All this was taking place within two hundred yards of Hassan Pasha, and he saw nothing of it.
“Glory be to Allah,” he cried, raising his hands to heaven; “victory is ours! The Christian is flying and is casting down his banners in every direction. The best of his warriors are wallowing in the dust. The rest are flying without weapons and with pale—”
Those about him listened, horror-stricken, to his words. The Christian host was at that moment cutting down the Janissaries, the flower of the Turkish camp!
“Thou ravest, my master!” cried Yffim Beg, seizing the bridle of Hassan Pasha’s horse. “Fly and save thyself! The best of thy army has perished, the Janissaries have fallen, the Moldavian army hath fled. Ismail Pasha’s head has been hoisted on to a pike!”
“Impossible!” roared Hassan, beside himself, “come with me; let us charge, the victory is ours.”
But his generals seized him, and tearing his sword from his hand, seized the bridle of his horse on both sides and hurried him along with them towards the bridge, which was now full of fugitives.
The hazard of the die had changed. The pursuers had become the fugitives. An hour before the Christian camp ran the risk of annihilation; it was now the turn of the Turks.
Kiuprile seeing the catastrophe, destroyed his bridges and remained on the opposite bank.
Meanwhile on the wings, Kucsuk Pasha and Feriz Beg, with his brigade of Amazons, were valiantly holding their own against the cuirassiers of Toggendorf and the hussars of Petneházy, till at last the melancholy notes of the bugle-horns gave the signal for retreat, and the combatants gradually separated. Only a few scattered bands, and presently, only a few scattered individuals, still fought together, and then they also wearily abandoned the contest and returned silently to their respective camps. Both sides felt that their strength was exhausted. The Christian host had four thousand, the Turkish sixteen thousand slain, and among them its best generals; they also lost all their heavy cannons, their banners, and their military renown; but none lost so much as Feriz Beg. The Amazon Brigade had perished. By its deliberate self-sacrifice it had saved the Turkish army from utter destruction.
XIII
The Persecuted Woman
Perhaps by this time you have clean forgotten our dear acquaintance, pretty Mariska, the wife of the Prince of Wallachia?
Ah, she is happy! Although her husband is far away, her sorrow is forgotten in the near approach of a new joy—the joy of motherhood.
There she sits at eventide in the garden of her castle, weaving together dreams of a happy future, and her court ladies by her side are making tiny little garments adorned with bright ribbons.
When the peasant women pass by her on the road with their children in their arms, she takes the children from them, presses them to her bosom, kisses, and talks to them. She is the godmother of every newborn infant, and what a tender godmother! Day after day she visits the churches, and before the altar of the Virgin-Mother prays that she also may have her portion of that happiness which is the greatest joy God gives to women.
After the battle of St. Gothard it was Prince Ghyka’s first thought to send a courier to his wife, bidding her not to be anxious about her husband, for he was alive and would soon be home.
This was Mariska’s first tidings of the lost battle, and she thanked God for it. What did she care that the battle was lost, that the glory of the Turkish Sultan was cracked beyond repair, so long as her husband remained to her? With him the husbands of all the other poor Wallachian wives were also safe. She at once hastened to tell the more remote of these poor women that they were not to be alarmed if they heard that the Turkish army had been cut down, for their husbands were free and quite near to them.
What joy at the thought of seeing him again! How she watched for her husband from morn till eve, and awoke at night at the slightest noise. If a horse neighed in the street, if she heard a trumpet far away, she fancied that her husband was coming.
One night she was aroused by the sound of a light tapping at her bedroom door, and her husband’s voice replied to her question of “Who is there?”
Her surprise and her joy were so great that in the first moment of awaking she knew not what to do, whereupon her husband impatiently repeated:
“Mariska, open the door!”
The wife hastened to embrace her husband, admitted him, fell upon his neck, and covered him with kisses; but, perceiving suddenly that the kisses her husband gave her back were quite cold, and that his arm trembled when he embraced her, she looked anxiously at his face—it was grave and full of anxiety.
“My husband!” cried the unusually sensitive woman with a shaky voice. “Why do you embrace me—us, so coldly,” her downcast eyes seemed to say.
The Prince did not fail to notice the expression, and very sadly, and sighing slightly, he said:
“So much the worse for me!”
His hands, his whole frame shook so in the arms of his wife; and yet the Prince was a muscular as well as a brave man.
“What has happened? What is the matter?” asked his wife anxiously.
“Nothing,” said the Prince, kissing her forehead. “Be quiet. Lie down. I have some business to do which must be done tonight. Then I’ll come to you, and we’ll talk about things.”
Mariska took him at his word, and lay down
