? What does he hope for? What are his plans?”

“Is it for me to inform you? In the name of the God of the Christians, who has been yours and is still mine, cease to question me. If our master should only discover that this young man has penetrated here into the gardens, I know that I should be put to death. I should be cut to pieces and thrown to feed the fish in the ponds.”

“But he shall not know it. Thou hast nothing to fear, I tell thee; am not I here to protect thee?”

“But thee? Who will protect thee?”

“What matters it? Then you know this stranger? Thou hast met him, and hast told me nothing of it?”

“Doubtless it has so happened, though he would have preferred meeting another.”

“And who is that other?”

“Thyself.”

“Me!” exclaimed Baïla, with her face suffused with blushes, as if she did not expect this reply, which she had skillfully extracted in order to force Mariam into her confidence. “And what does he want with me?”

“What does he want?” replied the old negress, again a prey to her first emotion. “What does he want? God keep me from saying?! He alone can tell you. But it will be death perhaps for us three.”

Baïla was silent for a moment. “He has hoped to see me again?” she then asked.

“If one may believe him, he would give his life a thousand times to realize this hope; and moreover—”

“What else does he wish?”

“It is his secret, not mine, I have already said too much.”

They were interrupted; Mariam retired abruptly and Baïla remained alone with the serpent of curiosity which was gnawing into her heart.

Shortly afterward, during the night, whilst the pacha was at the city of Tocata, where the cares of government detained him, a man was brought furtively into the gardens of the Red River. A bostangi had found means to introduce him in a flower vase. This bostangi, gained by rich presents, conducted him by then deserted paths to the pavilion of the favorite.

Baïla was in the bath, when the Abyssinian negress appeared and made her a signal. The beautiful odalisk, under a pretext of a desire to repose, then dismissed her serving-women, after they had bound up her hair and carefully perfumed her person.

Her slaves dismissed, she dressed herself with the assistance of Mariam, but in such haste that her cashmere girdle, tied negligently, kept her robe scarcely half closed, and her long veil thrown around her, alone concealed the richness of her shoulders and bust.

She stopped on her way to the saloon in which the mysterious visiter awaited her. Her respiration failed, a nervous tremor agitated her beautiful limbs, and made her skin, still moist with rose-water and the essence of sandal-wood, to shiver—placing her hand on her heart to restrain, as it were, its tumultuous beatings, she murmured, “I am afraid!”

“What do you fear now?” said Mariam, sustaining her by her arms, and whose courage, like a game of see-saw, appeared to be exalted and strengthened in proportion as that of her mistress failed. “The pacha is far off—every thing around us sleeps; this Frank, whom you desired to see and whom you are about to see, has crossed the portals of the palace without awakening suspicion. He awaits you; he has not trembled in coming to you; time is precious, he counts it impatiently, let us join him.”

“I am afraid,” said Baïla, resisting the impulse which the old slave wished to give her, and trembling all over, with her body bent, her eyes half closed, she appeared to drink in with delight the alarm she experienced; as the sick, saturated with tasteless and sugared beverages, rejoice in the bitter draughts of abscynthe. It was an emotion, and every emotion is precious to a recluse of the harem.

She entered finally the saloon in which the unknown awaited her, but not without casting another glance on the abandon of her toilet. By the feeble light of two candles placed in a bracket, she saw the stranger standing in a meditative posture.

At the rustling of her robe, at the light sound of her step, he raised his head, crossed his hands with a kind of ecstatic transport, and his eyes, raised to the gilded ceiling, sparkled so brightly, that it appeared to the Mingrelian as if the light about her was doubled.

When Mariam had disappeared, the better to watch over them, when Baïla found herself alone with her unknown, with the lover of her day dreams, casting her veil suddenly aside, she revealed herself to him in all the glory of her Georgian beauty.

She enjoyed his pleasure, his surprise, for a moment, then seating herself on a corner of the sofa, motioned him to a seat by her side. But the stranger remained immovable; his only motion was to cover his eyes as if the light had suddenly blinded him. After having sweetly gratified her pride by the stupefying effect produced by her resplendent beauty, she repeated her gesture.

The Frank, still embarrassed and hesitating, went now toward the sofa, and bending with downcast eyes almost to the earth before her, took hold of the end of her long veil and re-covered her entirely, turning away his head. This movement surprised Baïla strangely; but she said to herself, “perhaps it is one of the preliminaries of love among the Franks.”

“Listen to me,” said the young man, then, with a voice full of emotion, and seating himself beside her; “listen to me with attention; the present moment may become for you as well as for myself the commencement of a new era of glory and safety.”

She did not understand him, she drew nearer to him.

“You are born a Christian,” he continued, “Mingrelia is your country.”

Baïla thought for an instant that he had himself come from the ancient Colchis; that he had seen her family; and in the rapid flight of her fancy she saw the love of this young man remount not only to a recent period, but also to that time in which she was still the property of her father. The recollections of her natal country beaming pleasanter to her by uniting themselves with the idea of a love from childhood, she came yet nearer to him and looked at him carefully, hoping to find in his face features impressed of old upon her memory.

“You are then a friend of my brothers?” she said to him. At this moment of expansion the Mingrelian placed her hand on that of the stranger. The latter trembled, rose at once and making the sign of the cross, said with a voice full of unction and solemnity—

“Yes, I am the friend of your brothers, your brothers the Christians, now trampled under foot by a cruel despot, but one whom you can soften. The terrible Daker, the master of a part of Syria and Palestine, after he took for his minister a Christian, Ibrahim Sabbar, became the protector of the disciples of Jesus Christ. Do you not exercise over your master a power greater than Ibrahim did over his? A power that they say the very lions do not resist. God made use of Esther to touch the heart of Ahasuerus; he has marked you like her with his seal, to concur in the deliverance of his people. Faith has revealed it to me. Thanks to you, Ali-ben-Ali, the Pacha of Shivas, the butcher, the executioner, shall no longer turn his rage but against the enemies of the church. The divine light descending from the cross of Calvary shall penetrate the most hardened hearts—”

“Wretch!” exclaimed Baïla, awakening at last from the stupor into which this unexpected discourse had thrown her, “what has brought you here?”

“To teach you to mourn over your past life, to assist you in washing yourself from your sins, to save you, and with you, and by you, our brethren the Christians of Shivas.”

“Go then, apostle of the demon—retire, insolent,” repeats the beautiful odalisk, enveloping herself in her veil, the better to conceal herself from the looks of the profane; “go then, and be accursed.”

“No, you shall not drive me away thus,” replied the young enthusiast; “you shall hear me. God, who inspired me with the idea of this holy mission which I am now discharging, is about to change your heart; he can, he will.”

“Thy God is not mine, impious; depart.”

“Ah! do not blaspheme the God of your fathers; do not deny the holy belief which even without your knowledge has perhaps remained in your heart. Was it not you who, in a retired part of your garden, reared the humblest of crosses, doubtless to go thither to pray in private?”

This word, this remembrance of the branch of the azalea, brought suddenly to the memory of the young odalisk all the chimeras of her fantastic loves, all the hopes, all the illusions which were grouped by her around a single idea; the disgust at finding all her reveries effaced; the frightful thought of the peril she had sought, had braved, and which still threatens her at that very moment, and all to arrive at such a deception—to find an apostle when she expected a lover—so troubled her mind, that her voice, gradually rising, appeared to reach beyond the pavilion, and reach the sleeping slaves. To endeavor to calm her, the stranger, with a suppliant gesture, advanced a step.

“Do not approach me,” she exclaimed, and rising with a groan, she called Mariam. She was about to leave the room, still uttering imprecations, when the door was thrown quickly open and the pacha appeared suddenly, surrounded by soldiers, and carrying a complete arsenal of arms of all kinds at his girdle.

Whether the wrath of the Mingrelian had reached its height, or whether the sentiment of self preservation awakened imperiously in her, rendered her pitiless, she exclaimed—

“Kill him—kill him!” and with her finger designated the unfortunate Frank to the vengeance of the pacha.

The young man cast a momentary sad and pitying look upon her, which made her start; he then held out his head, a soldier raised his sabre, but Djezzar turned the blow aside.

“No,” said he, “he must not die so quickly;” and casting a suspicious glance by turns upon the two, he murmured in a low voice this frightfully poetic phrase, “his blood should not leap suddenly like water from the fountain, but flow gently like that of the spring which falls drop by drop from the rock.”

In the East, poetry is found every where.

He then said something in the ear of a Mangrebian slave near him, and the Christian was led away.

——

CHAPTER IV.

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.

——

CHAPTER V.

Baïla felt her confidence vanish; a single revelation from the prisoner would be a decree of death to her, and concealing her paleness beneath the redoubled folds of her veil, she awaited the examination with a palpitating heart, fixing her curious gaze upon the prisoner.

“Why did I risk my life to listen to a sermon from this mournful preacher?” she said to herself. “Why did they not kill him when I commanded? Why did he not fall beneath the blow of the guard?”

Seeing him, however, with his body furrowed by bluish stripes, his flesh swollen and bloody, standing in that saloon as if he had never left it to be handed over to executioners, as he did before the arrival of the pacha, with the same air, the same timid look, which he dared not raise toward her, she felt an emotion of pity.

“Christian,” said the pacha, “what motive brought thee hither?”

“Her salvation,” replied the captive, turning his eyes for a moment to the sofa on which the odalisk was seated, and then letting them fall on Djezzar, he added, “and thine, perhaps.”

“What, dog, and son of a dog, as thou art, didst thou think to make a vile Nazarene of me, and to convert me to the sect of the accursed, by taking advantage of my absence?”

“I have said the truth,” replied the young man, “as true as that Jesus Christ is the redeemer of the world.”

“Thou liest,” replied the pacha, “as true that there is no God but God, and that Mahomet is his prophet.”

After this outbreak he appeared to endeavor to restrain his anger. He replaced himself more at his ease upon the knees of his favorite, passed his hand, as a motion of caress, through the mane of his lion, and when he had taken two or three whiffs of his batakie, resumed.

“See that thou art sincere, and do not aggravate thy crime. Thou knowest well that a Mussulman cannot become a Christian, as a Christian cannot become a Jew. The law of Moses paved the way for that of Jesus; that of Jesus was but the precursor to that of Mahomet. On this ladder men never descend—they mount upward.”

“I had hoped, at least,” said the captive, “to render thee more favorable to my brethren.”

“Are, then, all those bands of rascals who gnaw each other—all those races of infidels, who are forgetful of their own law, thy brethren? Of what do they complain? Of some I have made good Christians by martyrdom; of others, good Musselmen by persuasion. Besides, art thou one of their priests? No, far from that. Thou art but one of those frivolous Europeans, who seek to propagate their impious usages among us. Lay aside trick and falsehood. Thou hast heard of the beauty of this slave, (turning his head toward Baïla,) and thou hast desired to satiate thy eyes at the price of thy life. Is it not so?”

