The odalisque, laughing loudly, flung herself on Hassan’s neck.
“Ha, ha, ha! the worthy Beg takes the water-carrying girls for an army!”
Then Yffim Beg began to tremble, for he perceived now whither this woman wanted to carry her joke.
“My master,” said he, “forbid thy slave-girl to make a fool of me. The camp of Feriz Beg is straight in front of us, and thou wilt do well to prevent thy maidservant from looking at these men with her face unveiled.”
“Allah! thou dost terrify me, good Beg!” said Azrael, feigning horror so admirably that Hassan himself felt the contagion of it.
“Say! where dost thou see this camp?”
“There, on the waterside; dost thou not see the tents on the hillocks?”
“Surely it is the linen which these girls are bleaching.”
“And that blare of trumpets?”
“I only hear the merry songs that the girls are singing.”
In his fury Yffim Beg plucked at his beard.
“My master, this devilish damsel is only mocking us.”
“Thou art suffering from deliriums,” said Azrael, with a terrible face, “or thou art under a spell which makes thee see before thee things which exist not. Contradict me not, I beg; this hath happened to thee once before. Dost thou not remember when thou fleddest from Transylvania how, then also, thou didst maintain that the enemy was everywhere close upon thy heels! Thou also then wert under the spell of a hideous enchantment, for thy eunuch horseman who remained behind at Nagyenyed, and is now a sentinel on this island, hath told me that there was no sign of any enemy for more than twenty leagues around, and he remained waiting for thee for ten days and fancied thou wert mad. Most assuredly some evil sorcery made thee fly before an imaginary enemy without thy turban or tunic.”
Yffim Beg grew pale. He felt that he must surrender unconditionally to this infernal woman.
“Was it so, Yffim?” cried Hassan angrily.
“Pardon him, my lord,” said Azrael soothingly; “he was under a spell then, as he is now. Thou art bewitched, my good Yffim.”
“Really, I believe I am,” he stammered involuntarily.
“But I will turn away the enchantment,” said the damsel; and tripping down to the water’s-edge she moistened her hand and sprinkled the face of the Beg, murmuring to herself at the same time some magic spell. “Now look and see!”
The Beg did all that he was bidden to do.
“Who, then, are these walking on the bank of the Danube?”
“Young girls,” stammered the Beg.
“And those things spread out yonder.”
“Wet linen.”
“Dost thou not hear the songs of the girls?”
“Certainly I do.”
“Look now, my master, what wonders there are beneath the sun!” said Azrael, turning towards Hassan Pasha; “is it not marvellous that Yffim should see armies when there is nothing but pretty peasant girls?”
“Miracles proceed from Allah, but methinks Yffim Beg must have very bad sight to mistake maidens for men of war.”
Yffim Beg durst not say to Hassan Pasha that he also had bad sight; he might just as well have pronounced his own death sentence at once. Hassan wanted to pretend to see all that his favourite damsel pointed out, and she proceeded to befool the pair of them most audaciously in the intimate persuasion that Hassan would not betray the fact that he could not see, while Yffim Beg was afraid to contradict lest he should be saddled with that plaguy Transylvanian business.
Meanwhile, on the opposite bank, Feriz Beg in a sonorous voice was distributing his orders and making his tired battalions rest, galloping the while an Arab steed along the banks of the Danube. The odalisque followed every movement of the young hero with burning eyes.
“I love to hear the songs of these damsels; dost not thou also, my master?” she inquired of Hassan.
“Oh, I do,” he answered hastily.
“Wilt thou not sit down beside me here on the soft grass of the river bank?”
The Pasha sat down beside the odalisque, who, lying half in his bosom, with her arm round his neck, followed continually the movements of Feriz with sparkling eyes.
“Look, my master!” said she, pointing him out to Hassan; “look at that slim, gentle damsel, prominent among all the others, walking on the river’s bank. Her eyes sparkle towards us like fire, her figure is lovelier than a slender flower. Ah! now she turns towards us! What a splendid, beauteous shape! Never have I seen anything so lovely. Why may I not embrace her—like a sister—why may I not say to her, as I say to thee, ‘I love thee, I live and die for thee?’ ”
And with these words the odalisque pressed Hassan to her bosom, covering his face with kisses at every word; and he, beside himself with rapture, saw everything which the girl told him of, never suspecting that those kisses, those embraces, were not for him but for a youth to whom his favourite damsel openly confessed her love beneath his very eyes!
And Yffim Beg, amazed, confounded, stood behind them, and shaking his head, bethought him of the words of Haji Baba, “Cast forth that devil, and beware lest she give you away!”
XI
A Star in Hell
Let the gentle shadows of night descend which guard them that sleep from the eyes of evil spectres! Let the weary errant bee rest in the fragrant chalice of the closed flower. Everything sleeps, all is quiet, only the stars and burning hearts are still awake.
What a gentle, mystical song resounds from among the willows, as of a nightingale endowed with a human voice in order to sing to the listening night in coherent rhymes the song of his love and his melancholy rapture. It is the poet Hariri whom, sword in hand, they call Feriz Beg, “The Lion of Combat,” but who, when evening descends, and the noise and tumult of the camp are still, discards his coat of mail, puts on a light grey burnush, and, lute in hand, strolls through the listening groves and by the side of
