With the burning torch in her hand she went all through the rooms, tearing down the curtains and tapestries, and piling them all on the divan; and when she entered the last of the rooms she saw a pale white figure coming towards her from its dark background. The shape was as familiar to her as if she had seen it hundreds of times, although she knew not where; and its face was so gentle, so unearthly—a grief not of this world suffused its handsome features and the joy of heaven flashed from its calm, quiet eyes—its hair clung round its head in tiny curls, as guardian-angels are painted.
The damsel gazed appalled at this apparition. She fancied Heaven had sent her the messenger of the forgiveness of her sins; but it was her own figure reflected from a mirror concealed in the dark background—that gentle, downcast, sorrowful face, those pure, shining eyes she had never seen in a mirror before; the cutoff hair increased the delusion.
Tremblingly she sank on her knees before this apparition, and touching the ground with her face, lay sobbing there for some time; and when she again rose up, it appeared to her as if that apparition extended towards her its snow-white arms full of pity, full of compassion; and when she raised her hands to Heaven it also pointed thither, raising a face transformed by a sublime desire. No, she could not recognise that face as her own, never before had she seen it so beautiful.
Azrael placed her hands devoutly across her breast and beckoned to the apparition to follow her, and raising the curtain she returned into that room where she had already raised a funeral pyre for herself.
There, piled up together, lay cushions of cloth of gold, Indian feather-stuffs, divans filled with swansdown, light, luxurious little tables, harps of camphor-wood adorned with pearls, lutes with the silvery voices of houris, a little basin filled with fine fragrant oils composed from the aroma of a thousand oriental flowers; this she everywhere sprinkled over the heaped-up stuff, and also saturated the thick carpets with it, the volatile essence filled the whole atmosphere.
Then she pressed her hand upon her throbbing heart, and said: “God be with me!”
And then she fired the heaped-up materials at all four corners, and, as if she were ascending her bridal bed, mounted her cushions with a smiling, triumphant face, and lay down among them, closing her eyes with a happy smile.
In a few moments the flames burst forth at all four corners, fed freely by the light dry stuff, and combining above her like a wave of fire, formed a flaming canopy over her head. And she smiled happily, sweetly, all the time. The air, filled with volatile oil, also burst into flame, turning into a sea of burning blue; white clouds of smoke began to gather above the pyre; the strings of the harp caught by the flames burst asunder one by one from their burning frame, emitting tremulous, woeful sounds as if weeping for her who was about to die. When the last harp-string had burnt—the odalisque was dead.
The night was now drawing to a close. Feriz Beg, quietly intent, was sitting at the window of his kiosk, as he had promised the odalisque. He had not understood her mysterious words, but he did as she asked, for he knew instinctively that it was the last wish of one about to die.
Suddenly, as he gazed at the black waves of the Danube and the still blacker clouds in the sky, he saw a bright column of fire ascend with the rapidity of the wind from the midst of the opposite island, driving before it round white clouds of smoke. A few moments later the flames of the burning kiosk lit up the whole region. The startled inhabitants gazed at the splendid conflagration, whose flames mounted as high as a tower in the roaring blast. Nobody thought of saving it.
“No human life is lost, at any rate,” they said quietly; “the harem and its guards were transferred yesterday.”
The wind, too, greatly helped the fire. The kiosk, built entirely of the lightest of wood, was a heap of ashes by the morning, when Feriz, accompanied by the müderris in his official capacity, got into a skiff and were rowed across to the island. Not even a remnant of embers was to be found, everything had been burnt to powder. Nothing was to be seen but a large, black, open patch powdered with ashes. The fire had utterly consumed the abode of sin and vice. Nothing remained but a black spot. In the coming spring it will be a green meadow.
In the afternoon of the following day we see a familiar horseman trotting up to the gates of the fortress—if we mistake not, it is Yffim Beg.
All the way from Klausenburg he had been cudgelling his brains to find words sufficiently dignified to soften the expression of the insulting message which the Estates of Transylvania had sent through him to his gracious master. On arriving in front of Hassan’s palace he dismounted as usual, without asking any questions, and gave the reins to the familiar eunuchs that they might lead the horse to the stables.
There was no trace of the scaffold that had been erected in front of the gate the day before. Yffim Beg entered and passed through all the rooms he knew so well, all the doors of which were still guarded by the drabants of Hassan as of yore; at last he reached Hassan’s usual audience chamber, and there he found Olaj