The young man made a sign of negation; the pacha heeded it not, and proceeded.

“Well, art thou satisfied? Thou shouldst be, for thou hast seen her. Are your women of Europe so to be disdained, that you must come among us to carry off ours? Until now you have coveted our horses only. How didst thou find means to correspond with her? Who was thy guide? How did she first see thee?”

Like a tiger, which with eye and ear watches for the least cry, the least motion of the prey it is about to seize, Djezzar watched for a word of avowal—a denunciatory sign on the part of him whom he interrogated. He obtained none from him, but he felt the knees of Baïla tremble.

“Christian,” he resumed, “I repeat to thee, be sincere. Tell me what hope thou hast conceived; tell me who introduced thee into this place; name thy accomplice, and whatever may be thy fault I will place in the other scale thy youth and thy consular title, although thy presence in the midst of my harem at night gives me a right to forget it. But I will consider what thou hast already endured, and, like Allah, I will be merciful. Speak; I listen.”

He inhaled again the odorous smoke of his pipe, and appeared to await a reply; but the captive remained silent and motionless.

“Speak, Christian, speak! There is yet time. At this price alone canst thou purchase thy life—by abjuring thy idolatry, of course.”

At this last sentence the young man raised his head—a noble blush mounted to his face.

“To denounce and apostatize,” said he; “is such thy clemency, pacha? Have thy executioners forgotten to tell thee who I am? Art thou, who hast thyself honored me with the title of Christian, ignorant of the duties which this title enjoins? Dost thou think that the disciples of Christ care so much for this mortal life, as to plunge their souls twice into ineffaceable pollution?” and his eye sparkled, and his whole countenance assumed an expression of sublime beauty.

“It is said,” said Djezzar, forming, from his apparent imperturbability, a fine contrast with the exaltation of the young Frank. “Thou wishest to die, and thou shalt die. But dost thou know for what an end I reserve thee?”

“Be it what it may, I am ready,” replied the captive.

“Then thou regrettest nothing of this mortal life?” and the pacha followed his look attentively, which he thought he would fix on Baïla.

“Nothing,” said the young man, with his eyes cast down, “but the not being assisted at my last moments by a priest of my religion.”

Djezzar appeared to reflect; a slight smile then contracted his lips.

“If thy wishes go no farther,” he said, “they shall be gratified.”

The Mangrebian reappeared at his call. A few moments afterward an old man, with a bald head, a long white beard, and a severe countenance, entered. He trembled violently at the sight of the pacha, as if he thought his last hour was come.

He was a poor Maronite monk, sent recently by the patriarch of Mount Libanus to replace the superior of the convent of Perkinik, who was dead. The pacha had, whilst passing on that day through this Catholic village, in the environs of Shivas, wished to make an exaction on this miserable convent, in which a few monks, covered with rags, lived by the labor of their hands, in the midst of a population as miserable as themselves. Djezzar, unable to extort the money which they had not, had carried off their superior with him, to detain him as a hostage until the sum demanded was paid.

“Kaffer,” he said to him, “thou hast refused to pay the taxes of Miri and Karadj.”

“The Christians of Libanus are exempt from them since the capitulation of the holy King Louis,” replied the unfortunate man, whose voice betrayed a violent emotion. “The Vice Roy Mehemet Ali regarded us as exempt.”

“To hell with the old rascal!”

“But the sultans themselves have recognized this law, your highness.”

“There is no law here but my will,” replied the pacha.

“What can I do to disarm thy severity,” blubbered out the old man, fixing his terrified look upon the lion crouched beside Djezzar, and of which he already considered himself the prey. “I have nothing in the world which thou canst take from me, but my life.”

“Which I will do if thou dost not obey me at once.”

“But, to acquit this impost—”

“By the koran, who is now speaking to thee of imposts? Of Karadj and Miri I hold thee acquitted, thou and thine, forever, and thou art free, and shalt leave here carrying with thee more piastres than I demanded of thee; but before we separate thou must call down the curses of thy God on that dog there.” Then, turning to his other captive, he continued: “Yes, thou art about to die, and die accursed by a priest of thy religion. Inch Allah, wilt thou speak now?”

With an heroic resignation Ferdinand, as his only reply, kneels and bows his head, devoted at once to the sabre and anathema, when he hears the old Cenobite of Libanus, raising his trembling hands above his head, say to him, in a soft voice,

“If thou art a Christian, I bless thee, my son.”

These holy words were scarcely pronounced when the old man fell, shot dead. Baïla fell backward with a movement of horror, and the pacha, with unbounded impassibility, replaced his pistol in his belt. He interrupted this movement suddenly to restrain his lion by the mane, which, animated by the sight of blood, was about to spring with a roar on the body of the Maronite.

“Carry off that corpse,” said Djezzar to the Mangrebian, “and leave us.”

The dead body carried off, the Mangrebian gone, turning to the lion, which, with open mouth and thirsty and trembling lips, was uttering low growls and darting his brilliant glance toward the prey which was carried from him, Djezzar, restraining him by voice and gesture, said:

“Be patient, Haïder; thy part shalt soon come—thou shalt not lose by the exchange.”

He then resumed his first position, and whilst the lion, restrained by him, continued its low roaring, with its eyes fixed on a large spot of blood on the carpet, and addressing Baïla, without appearing to notice the emotions of terror by which she was agitated, said:

“Yes, the giaour is for us three—for each a part. For me, his head; for the lion, his body; and for thee, my beautiful rose of Incour—my faithful, for thee, his heart. Has he not given thee that heart? Well, go take it.”

Baïla, undecided, troubled with horror, knew not what meaning to attach to his words.

“Go, take it,” repeated Djezzar. “look, behold! powerless to defend himself, does he not appear himself to offer it to thee? Go, my soul, and if thy dagger is not enough for the work, use mine.”

The odalisk bent toward him—“Thou art sporting with me, Ali—is it not so?” she murmured in his ear.

“Dost thou not hear me, or art thou unwilling to understand me?” he replied, in a formidable tone. “This man dies—dies at once, by thy hand, or I shall believe thee to be his accomplice, and thy head shall fall before his. I swear it, by Mahomet and the four caliphs.”

Baïla, having to choose between inflicting or receiving death, felt an icy coldness in her veins; her forehead became lividly pale.

“Thou hesitatest!” said the pacha.

She carried a trembling hand to her dagger.

“Take mine,” he said.

The hand of Baïla fell on the shoulder of Djezzar, and remained there as if paralyzed; her troubled eyes were raised furtively toward the young Frank, even on that very evening the object of her reveries of love; toward that young martyr, who by a word could destroy her, and who was about to die—to die for her, for being unwilling to pronounce that word.

“Wilt thou obey?” said the executioner, with a gesture of impatient rage.

The hand of Baïla descended from the shoulder of Djezzar and played inquisitively among the arms which formed an arsenal at his belt.

“Thou tremblest—thou art unwilling to do it? Thou lovest him then!” he exclaimed at last.

“Yes, I love him,” replied the Mingrelian, and bounding suddenly forward she sheathed the blade of the yataghan full in the breast of the pacha. Though mortally wounded he still made an effort to seize his other pistol, but, at a gesture from Baïla, the lion Haïder, excited anew by the sight of the flowing blood, springing on his master did his part.

Whilst Ferdinand, alarmed at what was passing, was closing his eyes, stretching out in terror his bound arms, the Mingrelian, endowed with wonderful presence of mind, gathered quickly into one corner of the saloon the light furniture and stuffs which were in it; she set them on fire, and seizing the young Frank, who was more dead than alive, by his bonds, led him toward a secret outlet, which conducted them to the sleeping chamber of the Abyssinian negress.

The palace of Kizil-Ermak, which was of Turkish construction—that is, built of wood—was almost entirely consumed.

On the next day the news mongers of Shivas endeavored to define the causes of this great event. Some said that the pacha had been strangled by his lion, and that, in the struggle between these two fierce beasts a torch was upset, which was the cause of the fire. Others, reasoning from the usage of the ancient Ottoman regime, and claiming to be better informed, said that a man, wearing the dress of a Frank, after having sojourned in the city long enough to avert suspicion as to the object of his secret mission, had introduced himself into the presence of the pacha in the very interior of his harem; when the latter had ordered his slaves to behead him, the pretended Frank, who was no other than the capidgé-bechi of the sultan, had shown his katcherif, and that the head of Djezzar had alone fallen. The fire had broken out in the midst of the disorder, and the capidgé-bechi, taking advantage of the great crowd attracted thereby, had escaped, in a new disguise.

Twenty other versions were in circulation, almost all of which were repeated by the journals of Europe.

Whilst in Shivas, Rocata, and other cities of the pachalick, they were thus indulging in explanations more or less truthful, Baïla and Ferdinand, who had been enabled to escape in disguise from the palace, thanks to the confusion and the crowd, concealed themselves at first in the mountains to the south of Shivas, where some Kurdish brigands took them under their protection, exacting a very moderate ransom; they then found an asylum in a convent, then twenty others in the caverns or depths of the woods of Avanes, always, however, continuing their path steadily up the Red River. Having finally entered the dominions of the Shah of Persia, they returned to France in the train of the last embassy.

In these wanderings Ferdinand lost some of his ardor for proselytising. He had traveled across mountains and valleys by day and by night, carrying temptation with him; Baïla had really become to him the demon which he had fancied her.

With the beautiful Mingrelian, his liberator, and the companion of his flight, walking at the same pace, in the same pathway, sleeping under the same shelter, cared for and watched over by her, it had been difficult for him to prevent his heart from beating under other inspirations than those of divine love. Ferdinand was twenty-five years old, and gratitude has great sway over a generous soul.

Still in the first days of their common flight he had converted his schismatic companion, who, from her indifference to matters of religion, was easy to persuade; but it was said that in her turn she had soon converted him. What is positively known about it is, that the young man did not return to France alone, but that when his passport was exhibited at Marseilles, it provided for M. Ferdinand Laperre, consular cadet, traveling with his sister.

My friend, the illustrious traveler, had already furnished me with all the details of the history I have recounted; but my curiosity was not yet fully satisfied. I wished to know the fate of the lovers after their arrival in France. I pressed him with questions on this point, and at first uselessly. We were breakfasting in the open air, on the lawn at the Butard, and my botanist, in an exultation difficult to describe, was fully occupied with a godsend he had found beneath the table we had used. It was a small plant with shaggy and lanceolate leaves, with flowers of pale yellow, marked with a violet spot at the base of their five petals.

