A little beyond midnight the child began softly wailing. At the first sound of its crying Mariska awoke, and as she moved her hand the chain rattled. Azrael was instantly alert.
“Hast thou had evil dreams?” inquired the odalisque of Mariska; “the rattling of the chain aroused me.”
“The weeping of my child awoke me,” said Mariska softly; and drawing the little one to her bosom, as it embraced its mother’s beautiful velvet breast with its chubby little finger, and drank from the sweetest of all sources the draught of life, the young mother gazed upon it with unspeakable joy, smiled, laughed, caught the child’s rosy little fingers in her mouth, and implanted resounding kisses on its rosy, chubby cheeks. She had no thought at that moment for chain and dungeon.
Azrael felt in her heart the torments of the demons—it was that jealousy which those who are rocked in the lap of happiness feel at the sight of a luckless wretch who is happier than they are in spite of all his wretchedness.
“Wherefore dost thou rejoice?” she asked, gazing upon the lady with the eyes of a serpent.
“Because my child is with me.”
“But the whole world has abandoned thee.”
“It is more to me than the whole world.”
“More than thy husband?”
Mariska reflected for a moment, and then, instead of replying, hugged the child still closer to her bosom and imprinted a kiss upon its forehead.
“Wert thou ever a mother?” she asked Azrael in her turn.
“Never,” stammered the odalisque, and involuntarily her bosom heaved beneath a sigh.
It was plain from the face of Mariska how much she pitied this poor woman. Azrael perceived the look, and it wounded her that she should be pitied.
“Dost thou not know that both of you must die?” she asked with a darkened countenance.
“I am ready.”
“And art thou not terrified at the thought? They will strangle thy child with a silken cord, and hang it dead upon thy breast, and then they will strangle thee likewise, and put you both in the grave, in the cold earth.”
“We shall see each other in a better world,” said Mariska with fervent devotion.
“Where?” inquired the astounded Azrael.
Mariska, with holy confidence, raised her little one in her arms, and, lifting her eyes, said: “God will take us unto Himself.”
“And what need hath God of you?”
“He is the Father of those who suffer, and in the other world He rewards those who suffer grief here below.”
“And who told thee this?”
Mariska, as one inspired, placed her hand upon her heart and said: “It is written here!”
Azrael regarded the woman abashed. Truly, many mysterious words are written in the heart, why cannot everyone read them? She also had listened to such mystic voices, but they were words shouted in a desert, in her savage breast there was no manner of love which could interpret their meaning.
Mariska again put down her child on the edge of the cushion.
“Place not thy child there,” cried Azrael impatiently; “it might easily fall, place it between us!”
Mariska accepted the offer, and placed the little one between herself and Azrael.
When the first ray of dawn penetrated the large window Mariska awoke, and, folding her hands together above the head of the little child, again began to pray.
Azrael looked on darkly.
“Dost thou never pray?” said Mariska, turning towards her.
“Why should women pray? Their destiny is not in their own hands. Their fate depends upon their masters; if their masters are happy, they are happy also; if their masters perish, they perish with them. This is their earthly lot—and that is all. Allah never gave them a soul—what have they to do with the life beyond this? In Paradise the Houris take their places and the Houris remain young forever. The breath of a woman vanishes with the autumn mist like the fumes of a dead animal, and Allah has no thought for them.”
Mariska, with only half intelligible sorrow, looked at this woman who wished to seem worse than she really was.
Azrael crept closer up to her.
“And dost thou really believe that there is someone who listens to what the worms say, to what the birds twitter, and to what women pray?”
“Certainly,” replied the young Christian woman; “turn to Him, and thou wilt feel for thyself His goodness.”
“How can it be so? Why should He pay any attention to me?”
“It is not enough I know to clasp thy hands and close thy eyes. Thy petition must come straight from thy heart, and thy soul must believe that it will gain its desire.”
Azrael’s face flushed red. Hastily she cast herself down on her knees on the carpet, and pressing her folded hands to her bosom, stammered in a scarce audible voice:
“God! grant me one moment in my life in which I can say: I am happy.”
Her eyes were still closed when the door of the dormitory opened, and Hayat, the oldest duenna of the harem, entered with an air of great secrecy. She was now a shrivelled up bundle of old bones, but formerly she had been the first favourite of Hassan Pasha, and now she was the slave and secret confidante of all the
