“So thou hast been my nurse, eh?” sighed the youth gratefully, and he extended his hand to take that of the dervish, and he respectfully impressed upon it a long burning kiss, closing his eyes piously as he did so.
And when he again opened his eyes, holding continually the kissed hand between his own hands, behold! by his bedside no longer sat the old dervish, but a young and tremulous damsel, with black tresses rolling down her shoulders, with a blushing face and timidly smiling lips—it was Azrael.
Feriz fancied that he was the sport of some delirious dream or enchantment, and only when he looked about him in his bewilderment and perceived the cast-off false beard and turban and the other lying symbols of age, did he regain his presence of mind; and immediately the expression of gratitude and devotion disappeared from the face of Feriz Beg, his features took in a rigorous expression and he withdrew his hand from the pressure of those other hands. Speak he could not, both mind and body were too much broken for that; but he pointed to the door and signified to the damsel in dumb show that she was to withdraw.
“Thou knowest me, for thou hatest me,” stammered Azrael; “if thou didst not know me thou wouldst not hate me, and if thou didst know me better thou wouldst love me.”
The youth shook his head.
“Then—thou—lovest—another?” said the trembling girl.
Feriz Beg nodded: yes.
Azrael rose from her place as if some venomous spider had bitten her, her face was convulsed by a burning grief, she pressed her hands to her bosom; then slowly her form lost all its proud rigidity, and her eyes their savage brightness, her features softened, and collapsing before the bed of the youth she hid her face in his pillows and murmured in a scarce audible voice: “And therefore I love thee all the more.”
Then, resuming her disguise, she calmly piled upon herself all the tokens of old age till once more before the sick man stood the gentle honest dervish who hobbled away on his crutches, blessing everyone he encountered till he returned again to the mosque.
After Azrael had withdrawn, Feriz at once dismissed the dervish, who, at the youth’s command, confessed everything to him. The general’s favourite damsel, he said, had come to the mosque to pray ten days ago and had changed garments with him in his hiding-place in order to tend the dear invalid all day long while the dervish, enwrapped in her veil, had prayed in the sight of the slaves.
Feriz Beg threatened the dervish with death if he did not confess everything, and, as it became a true cavalier, richly rewarded him when he had revealed the secret intrigue, forbidding him at the same time to assist it any further.
Several days had passed by.
Hassan Pasha spent his days in the mosque, and his nights behind the trellised gates of his harem; he scented an evil report in every new arrival, and avoided all intercourse with his fellows. The whole day he was praying, the whole night he was drunk; from morning to evening he was occupied with the priests and the Koran, and from the evening to the morning he amused himself among his damsels, listened to their songs, bathed in ambergris-water, drank wine mingled with poppies, and had his body rubbed with cotton-wool that he might sleep and be in paradise.
Frequently he had bad dreams, an evil foreboding, like the pressure of a night-hag, lay upon his heart, and when he awoke he seemed to see it all vividly before his eyes and durst not sleep any more, but dressed himself, sought out the room of Azrael and made the damsel sit down beside him and amuse him with merry stories.
The odalisque held unlimited sway over the mind of Hassan, and could, at will, tune his mind to a good or evil humour by anticipating his thoughts. The Pasha trusted her implicitly.
It is a bad old custom with oriental potentates to go to bed fuddled and dream all manner of nonsense, and then incontinently to demand a clear interpretation of the nebulous stuff from their wise men—or wise women.
This happened to be the case one morning with Hassan Pasha and Azrael who just then was watering with a silver watering-can a gorgeous gobaea, whose luxurious offshoots clambered like a living ladder to the roof of the greenhouse, thence casting down to the ground again tendrils as thick as ropes.
“Last night I was dreaming of this very plant that thou dost nourish in yon large tub,” said Hassan in a voice that sounded as if he thought it an extraordinary thing to be listening to his own words. “I dreamt that it put forth a long and flowery shoot which grew into a tall tree, and from the end of one of the branches of this tree hung a large yellow fruit. Then I thought I had some important and peculiar reason for breaking off the fruit, and I sent a big white-bearded ape up into the tree to fetch it. The ape reached the fruit, and for a long time plucked at it and shook it, but was unable to break it off. At last, however, he fell down with it at my feet, the golden fruit burst in two, and a red apple rolled out of it, and I picked them both up and was delighted. What does that signify?”
Azrael kept plucking the yellow leaves off her dear plant and throwing them through the window, beckoned to the Pasha to sit down beside her, and tapping him on the shoulder, began to tick off the events on her pretty fingers.
“The golden fruit is the Moldavian Princess, and the white ape thou didst send for her is none other than Olaj Beg. Thy dream signifies that the Beg is about to arrive with the Princess,