“Cistus guttatus! Helianthemum guttatum!” he exclaimed, with cries and gestures impossible to describe to any one who has not the heart of a botanist. “I thought it only existed in the mountains of Anti-Taurus, from whence I brought away so carefully an unique specimen. It was my finest vegetable conquest, and lo I find it here at the Butard at Luciennes, a suburb of Paris, beneath the table of a tavern. How can this be? Taurus and the Butard rivals in their productions? I am nonplussed! Do you believe in Asia Minor?”

“But of Asia Minor?” said I, interrupting him with tenacity, with obstinacy; “you have related to me a story, the parties to which interest me strongly—I beseech you tell me more of them!”

“They are perfectly well, I thank you,” he replied.

“I do not inquire after their health, but their fate.”

“Ah! what has become of them? Yes, I comprehend;” then looking at me with an air of mockery, and laughing loudly, he continued, “as they have, like us, a habit of chatting much when eating, they breakfast near by.”

“How! What!” I exclaimed, “those people at the fountain of the priest?”

“Truly. You now discover that you are no diviner. The alledged confectioner, the lemonade seller, is no other than my friend, Ferdinand Laperre, our Christian martyr; and his companion, by you so lightly qualified as a chambermaid, or a countess without prejudices, is Baïla, the ex-favorite of Djezzar, the pacha of Shivas; Baïla, the Mingrelian, the rose of Incour, the dove in the talons of the hawk.”

After having inflicted this mockery upon me, which was doubtless well merited, my friend determined finally to finish the story.

“Having arrived in Paris, events of a more vulgar nature than those which had signalized their sojourn in Shivas, proved the young Frenchman and the Mingrelian. Their money gave out. The ornaments, presents from Djezzar, which the odalisk had carried off in her flight, were, most of them, false. Pachas even are no longer to be trusted. Ferdinand must, above every thing, seek for a lucrative employment. He entered the royal printing office as a proof-reader of Oriental works. This resource being insufficient for the wants of the household, Baïla sought also to be useful. Having never handled a needle, she could not become a seamstress or an embroideress, or a dressing-maid, or a female companion. She has a charming voice, and might, at a pinch, challenge all the Italian, French, and other singers, in warbling and trilling; but understanding none of the European languages, she could only sing Arabian mouals or Turkish gazels. Fortunately she dances also; and dancing is a language spoken and understood in all countries. She now figures in the ballet corps of the opera, where she is remarkable for her lightness, her mildness, and her modesty.”

As my illustrious friend finished his recital, we saw Ferdinand Laperre and his handsome companion walking arm-in-arm toward the Butard. Now, better informed, I admired the rare beauty of the Mingrelian, and the wonderful and graceful suppleness of her figure. My eyes were directed curiously toward the lower extremities of the ex-consular cadet, to examine the form and dimensions of his feet, so as to verify one of the details of this history. I found them much as usual. He had doubtless confided to Baïla the connection of friendship existing between him and my companion, for when we again met, she made him a slight wave of the hand, saying, “Bojour mocha.”

“Salem-Alai-k,” replied my illustrious traveler.

I saluted her profoundly.

A NIGHT AT THE BLACK SIGN.

———

BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

———

Ye, who follow to the measure

Where the trump of Fortune leads,

And at inns a-glow with pleasure

Rein your golden-harnessed steeds,

In your hours of lordly leisure

Have ye heard a voice of wo

On the starless wind of midnight

Come and go?

Pilgrim brothers, whose existence

Rides the higher roads of Time,

Hark, how from the troubled distance,

Voices made by wo sublime,

In their sorrow, claim assistance,

Though it come from friend or foe—

Shall they ask and find no answer?

Rise and go.

One there was, who in his sadness

Laid his staff and mantle down,

Where the demons laughed to madness

What the night-winds could not drown—

Never came a voice of gladness

Though the cups should foam and flow,

And the pilgrim thus proclaiming

Rose to go.

“All the night I hear the speaking

Of low voices round my bed,

And the dreary floor a-creaking

Under feet of stealthy tread:—

Like a very demon shrieking

Swings the black sign to and fro,

Come, arise, thou cheerless keeper,

For I go.

“On the hearth the brands are lying

In a black, unseemly show;

Through the roof the winds are sighing

And they will not cease to blow;

Through the house sad hearts replying

Send their answer deep and low—

Come, arise, thou cheerless keeper,

For I go.

“Tell me not of fires relighted

And of chambers glowing warm,

Or of travelers benighted,

Overtaken by the storm.

Urge me not; your hand is blighted

As your heart is—even so!

Come, arise, thou cheerless keeper—

For I go.

“Tell me not of goblets teeming

With the antidote of pain,

For its taste and pleasant seeming

Only hide the deadly bane;

Hear your sleepers tortured dreaming,

How they curse thee in their wo!

Come, arise, thou cheerless keeper,

For I go.

“I will leave your dreary tavern

Ere I drink its mandragore:

Like a black and hated cavern

There are reptiles on the floor;

They have overrun your tavern,

They are at your wine below!

Come, arise, thou fearful keeper,

For I go.

“There’s an hostler in your stable

Tends a steed no man may own,

And against your windy gable

How the night-birds scream and moan!

Even the bread upon your table

Is the ashy food of wo;

Come, arise, thou fearful keeper,

For I go.

“Here I will not seek for slumber,

And I will not taste your wine:

All your house the fiends encumber,

And they are no mates of mine;

Nevermore I join your number

Though the tempests rain or snow—

Here’s my staff and here’s my mantle,

And I go.”

Suffering brothers—doubly brothers—

(Pain hath made us more akin)

Trust not to the strength of others,

Trust the arm of strength within;

One good hour of courage smothers

All the ills an age can know;

Take your staff and take your mantle,

Rise and go.

SONNETS:

SUGGESTED BY PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.

———

BY MISS A. D. WOODBRIDGE.

———

I.—The Era of Discovery.

The darkest storm-cloud oft upon its breast

Weareth the bow of promise. In the hour

Of deepest anguish, words of healing power

Are whispered to the spirit—“Peace!” and “Rest!”

Praise to our God! if e’en Death’s shadow lower,

Hope lightens all the gloom, with radiant crest—

Oh! Joy is, oft, in garb of sorrow drest,

And direst grief brings rapture as its dower.

Thus, on the night of ages, flashed a light

Of wondrous power and splendor, Learning came

Forth from the cloisters. Welcome to the sight,

A breath from Heaven relit religion’s flame.

’Twas then, his sail the great Discover furled,

’Twas then, was born, as ’twere, this western world.

II.—The Early Life of Columbus.

Amid a glorious city, woke to light

He who threw back a double radiance pure;

And that blue sea! ’Twas as an angel bright,

Beck’ning the child to fame and fortune sure.

How lovingly its waters kissed his feet!

How graceful yielded, as to lure away

The young enthusiast! Should he fail to meet

The ceaseless chime, forbidding him to stay.

The man, the hour were found, and from that time

His soul was girded for its task sublime:

To struggle on, through error’s endless maze;

To bear contempt, and poverty, and pain;

To wait for royal favor’s fickle rays;—

To find a world beyond the western main!

III.—Columbus at the University of Pavia.

Here was the manna for his hungry soul;

And here the fount for which he’d thirsted long.

Though yet his years were few, none might control

His mighty yearnings, or his purpose strong.

Ah! it is joy to watch the spark divine,

To feel it struck, as thought encounters thought!

What deep, exulting happiness was thine,

When to thine aid long-hidden lore was brought,

And thou, Columbus! didst believe the skies

Stooped down to nerve thee for thy high emprise!

’Twas well thou hadst the witness in thine heart,

Or thou hadst fainted in thy weary way;

Though hope “deferred,” though anguish were thy part,

Faith shed a halo round thee day by day.

IV.—Columbus arrives in Spain.

What veiléd glory, and what strange disguise,

We meet in by-ways of this wondrous earth!

How oft the “angel” to our scaléd eyes

Seems but a “stranger” guest of mortal birth!

Met with cold words, or, haply, careless mirth,

Known only when he’s passed into the skies.

Columbus asks for bread![^[2]] None see the ties

Which link him to the future home and hearth

Of unborn millions. Thus, the glorious day

Oft dawns in clouds, while the cold, ceaseless rain

Fills up each pause in the wind’s moaning strain,

And forms of evil seem to haunt our way.

The sky seems brightest when the clouds depart!

Earth-woes make heaven still dearer to the heart.

V.—Columbus before the Council.[^[3]]

A silver lining to on ebon cloud;[^[4]]

A diamond flashing in Cimmerian cave;

A Lazarus, up-rising from the grave,

Bursting the cerements of the straitened shroud;

To all true men Columbus calls aloud.

He scans the past, with all its priestly lore,

But, Janus-like, beholds the future’s shore.

What glorious scenes, what teeming wonders crowd!

What though the church behold him with a frown!

What though the crosier point toward the rack,

When heresy is near, as to the track

Of precious gold the magic hazel leans?

He heedeth not the mitre, cowl, or gown;

A new creation on his spirit beams.

VI.—Columbus at Court.

The crescent wanes within Granada’s walls;

The Moorish standard bows into the dust;

The hour hath come when proud Boabdil must

Yield to Castilian prowess. In the halls

Of the Alhambra hymns of praise and trust

Ascend to Heaven. On the glad ear there falls

A mighty shout of triumph. Each one calls

“Rejoice! the Cross hath conquered—ever just!”

Who cometh ’mid the throng? One who hath learned

To hope, when hope hath died within the breast;

Fainting, to hold right on, though scoffed and spurned—

Amid that jubilation he is blest.

Man’s eyes are holden, but proud Woman’s name

From that good hour shares the Discoverer’s fame.

VII.—The Embarkation.

Oh! sweet as is the voice of one most dear,

And balmy as the welcome breath of heaven

To the sick soul, long “cabined, cribbed, confined,”

Is the blesséd wind, that on his high career

Now wafts the man to whose high trust is given

A world unknown, save to his mighty mind.

The last deep prayer is said—the mystic rite

Hath brought new strength unto his awe-struck heart,

He who long struggled with the diver’s might,

Who oft the waves of error did dispart,

And gasped for breath amid those shades of night,

Now with the aim unerring of a dart

Strikes for the pearl, bright gleaming to his eyes—

What mortal man e’er brought up such a prize!

VIII.—The Discovery.

The morning dawns, and to th’ enraptured eye

Appears a land, glorious beyond compare,

Save that the dreamer saw in vision fair,

When to the Holy City he drew nigh.

The long-drawn veil e’en now is rent in twain!

Well may he enter in, with grateful prayer,

And bathe, as ’twere in a diviner air.

Well may the tears flow down—a blesséd rain!

And Spain’s broad banner proudly rise on high.

What scenes unknown—what beings from the sky,

May wait his coming, or his glory share,

And sing his praise in a celestial strain?

Methinks his soul might now depart in peace!

Well had it been had he then found release!

IX.—The Return to Spain.

