Gibson Digital Library

BY
LEW. WALLACE

VOL. I.




_Rise, too, ye Shapes and Shadows of the Past
Rise from your long forgotten grazes at last
Let us behold your faces, let us hear
The words you uttered in those days of fear
Revisit your familiar haunts again
The scenes of triumph and the scenes of pain
And leave the footprints of your bleeding feet
Once more upon the pavement of the street_
LONGFELLOW




CONTENTS


BOOK I
THE EARTH AND THE SEA ARE ALWAYS GIVING UP THEIR SECRETS

I. THE NAMELESS BAY
II. THE MIDNIGHT LANDING
III. THE HIDDEN TREASURE

BOOK II
THE PRINCE OF INDIA

I. A MESSENGER FROM CIPANGO
II. THE PILGRIM AT EL KATIF
III. THE YELLOW AIR
IV. EL ZARIBAH
V. THE PASSING OF THE CARAVAN
VI. THE PRINCE AND THE EMIR
VII. AT THE KAABA
VIII. THE ARRIVAL IN CONSTANTINOPLE
IX. THE PRINCE AT HOME
X. THE ROSE OF SPRING

BOOK III
THE PRINCESS IRENE

I. MORNING ON THE BOSPHORUS
II. THE PRINCESS IRENE
III. THE HOMERIC PALACE
IV. THE RUSSIAN MONK
V. A VOICE FROM THE CLOISTER
VI. WHAT DO THE STARS SAY?
VII. THE PRINCE OF INDIA MEETS CONSTANTINE
VIII. RACING WITH A STORM
IX. IN THE WHITE CASTLE
X. THE ARABIAN STORY-TELLER
XI. THE TURQUOISE RING
XII. THE RING RETURNS
XIII. MAHOMMED HEARS FROM THE STARS
XIV. DREAMS AND VISIONS
XV. DEPARTURE FROM THE WHITE CASTLE
XVI. AN EMBASSY TO THE PRINCESS IRENE
XVII. THE EMPEROR'S WOOING
XVIII. THE SINGING SHEIK
XIX. TWO TURKISH TALES
XX. MAHOMMED DREAMS

BOOK IV
THE PALACE OF BLACHERNE

I. THE PALACE OF BLACHERNE
II. THE AUDIENCE
III. THE NEW FAITH PROCLAIMED
IV. THE PANNYCHIDES
V. A PLAGUE OF CRIME
VI. A BYZANTINE GENTLEMAN OF THE PERIOD
VII. A BYZANTINE HERETIC
VIII. THE ACADEMY OF EPICURUS
IX. A FISHERMAN'S FETE
X. THE HAMARI




BOOK I

THE EARTH AND THE SEA ARE ALWAYS GIVING UP THEIR SECRETS THE
PRINCE OF INDIA


CHAPTER I.

THE NAMELESS BAY


In the noon of a September day in the year of our dear Lord 1395, a
merchant vessel nodded sleepily upon the gentle swells of warm water
flowing in upon the Syrian coast. A modern seafarer, looking from the
deck of one of the Messagerie steamers now plying the same line of
trade, would regard her curiously, thankful to the calm which held her
while he slaked his wonder, yet more thankful that he was not of her
passage.

She could not have exceeded a hundred tons burthen. At the bow and stern
she was decked, and those quarters were fairly raised. Amidship she was
low and open, and pierced for twenty oars, ten to a side, all swaying
listlessly from the narrow ports in which they were hung. Sometimes they
knocked against each other. One sail, square and of a dingy white,
drooped from a broad yard-arm, which was itself tilted, and now and then
creaked against the yellow mast complainingly, unmindful of the simple
tackle designed to keep it in control. A watchman crouched in the meagre
shade of a fan-like structure overhanging the bow deck. The roofing and
the floor, where exposed, were clean, even bright; in all other parts
subject to the weather and the wash there was only the blackness of
pitch. The steersman sat on a bench at the stern. Occasionally, from
force of habit, he rested a hand upon the rudder-oar to be sure it was
yet in reach. With exception of the two, the lookout and the steersman,
all on board, officers, oarsmen, and sailors, were asleep--such
confidence could a Mediterranean calm inspire in those accustomed to
life on the beautiful sea. As if Neptune never became angry there, and
blowing his conch, and smiting with his trident, splashed the sky with
the yeast of waves! However, in 1395 Neptune had disappeared; like the
great god Pan, he was dead.

