The second letter was in a fine feminine script, but one might judge from it that that hand knew how to handle a sword as well as a pen.
It was to the following effect:—
“My dear Friend,
“I have received your letter, and this is my answer to it. I can give you no very credible news in writing, either about myself or the affairs of the realm. A lover can do everything and sacrifice everything, even to life itself, for his love. (You will understand that this reference to love refers not to me, a mournful widow, but to another mournful widow, who is also your mother.) I do not judge men by what they say, but by what they do. All the same, I have every reason to think well of you, and I shall be delighted if the future should justify my good opinion of you.
The noble bridal retinue, merrily conversing, now returned from the chapel to the castle, the very sensible arrangement obtaining, that when the guests sat down to table each damsel was to be escorted to her seat by a selected cavalier known to be not displeasing to her. The only exceptions to this rule were the right reverend brigade, and Achmed Pasha and Feriz Beg, the two Turkish magnates present, whose grave dignity restrained them from participating in this innocent species of gallantry.
First of all, as the representative of the Prince of Transylvania, came Emeric Tököly, conducting the aged mother of the bridegroom, the Princess Ghyka; after him came Paul Béldi, leading the bride by the hand. Béldi’s wife was escorted by the master of the house, and her pretty little golden-haired daughter Aranka hung upon her left arm.
Feriz Beg was standing in the vestibule with a grave countenance till Aranka appeared. The little girl, on perceiving the youth, greeted him kindly, whereupon Feriz sighed deeply, and followed her. The bridegroom led the beautiful Flora Teleki by the hand.
On reaching the great hall, the company broke up into groups, the merriest of which was that which included Flora, Mariska, and Aranka.
“Be seated, ladies and gentlemen! be seated!” cried the strident voice of the host, who, full of proud self-satisfaction, ran hither and thither to see that all the guests were in the places assigned to them. Tököly was by the side of Mariska, opposite to them sat the bridegroom, with Flora Teleki by his side. Aranka was the vis-à-vis of Feriz Beg.
The banquet began. The endless loving-cup went round, the faces of the guests grew ever cheerier, the bride conversed in whispers with her handsome neighbour. Opposite to them the bridegroom, with equal courtesy, exchanged from time to time a word with the fair Flora, but the conversation thus begun broke down continually, and yet both the lady and the prince were persons of culture, and had no lack of mother-wit. But their minds were far away. Their lips spoke unconsciously, and the Prince grew ever gloomier as he saw his bride plunging ever more deeply into the merry chatter of her gay companion, and try as he might to entertain his own partner, the resounding laughter of the happy pair opposite drove the smile from his face, especially when Flora also grew absolutely silent, so that the bridegroom was obliged, at last, to turn to the Patriarch, who was sitting on his right, and converse with him about terribly dull matters.
Meanwhile, a couple of Serbian musicians began, to the accompaniment of a zithern, to sing one of their sad, monotonous, heroic songs. All this time Achmed Pasha had never spoken a word, but now, fired by the juice of the grape mediatized by his sherbet-bowl, he turned towards the singers and, beckoning them towards him, said in a voice not unlike a growl:
“Drop all that martial jumble and sing us instead something from one of our poets, something from Hariri the amorous, something from Gulestan!”
At these words the face of Feriz Beg, who sat beside him, suddenly went a fiery red—why, he could not have told for the life of him.
“Do you know ‘The Lover’s Complaint,’ for instance?” inquired the Pasha of the musician.
“I know the tune, but the verses have quite gone out of my head.”
“Oh! as to that, Feriz Beg here will supply you with the words quickly enough if you give him a piece of parchment and a pen.”
Feriz Beg was preparing to object, with the sole result that all the women were down upon him immediately, and begged and implored him for the beautiful song. So he surrendered, and, tucking up the long sleeve of his dolman, set the writing materials before him and began to write.
They who drink no wine are nevertheless wont to be intoxicated by the glances of bright eyes, and Feriz, as he wrote, glanced from time to time at the fair face of Aranka, who cast down her forget-me-not eyes shamefacedly at his friendly smile. So Feriz Beg wrote the verses and handed them to the musicians, and then everyone bade his neighbour hush and listen with all his ears.
The musician ran his fingers across the strings of his zithern, and then began to sing the song of the Turkish poet:
“Three lovely maidens I see, three maidens embracing each other;
Gentle, and burning, and bright—Sun, Moon, and Star I declare them.
Let others adore Sun and Moon, but give me my Star,