Joy! for the Victor cometh! He hath won

A prouder triumph than the great of eld;

The tempest-tossed, within whose bosom swelled

Bright hopes, that changed to fears, now sees the sun

Shine on the fair and fertile land of Spain,

Which hails his name with proud enraptured strain.

All press to gaze on th’ anointed one,

Whom the Most High within his hand has held—

While peals again the long and loud refrain;

And for “Castile and Leon’s” chosen son,

A full-orbed glory shineth in the West.

Oh! if Life’s sands e’en then had ceased to run,

Bright visions of those “islands of the blest”

Had soothed him to his last and dreamless rest.

X.—Columbus in Chains.

In chains! in chains! homeward once more he came!

Life’s sky is veiled in midnight drear and dark;—

And this is his reward! They leave no mark

Those shameless fetters on his own fair fame.

The shaft may pierce his soul, but yet no shame

Bows that proud head; he is the victor still;

He triumphs in a stern, unconquered will.

His ’scutcheon fair was dimmed by breath of blame;

The stain is washed away by woman’s tears;

His patron-queen forbids his anxious fears—

Her gracious sweetness brings him to the dust.

The pledge of royal favor now he hears.—

But, oh! too long it waited—to be just;

While care and grief led on the lingering years.

XI.—Columbus proposes a new Crusade.

The evening sky is bright with blended hues;

A soft, mild radiance, borrowed from on high,

Seems, to our view, to bring e’en heaven nigh,

And its pure essence in our souls infuse.

Thus, to that noble heart, as from the sky,

There came a presence, in life’s slow decline;

He viewed it as a holy seal and sign—

The Cross must crown the city of the Jews!

Like the pure incense-flame he soars from earth;

In fancy sees the prophet’s page unroll,

And reads therein the presage of his birth,

The mighty mission of his single soul!

Life’s pathway bears for him a healing balm,

Which cheers his heart and nerves his fainting arm.

XII.—The Death of Columbus.

He cometh to the shore of that vast sea,[^[5]]

Whereon he never yet hath spread his sail;

His last, last voyage. Now every chart must fail,

Save that, our Father! he received of Thee!

With an unwavering trust he meets the wave,

Which bears him onward to the dread unknown;

From man’s injustice to that mighty Throne,

Supreme in power, Omnipotent to save.

Ah! ne’er from that far land shall he return!

His dust shall mingle with his mother-earth

In that fair isle to which his skill gave birth.[^[6]]

That mighty soul! where doth it “breathe and burn?”

What worlds hath it discerned beyond the tomb,

Which to our eyes are all enwrapped in gloom?

TO A FRIEND—WITH A BUNCH OF ROSES.

———

BY MISS L. VIRGINIA SMITH.

———

Go forth in beauty blushing to the one I love so well—

Let this dewy fragrance gushing to his spirit softly tell

How a secret, sweet revealing from a gentle kindred heart,

Far through his bosom stealing, comes to seek its nobler part.

Oh! there’s not a spell so glowing in this lovely world of ours,

As when Feeling’s tones are flowing through the voices of the flowers,

When Affection’s thoughts are wreathing in a murmured melody

Round their dewy petals breathing forth a music-mystery.

There are angel voices given in their delicate perfume,

Which will lead us up to Heaven where the fadeless roses bloom,

They have come unto us glowing with a beauty from the skies,

They are gifts of God’s bestowing, from a blessed Paradise.

Let a bright and lovely vision from our sunny Southern bowers,

A dream of joy elysian be awakened by these flowers,

For a wealth of bliss is filling all the loveliness they wear,

And their tiny leaves are thrilling with the messages they bear.

Where the velvet bud uncloses to the morning’s golden beam

Be thy life like summer roses floating o’er a summer stream,

And amid its sunny bowers may a gentle heart be thine,

To bring thee back the flowers which thou hast thrown o’er mine.

Yes—a gentle heart to bring them—leaves from out the distant past,

O’er thy path in life to fling them—all unfading to the last,

In itself the sweetest blossom which a “God of love” has given,

To be worn within thy bosom—and to bloom for aye in Heaven.

MUSIC.

———

BY HENRY GILES.

———

The mere capacity in man of perceiving sound, renders the musical element a necessity in nature and in life. Discord, as a permanent state, is as inconceivable as a permanent state of chaos. The combinations of sounds, therefore, in the audible creation, if not all in detail musical, are pervaded by the musical element: No ear is insensible to the music of the air in the branches of a tree; to the groaning of it in the hollow cave—to its whistle in the grass, or to its spirit-voices in a stormy night around the dwelling. No ear is insensible to the trickling melody of the stream, to the deep song of the river—to the solemn anthem of the torrent, to the eternal harmonies of the ocean. Birds are peculiarly the musicians of the animal world. But how skillful and how rich their music is, we must learn, not from the printed page, but in the sunny grove. Though other creatures have not, as birds, the gift of song, yet are they not unmusical, and have their parts in the mighty orchestra of living nature. Musical sounds are grateful to the sense—and all beings that hear listen to them, enjoy them, and need them. In music man has a common medium of sympathy with his fellow animals. The charger prances to the sounds that swell the heart of his master—for he, too, has a heart which they can enter and dilate. A melody can soothe the lion’s rage. The elephant treads delighted to the measure of the band. The dog bays gladness to the shepherd’s flute. The cow stands in placid rapture while the milk-maid sings. Man is scarcely ever so rude as to be beyond the reach of music. It was a myth, containing as much truth as beauty, that feigned Apollo with his lyre as the early tamer of wild men. If music is the first influence which the race feels, it is also the first which the individual feels. The infant opens its intelligence and love to the mother’s song as much as to the mother’s face. The voice, even more than the look, is the primitive awakener of the intellect and heart. Every mother ought to sing. A song will outlive all sermons in the memory. Let memories that begin life have songs that last for life.

As a mere sensation, music has power. A little maid I have known, who would sit on her cricket by her father’s knee until he had read the whole of Christobel—of which she did not know the meaning of a line. It was melodious to her ear, and merely in its music there was fascination to her infant spirit. The songs which primitive people sing—in which they have their best social interchange, are frequently poor in diction and bald in sentiment. It is the music that gives the words a life; and this life can transfuse energetic inspiration into the meanest words. Early melodies are, of necessity, most simple. They are the instincts seeking to put themselves into measured sound—yet with little to fill the ear, and less to reach the mind. Nevertheless, they are good for the mind and pleasant to the ear. A rude musical sensation is of value; of how much more value is a refined musical sensation. But a musical sensation is of its very nature a refined one. It is among the purest of sensations. It may, indeed, be associated with coarse and base emotions. This, however, is not in itself. It is in the imagination or the word-music simply, as music presents nothing to the sense that is either coarse or base. The conception is from the mind to music, not from music to the mind. Speaking of music as a sensation, I speak relatively—for to man there is no music without soul. In music soul and sense both mingle—and become one in its inspired sound.

Yet the least part of music is the mere sensation. It is not on the ear but on the heart that its finest spirit dwells. There are the living chords which it puts in motion, and in whose vibration it has the echoes of its tones. The heart, after all, is the instrument with which the true musician has to deal. He must understand that from its lowest note to the top of its compass. The true test of music is the amount of feeling it contains. The true criterion of a love for music is the capacity to appreciate feeling in music. Music properly is the language of emotion. It is the language of the heart. Its grammar, its rhetoric, its eloquence, its oratory, is of the heart. The evidence of its power is in the calm or the quivering pulsation. Feeling in music is a memory, a sympathy, or an impulse. Nothing can recall with such vividness as music can a past emotion—a departed state of mind. Words are but the history of a by-gone thought—music is its presence. All our profoundest feelings are in their nature lyrical. Whatever most deeply affects us, we do, in some way, link to tune, or they are by tune awakened. The feelings sing of themselves, and make an orchestra of the brain. Persons utterly incapable of putting the simplest combination of sounds musically together, will make melody in their hearts of the reminiscences that strongly move them. And these will commonly be sad, as all is that is connected with the Past—sad, however, with various degrees of intensity—some, but calm regrets—others, dirges and requiems. Therefore it is that the most affecting melodies belong to the Past—to the past in the life of a man—to the past in the life of a nation. Such melodies come not from prosperity or power. They come from those who have missed a history, or whose history is over. Such melodies are voices of sadness—the yearnings over what might have been but was not—the regret for what has been but will never be again. And thus, too, it is with the most affecting eloquence. That which agitates the breast with force resistless is the word which is fraught with the passions of its sorrow. Life in power is Action—Life in memory is elegy or eloquence. A nation, like a man, dreams its life again—and until life is gone or changed it soliloquizes or sings its dreams. The music of memory lives in every man’s experience; and the excellence of it is, that it binds itself only to our better feelings. It is the excellence of our nature, also, that only such feelings have spontaneous memories. The worst man does not willingly recall his bad feelings: and if he did, he could not wed them to a melody. Hatred, malice—vengeance, envy, have, to be sure, their proper expressions in the lyric drama, but of themselves they are not musical, and by themselves they could not be endured. It is not so with the kind emotions. They are in themselves a music—and memory delights in the sweetness of their intonations. Love, affection, friendship, patriotism, pity, grief, courage—whatever generously swells the heart or tenderly subdues it—or purely elevates it—are, of themselves, of their own attuning and accordant graciousness, of a musical inspiration. With what enchantment will a simple strain pierce the silence of the breast, and in every note break the slumber of a thousand thoughts. It is a positive enchantment. Faces long in the clay bloom as they did in youth. An inward ear is opened through the outward—and voices of other times are speaking—and words which you had heard before come to your soul, and they are pleasant in this illusive echo. Your spirit is lost in the flight of days, and insensible to the interval of distance; it is back in other hours, and dwells in other scenes. Such are the mysterious linkings by which music interlaces itself with our feelings—and so becomes an inseparable portion of our sympathy. But sympathy exists only when music answers to the spirit. Give not a merry carol to a heavy heart; although you may give a grave strain to a light one. Music, as rightly used, is, as some one calls it, “the medicine of an afflicted mind.” Joy is heightened by exultant strains, but grief is eased only by low ones. “A sweet, sad measure” is the balm of a wounded spirit. Music lightens toil. The sailor pulls more cheerily for his song: and even the slave feels in singing that he is a man. But, in other forms of labor, we miss in our country the lyric feeling. Most of our work is done in silence. We hear none of those songs at the milking hour, which renders that hour in Europe so rich in pastoral and poetical associations. We hear no ploughman’s whistle ringing over the field with a buoyant hilarity. We have no chorusses of reapers, and no merry harvest-feasts. But if such things can not be naturally, it is vain to wish for them—and it may be even useless to mention them. Better things, perhaps, are in their place—grave meditation and manly thought—and I merely allude to them as elements that accord pleasingly with certain modes of life in countries to whose habits and history they are native. Music in social intercourse is a fine awakener of sympathies, and a fine uniter of them. A violin or a piano is often not less needed to soothe the ruffled spirit of a company, than the harp of David was to calm down the fiend in the turbulent breast of Saul. Music, as we see in the customs of all nations, is used as an antidote to the sense of danger, as well as a stimulus to the passion of combat. And as embattled hosts move with measured tramp to the field of death, music is the magic that is trusted to charm away fear or to call up courage.

