When this was over, a stern voice was heard saying—
“Look while you may!”
The man who repeated the Emir’s words—a tall spare Tartar—was he who carried out the sentences of Feofar-Khan against offenders. He had taken his place behind Michael, holding in his hand a broad curved saber, one of those Damascene blades which are forged by the celebrated armorers of Karschi or Hissar.
Behind him guards were carrying a tripod supporting a chafing-dish filled with live coals. No smoke arose from this, but a light vapor surrounded it, due to the incineration of a certain aromatic and resinous substance which he had thrown on the surface.
The Persians were succeeded by another party of dancers, whom Michael immediately recognized.
The journalists also appeared to recognize them, for Blount said to his companion—
“These are the Tziganes of Nizhny Novgorod.”
“No doubt of it,” cried Alcide. “Their eyes, I imagine, bring more money to these spies than their legs.”
In putting them down as agents in the Emir’s service, Alcide Jolivet was, by all accounts, not mistaken.
In the first rank of the Tziganes, Sangarre appeared, superb in her strange and picturesque costume, which set off still further her remarkable beauty.
Sangarre did not dance, but she stood as a statue in the midst of the performers, whose style of dancing was a combination of that of all those countries through which their race had passed—Turkey, Bohemia, Egypt, Italy, and Spain. They were enlivened by the sound of cymbals, which clashed on their arms, and by the hollow sounds of the daires—a sort of tambourine played with the fingers.
Sangarre, holding one of those daires, which she played between her hands, encouraged this troupe of veritable corybants.
A young Tzigane, of about fifteen years of age, then advanced. He held in his hand a doutare, strings of which he made to vibrate by a simple movement of the nails. He sung. During the singing of each couplet, of very peculiar rhythm, a dancer took her position by him and remained there immovable, listening to him; but each time that the burden came from the lips of the young singer, she resumed her dance, dinning in his ears with her daires, and deafening him with the clashing of her cymbals. Then, after the last chorus, the remainder surrounded the Tzigane in the windings of their dance.
At that moment a shower of gold fell from the hands of the Emir and his train, and from the hands of his officers of all ranks; to the noise which the pieces made as they struck the cymbals of the dancers, being added the last murmurs of the doutares and tambourines.
“Lavish as robbers,” said Alcide in the ear of his companion. And in fact it was the result of plunder which was falling; for, with the Tartar tomans and sequins, rained also Russian ducats and rubles.
Then silence followed for an instant, and the voice of the executioner, who laid his hand on Michael’s shoulder, once more pronounced the words, which this repetition rendered more and more sinister—
“Look while you may!”
But this time Alcide observed that the executioner no longer held the saber bare in his hand.
Meanwhile the sun had sunk behind the horizon. A semi-obscurity began to envelop the plain. The mass of cedars and pines became blacker and blacker, and the waters of the Tom, totally obscured in the distance, mingled with the approaching shadows.
But at that instant several hundreds of slaves, bearing lighted torches, entered the square. Led by Sangarre, Tziganes and Persians reappeared before the Emir’s throne, and showed off, by the contrast, their dances of styles so different. The instruments of the Tartar orchestra sounded forth in harmony still more savage, accompanied by the guttural cries of the singers. The kites, which had fallen to the ground, once more winged their way into the sky, each bearing a parti-colored lantern, and under a fresher breeze their harps vibrated with intenser sound in the midst of the aerial illumination.
Then a squadron of Tartars, in their brilliant uniforms, mingled in the dances, whose wild fury was increasing rapidly, and then began a performance which produced a very strange effect.
Soldiers now came on the ground, armed with bare sabers and long pistols, and, as they executed dances, they made the air reecho with the sudden detonations of their firearms, which immediately set going the rumbling of the tambourines, and grumblings of the daires, and the gnashing of doutares.
Their arms, covered with a colored powder of some metallic ingredient, after the Chinese fashion, threw long jets—red, green, and blue—so that the groups of dancers seemed to be in the midst of fireworks. In some respects, this performance recalled the military dance of the ancients, in the midst of naked swords; but this Tartar dance was rendered yet more fantastic by the colored fire, which wound, serpent-like, above the dancers, whose dresses seemed to be embroidered with fiery hems. It was like a kaleidoscope of sparks, whose infinite combinations varied at each movement of the dancers.
Though it may be thought that a Parisian reporter would be perfectly hardened to any scenic effect, which our modern ideas have carried so far, yet Alcide Jolivet could not restrain a slight movement of the head, which at home, between the Boulevard Montmartre and La Madeleine would have said—“Very fair, very fair.”
Then, suddenly, at a signal, all the lights of the fantasia were extinguished, the dances ceased, and the performers disappeared. The ceremony was over, and the torches alone lighted up the plateau, which a few instants before had been so brilliantly illuminated.
On a sign from the Emir, Michael was led into the middle of the square.
“Blount,” said Alcide to his companion, “are you going to see the end of all this?”
“No, that I am not,” replied Blount.
“The readers of the Daily Telegraph are, I