Largely are men indebted even to the music of ballads and of songs. Difficult it would be to measure the good which such music has done to mankind. To multitudes in days of yore songs were the only literature, and by the bards they had all their learning. Songs were their history; their romance; their tragedy; their comedy; their fire-side eloquence, giving utterance and perpetuity to sacred affections, and to noble thoughts—and keeping alive a spirit of humanity in both the vassal and the lord. Men have not yet ceased to need such influences, nor have such influences lost their power. They still add purer brightness to the joys of the young—and are a solace to the memory of age. They are still bonds of a generous communion. They banish strangeness from the rich man’s hall: they add refinement to the rich man’s banquet: they are joy in the poor man’s holyday, they express lovingness in the poor man’s feast. What so aids beneficent nature as such music does, to remove barbarism and to inspire kindness? How dear amidst all the toils of earth are the songs which were music to our infant ears—the songs of our hearth and of our home—the songs which were our childhood’s spells, a blessedness upon our mother’s lips, a rapture and delight! What solaces the exile, while it saddens him? What is it that from the ends of ocean turns him with wistful imagination to the star which overhangs his father-land? What is it that brings the tear to his eye, and the memory of other days, and the vision in the far-off west; that annihilates years and distance, and gives him back his country, and gives him back his youth? Song—inspired song—domestic song—national song—song that carries ideal enthusiasm into rudest places—with many a tale of marvel and magnanimity—of heroism in the soldier, and sanctity in the saint—of constancy in love, and of bravery in war.

Man is a social being. Unselfish society is the harmony of humanity: loving interchange is the music of life; the music which lifts the attuned soul above discordant passions and petty cares—and song is the voice in which that music breathes. These are the strains that have memories in them of all that true souls deem worthy of life or death—the purities of their homes, the sacredness of their altars, the hopes of their posterity—all for which martyrs suffer—all for which patriots bleed—all that give millions a single wish and a single will—all that make the cry of liberty as the trump of judgment, and the swords of freemen as the bolts of heaven. Glorious names, and glorious deeds, and honorable feelings, are always allied to the lyric spirit. The independence of a country may seem to be utterly lost: the ruin of a nation may appear decided: indeed, its external destiny may be accomplished; but the character of a people is never absolutely degraded until the lyric fire is dead upon the altar, and the lyric voice is heard no longer in the temple.

Music is not exhausted in expressing feeling, though some persons are so constituted as not beyond this to understand or to enjoy it. But music of more profound combination is not, on this account, without meaning and without value. The higher forms of music, like the higher forms of poetry, must, of course, if tested by mere instinct, seem remote and complicated. Music, too, is susceptible of more multiplied combinations than poetry; and, without the restraints of arbitrary signs and definite ideas, can expatiate in the region of pure imagination. In the true sense of the word, it is infinite. Not bound to form, not bound to color, not bound to speech, it is as unlimited as the capacity of the soul to exist in undefinable states of emotional being. And into these it can throw the soul with inconceivable rapidity of change. The great master of even a single instrument appears, indeed, a wizard. He seems, in truth, to be the only artist to whom the designation of wizard can with any correctness be applied. Men of other genius may be creators, but the musician is the wizard. His instrument is a talisman. It is full of conjurations—out from it he draws his witchery; he puts his spell upon all around him; he chains them in the slavery of delight; and he is the only despot that rules over willing captives. No other power on the imagination is so complete—so uncontrollable. The fiction or the poem you can lay aside; the picture or statue moves you but calmly; the actor is at the mercy of an accident; the orator may fail, by reason of your opposition to his sentiments or opposition to his person; but the musician draws you from every thing which can counteract his charm, and once within his circle you have no escape from his power. Emotional conceptions—solemn, gay, pathetic, impassioned—are as souls in all his sounds. But in the case of an executive musician, the art seems incarnate in the artist. We associate the personality of the artist with the effects of his art. We are not yet within the limitless domain of imaginative music. The great instrumentalist is, indeed, a wizard—a cunning necromancer; but he is before us while he works his spells, and though we cannot resist the enchanter we behold him. In a great composer there is a higher potency, and it is one that is not seen. The action of his spirit on our spirits, though exercised by means of intermediate agents, is yet that of an invisible incantation. The great composer is an imperial magician—the sovereign of genii and the master of wizards. He is a Prospero, and Music is his Enchanted Island. The creative musician, and the region in which he dwells, can have no analogy more correct than that presented to us in Shakspeare’s extraordinary play of “The Tempest.” There we have the loud-resounding sea; at one moment the sun bright in the clear sky, at another hidden by the mist or breaking through the blood-red cloud; now the heavens are full of stars, and in an instant they are thick with gloom; the elements gather into masses, they clash together, and the thunder and the waves fill up the chorus. Then the day dawns softly, and the morning breaks into summer songs. Caves are there and pleasant dells; solitudes are there, dark and lonely; spots beautiful as well as terrible; barren and blasted heaths, where goblins hold their revels; and labyrinthian walks, where sweet-hearts, not unwilling, lose themselves and linger. The earth, the atmosphere, shore, stream, grove, are filled with preternatural movements, with sweet voices and strange sounds. There are Ariel-melodies, there are Caliban groanings; there are the murmurings of manly passions, and the whisperings of maiden-love; there are Bacchanalian jovialities, high and mysterious monologues, fanciful and fairy-ditties, the full swellings of excited hearts, and the choral transports of all nature, made living and made lyrical. But the Prospero who rules in this island, dwells in a lonely cell, and yet commands all the voices of the universe to do his bidding. Have I not, by this analogy, described a grand imaginative composer? Without intending it, I have described Beethoven. I speak, I admit, only as one of the appreciating vulgar—as one of the impressible ignorant; I am able only to express a sensation, not to pronounce a judgment. In listening to Beethoven’s music there is a delight, for which, no doubt, the learned artist can give a reason. I know nothing of art, and with me the listening is an untutored, a wild, an almost savage joy or sorrow, or a mixture of emotions that cannot be defined. The music of Beethoven, if I can judge from the little that I have heard of it, is unearthly; but the unearthliness of this music is of a compound nature. Like Spenser’s, Beethoven’s imagination is unearthly; and, like Spenser’s, it is unearthly in the supernaturally grand and beautiful. Like Milton’s imagination, also, Beethoven’s is unearthly; but here it is unearthly in the mysterious and the solemn. The union of these elements in the wholeness of Beethoven’s genius, have given to us that singular, that most original music, which seems to belong to the ideal region, which eastern fancy has peopled with genii and fairies. What a wonderful thing is a symphony of Beethoven’s! But who can describe it, in either its construction or its effects? You might as well attempt to describe, by set phrases, the raptures of St. Paul or the visions of the Apocalypse. It always seems the utterance of a mighty trance, of a mysterious dream, of a solemn ecstacy. The theme, even the most simple—so simple that a child, as it might appear, could have fashioned it, is one, however, that genius of a marvelous peculiarity only could have discovered—a genius that worked and lived amidst the most ideal analogies by which sounds are related to emotions. And this unearthly theme is thrown at once into an ocean of orchestral harmony, and this orchestral harmony is as unearthly as the theme. Thrown upon the orchestra it seems to break, to divide itself, to scatter itself upon the waves of an enchanted sea, in a multitude of melodies. It seems as a tune played by a spirit-minstrel, on a summer night, in the glade of a lonely wood, to which all the genii of music answer, in chorusses of holy, sad, enchanting modulation.

And of Mozart! What shall we say of him—of Mozart, less only than Beethoven in those strains which linger amidst remote associations, but versatile beyond most composers in the romance and reality of the comic and the tragic in actual life. If ever a genius lived with which all its work was play, that genius was the genius of Mozart. Constantly he made the merest play of genius. At ten years old he could astonish the most critical of musical audiences in Paris, and before their rapture had approached within many degrees of moderation, he would be romping in the crowd of his companions. Nor was it different in his maturity. He could compose a piece, in which he was himself to take a part. He would distribute the score, perfectly arranged for the several performers. As they played, he would turn page after page over along with them, always in the spirit of the music and its harmony; but the emperor, looking over his shoulder, could see that not a note had he written down. Mozart seemed to combine in his genius all the sweetness of Italy with all the depth of Germany. But on these themes I have no authority to speak. All I can say is, that what I have heard of his compositions, and most of what I have learned of his life, have led me to think of him with admiration as a musician, and with affection as a man.

Music, it is sometimes said, is not an intellectual art. What does this mean? Does it mean that music employs no intellect in the artist, and excites none in the hearer? The assertion in both cases is untrue. Music, as a study, must, I think, be profoundly intellectual. In the oldest universities it has always had a place among the abstract sciences. But, considered as an enjoyment—considered in relation to the hearer—we should first need to settle what we understand by an intellectual enjoyment. To work a problem in algebra, or to examine a question of theology, may be each an intellectual pleasure; but the pleasure, it is manifest, is, in each case very different. These both, it is true, agree in taxing the reasoning faculty; but is nothing intellectual but that which formally taxes this faculty? Is nothing intellectual but that which involves syllogism—but that which implies demonstration or induction? Prayer is not intellectual, if we identify intellectuality with logic; and if we do this, it is not intellectual to feel the merits of a picture, but peculiarly so to understand the proportions of its frame. According to such a theory, it is intellectual to analyze with Aristotle, but it is not so to burn and to soar with Plato. To speculate with Jeremy Bentham is intellectual, but it is not so to be enraptured by the divine song of Milton. Assertions which lead to such conclusions must be radically false. Whatever puts man’s spiritual powers into action, is intellectual. The kind of action engaged will, of course, be ever according to the subject and the object. The intellectuality of a statesman is not that of a bard; the intellectuality which concocts an act of parliament, is not that which composes a “Song of the Bell.” Music is neither inductive nor raciotionative. It is an art; that is, it is an inward law realised in outward fact. Such is all art. In this music agrees with all arts, for all arts are but the outward realities of inward laws. But some of these are for utility, others for delight. Music is of those arts which spring from the desire for enjoyment and gratify it. It bears the soul away into the region of the infinite, and moves it with conceptions of exhaustless possibilities of beauty. If ideas, feelings, imaginations, are intellectual, then is music; if that which can excite, combine, modify, elevate—memories, feelings, imagination—is intellectual, then music is intellectual.

An art which, like music, is the offspring of passion and emotion, could not but take a dramatic form. The lyrical drama, secular and sacred, civilized humanity could not but produce. Nothing is more natural than that the gayety and grief of the heart should seek the intense and emphatic expression which music can afford. It would, indeed, be extraordinary if a creature like man—so covetous of excitement, so desirous of varying his sensations—did not press into his service, wherever it could be used, an art which has no other equal to it for excitement and variety. The opera, both comic and tragic, is a genuine production of this desire. The burlesque, the odd, the merry, the absurd, and, still more, pity, love, jealousy, vengeance, despair, have their music in the rudest states of society; it is only in the order of things that they should in cultivated states of society have a cultivated music. Such music, as a matter of course, would connect itself with a story, a plot, with incident, character, scenery, costume, and catastrophe. It would thus become dramatic. Thus it has become; and as such, it has a range as ample as that of human life, as deep as human passions, as versatile as the human fancy and the human will. Hence we have the opera. The opera is that form which the drama assumed among a people musically organized—among a people whose love of music was, therefore, intense, constitutional and expansive. But no art remains within the limits of its native space, and the opera is now as extensive as civilization; as extensive, certainly, as modern civilization. The ballad is the first comedy or tragedy. There are germs in the words of the ballet for the genius of Shakspeare—there are germs in the air of it for the genius of Rossini. Many object to the opera. First, they say, it is expensive. All our amusements are expensive—expensive as they ought not to be—expensive as they would not be with a higher and a purer social culture. Artistic amusements are expensive, especially, by the want of taste, which hinders the many from sharing in them—by the want of taste, which makes expense itself distinction. True taste coincides with true feeling; true feeling delights in beauty, as it delights in goodness, for its own sake; and true feeling being wide as nature and humanity, the more widely its delight is shared the greater its own enjoyment. Were there among the people a diffusive taste for elevated music, we cannot but feel that music could be cheap as well as noble. But, secondly, many say that the opera is unnatural. It is absurd, they quizzically aver, that persons should sing their love-talk, their madness, their despair, etc., and grieve or laugh, and die or be married, in sharps or flats, in major or minor. And yet, this is exactly what nature does. Nature sings all its stronger emotions. The moment expression becomes excited it has rhythm—it has cadence; and the tune of Rossini is nearer to instinct than the blank verse of Shakspeare. Who will say that genuine passion is not in this wonderful blank verse? But who is it that could impromptu speak it? So in the tones and harmonies of music. In both nature is carried into the region of art, out from the region of the actual; and within the region of art the musical utterance of nature is no more strange than the poetical utterance of nature. The moral view of the opera I do not here pretend to deal with. My purpose is to speak on music as an element of social culture; and it is not beyond the range of possibility that beautiful truths can be united dramatically to beautiful tones. If they cannot, then society has an immense loss; and if a noble story cannot be told by music—cannot be told to a moral purpose, then music ceases to be an art, as it has always been considered as associated with the divinest impulses of our nature. The abuses of which the opera is susceptible, are the abuses of which every form of art is susceptible. The artist stands—he has ever stood—upon a point between the human and divine. He may carry his art into gross sensualities of the human, or into lofty spiritualities of the divine. With the purification of society we shall have the purification of art and of the artist; and, therefore, I can see no reason why the opera might not be made effective in the best culture of social humanity. The lyrical expression of humanity is not less human than it is religious.

The sacred lyrical drama, or oratorio, seems to be a remnant of the old mysteries. In those old mysteries a scriptural subject was exhibited to the people in a theatrical manner. The scriptural subject is all that remains of the old mystery in the modern oratorio. Stage, scenery, costume, have departed, and music takes their place. Music, therefore, in the oratorio, must, by its own power, indicate character, sentiment, passion; it must unite grandeur and diversity with unity of spirit; it must unite them with unity of expression. Yet even the oratorio has not escaped objection. But, if it has been wrongly attacked, it has been as unwisely defended. What, it is triumphantly asked, can inspire deeper devotion, more fervent piety, than the sacred composition of Handel? The mistake of the artiste on this side of the question, has its only measure in the mistake of the ascetic on the other. The strains, even of Handel, may be in unison with the highest and purest aspirations of the mind; but, in his divinest dramas, they are not of themselves—devotion. But, if high music confers a pleasure that harmonizes with the mind’s best faculties; if it prepares the mind’s best faculties for their best exercise; if by lifting the mind up into the sphere of great emotions from that of mean ones; if by withdrawing it from attention to selfish desires, it carries it into lofty thought, music exercises for the mind, even in the temple, a sacred power, though its power should yet only be artistic. No mind, for instance, can be in a low or degraded condition, while it is in sympathy with the pure and delectable genius of Haydn. No mind can have communed with him through his oratorio of the “Creation,” can have drunk in its liquid melodies—its gladdening hymns of praise—its soft and heart-soothing airs—its songs, which seem to sparkle with the light which they celebrate—with the dew that bathed first the flowers of Paradise—with its anthems of holy exultation, such as the sons of God might have shouted—with the whole breathing in every part as it does—with the young soul of goodness and beauty—no mind, I say, can be in such communion, and for the time be otherwise than transported beyond all that can belittle or defile. But Handel excites a profounder sentiment. He is not so cheerful as Haydn. He could not be; for this he is too massive and austere. He does not, like Haydn, lead the mind out to nature, he turns it in upon itself. Not loveliness, but mysteries make the spirit of his music. We find in Haydn the picturesqueness and the buoyancy of the Catholic worship; in Handel, the sombre, the inquiring, the meditative thoughtfulness of the Protestant faith. By Haydn’s “Creation” we are charmed and elated; by Handel’s “Messiah” we are moved with an overcoming sense of awe and power. Though nothing can surpass the sweetness of Handel’s melodies, yet interspersed amidst such masses of harmony, they seem like hymns amidst the billows of the ocean, or songs among the valleys of the Alps. Handel’s genius was made for a subject that placed him in the presence of eternity and the universe. His moods and movements are too vast for the moods and movements of common interests or the common heart. They require the spaces of the worlds. They require interests coincident with man’s destiny, and with man’s duration. Though Handel’s airs in the “Messiah” are of sweetest and gentlest melody, they have majesty in their sweetness and their gentleness. We can associate them with no event lower than that with which they are connected. In such tones we can conceive the Saviour’s birth celebrated in the song of angels; in such tones we can fancy the Redeemer welcomed in hosannas by those who ignorantly dragged him afterward to Calvary. And then the plaintiveness of Handel in the “Messiah,” has its true horizon only in that which girds the immortal. It is not simply plaintive, it is mysteriously awful. It is not a grief for earthly man, it is a grief for him who bore the griefs of all men—for Him who carried our sorrows—who was wounded for our transgressions—who was bruised for our iniquities, who was oppressed and afflicted, and who bore the chastisement of our peace. It is not a grief in which any common spirit dare complain. It is fit only for Him who had sorrows to which no man’s sorrows were like. It does not cause us to pity, but to tremble. It does not move us to weeping, because there lie beneath it, thoughts which are too deep for tears. And then, in unison with this dread and solemn pathos, is the subdued but mighty anguish of the general harmony. When the victory is proclaimed—the victory over the grave—the victory over death—the victory in which mortality is swallowed up of life—we are lost in the glory of a superhuman chorus; our imagination breaks all local bounds; we fancy all the elements of creation, all glorified and risen men, all the hosts of Heaven’s angels united in this exultant anthem. Handel truly is the Milton of music.

The grandest office of music, however, is that in which, no doubt, it originated—that in which, early, it had its first culture; in which, latest, it has its best—I mean its office in religion. In the sanctuary it was born, and in the service of God it arose with a sublimity with which it could never have been inspired in the service of pleasure. More assimilated than any other art to the spiritual nature of man, it affords a medium of expression the most congenial to that nature. Compared with tones that breathe out from a profound, a spiritually musical soul, how poor is any allegory which painting can present, or that symbol can indicate. The soul is invisible; its emotions admit no more than itself of shape or limitation. The religious emotions cannot always have even verbal utterance. They often seek an utterance yet nearer to the infinite; and such they find in music. You cannot delineate a feeling—at most you can but suggest it by delineation. But in music you can by intonation directly give the feeling. Thus related to the unseen soul, music is a voice for faith, which is itself the realization of things not seen. And waiting as the soul is amidst troubles and toils, looking upward from the earth, and onward out of time, for a better world or a purer life, in its believing and glad expectancy, music is the voice of its hope. In the depression and despondency of conviction; in the struggles of repentance; in the consolations and rejoicing of forgiveness; in the wordless calm of internal peace, music answers to the mood, and soothingly breaks the dumbness of the heart. For every charity that can sanctify and bless humanity, music has its sacred measures; and well does goodness merit the richest harmony of sound, that is itself the richest harmony of heaven. Sorrow, also, has its consecrated melody. The wounded spirit and the broken heart are attempered and assuaged by the murmurings of divine song. A plaintive hymn soothes the departing soul. It mingles with weeping in the house of death. It befits the solemn ritual of the grave. The last supper was closed with a hymn, and many a martyr for Him who went from that supper to his agony, made their torture jubilant in songs of praise.

An essay equal to the subject on the vicissitudes and varieties of sacred music, would be one of the most interesting passages in the history of art. In their long wanderings to the land of promise, sacred music was among the hosts of Israel; and in that great temple of nature, floored by the desert, and roofed by the sky, they chanted the song of Miriam and of Moses. It was in their Sabbath meetings—it resounded with the rejoicings of their feasts, and with the gladness of their jubilees. When Solomon built a house to the Lord, it was consecrated with cymbals, and psalteries, and harps, with the sounds of trumpets, and the swell of voices. As long as the temple stood, music hallowed its services; and that music must have been supremely grand which suited the divine poetry of the inspired and kingly lyrist. Israel was scattered—the temple was no more. Silence and desolation dwelt in the place of the sanctuary. Zion heard no longer the anthems of her Levites. A new word that was spoken first in Jerusalem had gone forth among the nations; and that too had its music. At first it was a whisper among the lowly in the dwellings of the poor. Stealthily it afterward was murmured in the palace of the Cæsars. In the dead night, in the depths of the catacombs, it trembled in subdued melodies filled with the love of Jesus. At length the grand cathedral arose, and the stately spire; courts and arches echoed, and pillars shook with the thunder of the majestic organ, and choirs, sweetly attuned, joined their voices in all the moods and measures of the religious heart, in its most exalted, most profound, most intense experience put into lyrical expression. I know that piety may reject, may repel this form of expression, still these sublime ritual harmonies cannot but give the spirit that sympathizes with them, the sense of a mightier being. But sacred music has power without a ritual. In the rugged hymn, which connects itself, not alone with immortality, but also with the memory of brave saints, there is power. There is power in the hymn in which our father’s joined. Grand were those rude psalms which once arose amidst the solitudes of the Alps. Grand were those religious songs, sung in brave devotion by the persecuted Scotch, in the depths of their moors and their glens. The hundredth psalm, rising in the fullness of three thousand voices up into the clear sky, broken among rocks, prolonged and modulated through valleys, softened over the surface of mountain-guarded lakes, had a grandeur and a majesty, contrasted with which mere art is poverty and meanness. And while thus reflecting on sacred music, we think with wonder on the Christian Church—on its power and on its compass. Less than nineteen centuries ago, its first hymn was sung in an upper chamber of Jerusalem; and those who sung it were quickly scattered. And now the Christian hymn is one that never ceases—one that is heard in every tongue; and the whisper of that upper chamber is now a chorus that fills the world.

Music is an essential element in social life and social culture, and our times have few better movements than the increasing introduction of vocal music into popular education. The higher kinds of music might be included in all the higher kinds of education for men as well as for women. Milton so teaches in his great tractate; and so the Greeks practiced, in whose training no faculty was wasted or overlooked. The music which is now most wanted, however, is music for the common heart. If education will give us the taste for such music, and give us the music, it will confer upon us a benefit, a blessing. It is not desired that music in the home, or in the friendly circle, should never wander out of the sphere of the home or the friendly circle, only let not these spheres of feeling be without any strains peculiarly suitable to themselves. Let the theatre have its music; let the camp have its music; let the dance-room have its music; let the church have its music; but let the home and the friendly gathering also have their music.

We have for the cultivated, music of rare powers and in great abundance; but we need a music for the people—and no music can be music for the people, but that which answers to simple and direct emotion. It is a most important need. The music of the opera, granting it were ever so pure, and had no resistance to encounter, can be had only in cities, and can never reach the scattered masses of the population. The music of the oratorio must have a limitation even still more restricted. Popular music must be domestic, social music. We have it not; therefore we are a silent people, and our writings have no lyrical inspirations. The finer and deeper elements of popular life have no true medium of exposition. These subtle, delicate, wordless idealities of the soul, which the rudest have, are without music; that alone, which can take them from the confining bosom, and give them to the vital air. Our rural life is gladdened by no song—is the subject of no song; and our social life is almost as silent as the rural. National music we have none: and our political songs are, generally, a shame to doggerel, and a libel upon tune. Complaining on the want of social and domestic music, will not, I am aware, supply it; and yet it is no less a want. We want it on the summer’s evening, when our work is done, to rest the spirit as we rest the body; and while the eye is filled with visible beauty, to bring the soul into harmony with invisible goodness. We want it in the winter’s night, by the winter fire, to cheer us while the hours pass, and to humanize in amusing us. We want it in our friendly re-unions, not for delight alone, but also for charity and peace, to exclude the demon of idle or evil speaking, and to silence the turbulence of polemical or political discussion. We want it in our churches. Christianity is the home-feeling and the social-feeling made perfect. The music of it should be the home-feeling and the social-feeling consecrated. As it is, our Protestant churches at least have either a drawling psalmody with the monotony of a lullaby, or they have patches of selections that want unity, appropriateness, or meaning. A music is wanted in our Protestant churches such as Christianity ought to have; a music, simple yet grand—varied but not capricious—gladsome with holy joy, not with irreverent levity, not sentimental, yet tender, solemn but not depressing—not intolerant to the beauties of art, and yet not scornful of popular feeling. If a true and natural taste for music should spring up and be cultivated through the country, not in cities only, but in every village and district, it would be an auspicious phenomenon. It would be a most vital and a most humanizing element in social life. It would break the dullness of our homes; it would brighten the hour of our meetings; would enliven our hospitality, and it would sublime our worship. “Let who that will make the laws of a people,” some one said, “but let me make their songs;” to which a great and patriotic composer might add, Let who that will supply the words of a people’s songs, if I shall be allowed to give these words to music.

SPRING LILIES.

’Neath their green and cool cathedrals,

In the garden lilies bloom,

Casting on the fresh spring zephyr

Peal on peal of sweet perfume;

Often have I, pausing near them

When the sunset flushed the sky,

Seen the coral bells vibrating

With their fragrant harmony.

But within my quiet dwelling

I have now a lily fair,

Whose young spirit’s sweet spring budding

Watch I with unfailing care.

God, in placing her beside me,

Made my being most complete,

And my heart keeps time forever

With the music of her feet.

I remember not whilst gazing

In her earnest eyes of blue,

That the earth holds aught of sorrow,

Aught less innocent and true.

And the restlessness and longing

Wakened by the cares of day,

With the burden and the tumult,

In her presence fall away.

Shield my Lily, Holy Father!

Shield her from the whirlwind’s might,

But protracted sunshine temper

With a soft and starry night;

’Neath the burning sun of summer

Scorched and shrunk the spring flower lies,

Human hearts contract when strangers

Long to clouds and tearful eyes.

Give her purpose strong and holy,

Faith and self-devotion high;

These Life’s common by-ways brighten,

Every hope intensify.

Teach her all the brave endurance

That the sons of earth require;

May she with a patient labor

To the great and good aspire.

Should some mighty grief oppress her

Heavier than she can bear,

Oh! sustain her by Thy presence,

Hear and answer Thou her prayer.

And whene’er the storms of winter

Round my precious Lily reign,

To a fairer clime transplant her

There to live and bloom again.

M. G. H.

THE EARTH.

———

BY R. H. STODDARD.

———

As one who walks with eyes upon the ground,

Arrested slow beside a dusty mound,

Where swarms of ants are bustling in the sand,

As if they had a Universe on hand,

Surveys their nothings with a quiet smile,

And stops to muse and meditate a while—

Even so the sage with philosophic mind

Looks down upon the earth and all mankind!

And yet withal this little orb is grand,

With its circumference of sea and land:

The Ocean girds it with a belt immense,

Heaving in billowy magnificence

Round Continents with all their subject lands,

A thousand sceptres in their giant hands!—

And mountains loom majestical on high,

And lift their foreheads in the blank of sky,

Bathed in its brightness, while their robes of snow

Trail o’er the tallest pines, and far below,

Poured from their urns, the streams divide the plain

And bear their tributes to the sounding main.

And the round hills and verdant solitudes

That slumber in the heart of trackless woods;

The broad champain, the hollow vale and mead,

And the green pastures where the cattle feed

Deep in the daisies; and the silver brooks,

And the long winding lanes, and grassy nooks,

All, all, are clothed in loveliness and light,

The various beauty of the day and night,

While the great Earth, as when its flight begun,

Wheels like a mighty eagle round the Sun!

Yes! Earth is beautiful in every phase,

Covered with glory and perpetual bays;—

What pomps and pageants fill the glowing east,

Hung like a palace on a bridal feast,

When clouds of purple standards are unrolled,

And morning lifts its diadem of gold!

What streams of radiance flood the azure field,

When the Noon marches with his shining shield

And scales the eternal steep of Heaven alone,

And looks o’er Nature from his burning throne!

What dreamy softness in the melting west

When Evening sinks in holiness to rest,

And the young crescent moon, an argent barque,

Drifts up the starry ocean of the dark!

And how sublime the black tempestuous cloud,

Where thunders shout their prophecies aloud

With tongues of fire, that flash from sphere to sphere,

While congregated nations quake in fear!

How glorious all! how changeless and serene

Where generations vanish from the scene.

Yet what is Earth in Nature’s wondrous whole,

Which mirrors dimly its Creative Soul?

Less than ant-hill, even the smallest one,

Whose gates thrown back exclude the summer sun.

A single grain of sand from out the sea,

The deep of Chaos and Eternity,

Whose bubbles are The Ages dim and vast,

Melting into the dark abysmal Past!

A mote in the cerulean space of air,

One of the innumerous myriads floating there,

Wafted of old from God’s eternal seat,

Where stars and suns lie thick as dust around his feet!

ALONE—ALONE!

———

BY MRS. I. W. MERCUR.

———

“Her friends had one after one departed, and in her mind continually rang the monotonous words, alone, alone!”

I am alone, oh God! alone—alone!

Yet thousands round me crowd life’s busy mart,

Whose ceaseless hum is as a deathless moan

Forever falling on my weary heart—

I am alone!

I am alone—around me press the gay,

The light of heart, they who have never known

The blight of sorrow, or the sure decay

Of every joy the spirit here has known—

I am alone!

I am alone—yet memory oft doth bring

Back the sweet visions of life’s sunny day,

Of friends unchanged, who in my early spring

With smiles of love illumed my joyous way—

I am alone!

I am alone—alas! stern death has won

Hearts that I cherished, and fond eyes of light;

Kind tones are hushed, and brows I gazed upon

In life’s full glory greet no more my sight—

I am alone!

Alone—alone!—for unto me no more

The living turn with thought or feeling’s flow.

And joy for me I feel on earth is o’er—

I never more shall love or friendship know—

I am alone!

Alone and weary, yet I strive to wear

Ever a look of calm, serene repose,

And smiling seek to hide each galling care

And burning sorrow which my spirit knows—

I am alone!

I am alone—and far, oh! far away

From where my home of happy childhood lies,

From scenes beloved where fountains murmuring play

And smile beneath my own, my native skies—

I am alone!

Alone—alone!—and my crushed heart doth bear

Cold and neglect from those for whom I pour

My full soul forth—whose images I wear

Forever shrined in memory’s sacred store—

I am alone!

I am alone, but in my fevered dreams

Friends throng around me—voices loved I hear.

Light once again upon my pathway beams,

But I awake!—no forms beloved are near—

I am alone!

Alone—alone!—no more the star I see

Of Hope which once illumed my cloudless sky.

And naught is left on this wide earth to me,

Save but to look on Nature’s face and die—

I am alone!

PEDRO DE PADILH.

———

BY J. M. LEGARE.

———

(Continued from page 148.)

Meanwhile, the Marquis of Santa-Cruz with a hundred sail was steering from Lisbon to Tercera, bent upon reaching that island before the French fleet, and moreover settling it in his own mind to hang the Viceroy de Torrevedros, (who was at that moment taking wine with De Chaste to their mutual longevity,) for sticking to the landless and luckless King Anthony of Portugal, in preference to his own master Philip the Second, sometimes called the Prudent, but by the Protestants, whom he roasted and otherwise ill-treated, the Demon of the South.

Señor Inique’s vessel was the Doblon, and our acquaintance Don Pedro’s the Pez-de-mar, but on the day designated, the two maîtres-de-camp dined together in the Doblon, besides whom were at table some half dozen cavaliers of more or less note. At the close of the meal, Sir Pedro said—

“Gentlemen all, this is a day I never let pass without thought of the brave man whose head fell ten years ago this noon, at Brussels. I ask a pater of the company here present for the rest of his soul.”

“If you mean Count Egmont,” answered one, “there never was truer knight. I was near him at the time of his death, and believe him to have been as loyal as you or I.”

“A doubtful comparison,” cried another, laughing, “since you question the king’s justice.”

“By no means,” returned the Constable of Castile. “The king acknowledged as much himself. I was present when the news arrived, and he said with his usual smile, ‘These two salmon heads are better off than three-score heads of frogs!’”

“Yes, and the French ambassador wrote to court, ‘I have seen a head fall which has twice made France quake.’”

“Well,” said the constable, “I was but a stripling at the time, but I well remember how the count led his lances at St. Quentin. There was not a—hush! what’s that?” he stopped suddenly and asked.

“What?” demanded most of his audience, who had heard nothing but the breaking of Don Pedro’s glass upset by his elbow. Perhaps Don Pedro, sitting next, was the only other who heard the smothered cry from a partition behind their host, for Don Inique’s face was as usual inflexible as a mask, and Padilh, turning to the constable, said—

“I interrupted you. You were saying?”

“Count Egmont rode so gallantly, there was not a man in the army had seen the like before; it was a ballad of the campeador acted to the life. Even the king, when he came down from the Escurial, praised his bravery, and afterward presented him a sword, upon which was engraved ‘St. Quentin.’”

The constable may have repeated the last word to satisfy a doubt in his mind, but if so he was disappointed in his purpose, for no response came from the partition, although a momentary silence followed the close of the sentence. I mention this little incident because it was the prelude to a singular conversation between the two camp-masters, the next morning, on board the Pez-de-mar.

“I cannot be mistaken, Padilh,” said the other, in his starched way. “You heard the exclamation yesterday at table, and endeavored to drown it. You saved me, sir, a pang—for which I am grateful,” he added, with the air of a man compelled to acknowledge a service.

“I did my best and quickest to forestall curiosity,” answered Sir Pedro kindly. “The Constable of Castile is the only gentleman in the fleet who suspects the presence of your—your—son. And that only since yesterday; he told me as much last evening. For your precautions in Portugal have been effectual in keeping a knowledge of the matter even from most of our comrades at St. Quentin.”

“A curse fall on the name,” muttered Inique bitterly. “It is the only touchstone his memory has, and at its utterance nothing but force can stay his screams. God pity me: I act it all over in mind whenever the boy cries out as he did on the field.”

Padilh knew his associate well enough to disguise what commiseration he felt, and without noticing the interruption continued—

“Thus, señor, your secret is safe still; for as you may readily believe, the constable got as little information from my tongue as by his own at table.”

“Do you think he pronounced the name with design?” cried the maître-de-camp, his brows contracting. “If I—”

“No,” returned honest Don Pedro decidedly, “the constable is a man of worth, and would pry into no one’s affairs systematically. But his chief defect is a tendency to say or do whatever comes into his head, and that he falls into difficulty less often is perhaps owing more to luck than consideration on his part. Don’t you remember hearing the answer he made his Holiness, while a mere lad?”

“No,” absently.

“Why,” persisted the knight, regardless of the doubtful attention of his auditor, and moved by a good-natured wish to lead away from the painful topic, “the brusquerie of the whole affair made it the talk at court; where were you that you failed to hear it? The constable was sent to congratulate his Holiness on his accession to St. Peter’s chair, but the Pope taking umbrage at the youth of the ambassador, exclaimed aloud—‘What! has the King of Spain no men in his dominions, that he sends us a face without a beard?’ Whereupon the fiery boy, stretching himself up and stroking with forefinger and thumb his upper lip, where a mustache should have been but was not, said with a frown—‘Sir, had my royal master known your Holiness measured wisdom by a beard, he would doubtless have sent a he-goat to honor you!’”

After a pause Inique said—(the capernian episode was evidently lost upon him)—

“I have no need of any mortal’s sympathy, Padilh, and the man that pities me openly must answer to my sword for it. You have done neither to my knowledge, yet you were not far off when I struck the boy,” (he dropped his voice here, as a weight on the conscience will make people do.) “If you choose to listen, the secret motives of a man who for fifteen years has had no thought for his second child, until moved to avenge her, because the first, an idiot, intervened, may startle your ears, Pedro Padilh.”

“The recital may ease your breast,” said our knight in some surprise.

“There is no likelihood of what you say,” answered Don Augustino, a shade of scorn crossing his moody face, “and I wish it otherwise. Why I choose you, a companion in arms, for confessor, you will learn in time; perhaps your long friendship and yesterday’s prompt action have their influence. These things you witnessed or know; the mad blows, their result, the measures I have taken to be constantly within reach of his voice? Why? have you, has any one, hesitated to give some cloak, some color, to so singular a course?”

Each of these interrogatories, rapidly put, Sir Pedro answered in turn by a slight token of assent; he was about to reply more fully to the last, when the other stopped him with a gesture.

“Never mind. I know what is said. That I hide away the living reminder of my crime from the world; that I am remorseful, or doing penance, or else crazed. Let them prate. Sir Pedro, by all the saints, the boy I struck is not my son!”

“Poor fellow!” thought the knight, compassionately; “his last plea is the right one.”

“Don Pedro Padilh, there was a man of good birth and great wealth, but little or no character, or care for character, whom I saved once from being hanged. He was grateful, after his headlong fashion, for the service, and in the end proposed to unite our infant children; he had one son, and I a son and daughter; and consolidate our joint estates. At first my soul revolted at the suggestion; an union between my own offspring and that of a redeemed felon, appeared to me monstrous. But while I debated the matter, difficulties softened. I knew better than any one the smallness of my fortune, which extravagance had reduced to the tatters of its former amplitude; but of this I said nothing, and the papers were signed in due form. That day was the last I could touch my breast proudly, and say, ‘Here is the abode of honor.’”

“And this is the soldier whose honor is held up to the world as a pattern!” Padilh mused.

“Still the degradation of such connection preyed upon my mind. I wanted the money to perpetuate the wealth of my house; but how be rid of the bad blood? And about this time my friend went abroad, leaving his boy in my charge. I confronted the temptation only to be overcome in the end; sent away my servants, and removing to the mountains chose others; and when these were assembled, I, myself, took occasion to call the names of the infants before them, that there might be no mistake—no mistake, you understand—as names may from what they have been. My own boy I called—”

“Speak, Sir Augustino!” ejaculated Padilh, sharply.

“Hilo de Ladron; the other—”

“Man, man!” cried the knight, rising and standing over against the speaker, “You have made an idiot of and imprison my own kin—the son of my half-brother. What reparation can you make?”

“Reparation! Look here, at these premature seams and wrinkles, grizzled hair and beard. Has that unsteady hand nothing to show of an iron temper shattered by sorrow?”

“Sir, your selfish sorrow blinds you. These are signs of retribution on you, not of reparation to the party injured. Don Augustino, I joined this expedition with the sole purpose of saving from ruin, if I might, a lad whom I despise for his vices; and do you think I will leave longer at your mercy the real Hilo, whom, in place of condemning, I can only pity.”

“That rests with me,” returned the maître-de-camp, with a slight sneer. “But listen to me, Don Pedro; you judge my case before it is stated.”

“Finish, sir,” answered Padilh, moodily, resuming his seat; “and heaven grant your conscience proves clearer than it seems to me likely to do.”

Inique, without comment, took up the word where the interruption occurred.

“My reasoning took this shape. My daughter is a puny thing—there is no probability of her surviving to even girlhood. What does it matter if the baby is betrothed to her brother? As for De Ladron, if he ever returns from the new world, how is he to recognize his boy, grown out of remembrance, if the child does not die—he seems pining away rapidly—before that time. Hernan Ladron I never saw again; but his infant grew strong and healthy in our change of climate, and this vexed me hourly. I had felt sure the weakly thing could not live, or the exchange would not have been made; and now, he was growing up a quiet, mild boy—pah! it made me sick to think he believed himself my son, as did all the world beside. The sense of this contrast pushed from my brain all other concern. I cursed the grasping folly which had tempted me to barter a gallant fellow, like my own boy, for an estate and this whey-faced child. However, he should go to war with me, and be cured of his girlishness. But when, at St. Quentin, he fled before the first charge of the French, cowering at my stirrup, I was frantic with rage and shame. I had no love for the boy; his very existence was a daily threat of exposure, and I beat him, as you all saw, with my sword hilt, to drive him a second time into the fight. What followed, too, you all knew. But, until this day, no mortal has learnt the yearning pity that mastered my passions and filled my breast with remorse. I believe my first resolution was to confess my infamy and restore the heir his wealth and name; but I waited until he should recover, and when I saw he was likely to remain an idiot, I changed my mind.”

“Don Augustino, you would have been less dishonored by confessing your dishonor,” cried our knight, here. “You proved yourself, in the sight of Heaven, a greater coward than your reputed son.”

“Sir,” replied the other, hotly, flushing red, “you forget I am your equal in point of rank, if not virtue, and wear a sword. You tax my forbearance heavily.”

“A horse in meadow neighs louder than a horse under saddle,” answered Padilh. “Overlook the reproach, Don Augustino, and pass on.”

“I set some value on your friendship, and will not consent to lose it for a hard word honestly spoken,” Inique said, not very contentedly.

“I altered my mind, but not altogether. I resolved not a fraction of his income should be used in the service of me or mine, and reduced the expenses of my household accordingly. Hilo, my real son, left to his own guidance at home, had become a ruinous spendthrift, and openly revolted at any curtailment of what he considered his rights. But against his wickedness I had, as a set off, the patience and affection of the supposititious son; the very qualities I had before despised now touched me most—his mildness of face and speech, and trustfulness in my protection—for the whole past seemed wiped out of his remembrance, and but a single word was capable of recalling any portion of it—the word the Constable of Castile spoke yesterday at table. Perhaps the cries and sounds of battle might recall my shame and his sorrow, but my care has hitherto proved successful in keeping such from his ears.”

“Yet there seems to me in all this, Don Augustino, no good reason for your becoming the boy’s jailor,” said Sir Pedro.

“Stay. If it was hard to resolve on publishing my infamy with my own mouth, was it easy to bear the thought that some day it must be realised in the growing likeness of my prisoner to his true father, Ladron? I watched this fast maturing resemblance with the anguish of one seeing his death warrant signed, understanding to the full how the crime which my voluntary confession might have softened in the eyes of the world, would grow in odium as time elapsed. I fancied it was only needful for you, or any one familiar with the father’s face, to catch a glimpse of the son’s to detect my secret; and I kept the sole evidence near my person, not because it was the safest, but the least harassing course it was possible to pursue.”

“The least harassing, Don Augustino,” the knight said, “would have been to acknowledge your criminality at first, and have made restitution openly as you did in private. Better do so now than never.”