The next remarkable thing about the ship was the absence of the signs of
business usual with merchantmen. There were no barrels, boxes, bales, or
packages visible. Nothing indicated a cargo. In her deepest undulations
the water-line was not once submerged. The leather shields of the
oar-ports were high and dry. Possibly she had passengers aboard. Ah,
yes! There under the awning, stretched halfway across the deck dominated
by the steersman, was a group of persons all unlike seamen. Pausing to
note them, we may find the motive of the voyage.

Four men composed the group. One was lying upon a pallet, asleep yet
restless. A black velvet cap had slipped from his head, giving freedom
to thick black hair tinged with white. Starting from the temples, a
beard with scarce a suggestion of gray swept in dark waves upon the neck
and throat, and even invaded the pillow. Between the hair and beard
there was a narrow margin of sallow flesh for features somewhat crowded
by knots of wrinkle. His body was wrapped in a loose woollen gown of
brownish-black. A hand, apparently all bone, rested upon the breast,
clutching a fold of the gown. The feet twitched nervously in the
loosened thongs of old-fashioned sandals. Glancing at the others of the
group, it was plain this sleeper was master and they his slaves. Two of
them were stretched on the bare boards at the lower end of the pallet,
and they were white. The third was a son of Ethiopia of unmixed blood
and gigantic frame. He sat at the left of the couch, cross-legged, and,
like the rest, was in a doze; now and then, however, he raised his head,
and, without fully opening his eyes, shook a fan of peacock feathers
from head to foot over the recumbent figure. The two whites were clad in
gowns of coarse linen belted to their waists; while, saving a cincture
around his loins, the negro was naked.

There is often much personal revelation to be gleaned from the
properties a man carries with him from home. Applying the rule here, by
the pallet there was a walking-stick of unusual length, and severely
hand-worn a little above the middle. In emergency it might have been
used as a weapon. Three bundles loosely wrapped had been cast against a
timber of the ship; presumably they contained the plunder of the slaves
reduced to the minimum allowance of travel. But the most noticeable item
was a leather roll of very ancient appearance, held by a number of broad
straps deeply stamped and secured by buckles of a metal blackened like
neglected silver.

The attention of a close observer would have been attracted to this
parcel, not so much by its antique showing, as by the grip with which
its owner clung to it with his right hand. Even in sleep he held it of
infinite consequence. It could not have contained coin or any bulky
matter. Possibly the man was on some special commission, with his
credentials in the old roll. Ay, who was he?

Thus started, the observer would have bent himself to study of the face;
and immediately something would have suggested that while the stranger
was of this period of the world he did not belong to it. Such were the
magicians of the story-loving Al-Raschid. Or he was of the type
Rabbinical that sat with Caiphas in judgment upon the gentle Nazarene.
Only the centuries could have evolved the apparition. Who was he?

In the course of half an hour the man stirred, raised his head, looked
hurriedly at his attendants, then at the parts of the ship in view, then
at the steersman still dozing by the rudder; then he sat up, and brought
the roll to his lap, whereat the rigor of his expression relaxed. The
parcel was safe! And the conditions about him were as they should be!

He next set about undoing the buckles of his treasure. The long fingers
were expert; but just when the roll was ready to open he lifted his
face, and fixed his eyes upon the section of blue expanse outside the
edge of the awning, and dropped into thought. And straightway it was
settled that he was not a diplomatist or a statesman or a man of
business of any kind. The reflection which occupied him had nothing to
do with intrigues or statecraft; its centre was in his heart as the look
proved. So, in tender moods, a father gazes upon his child, a husband at
the beloved wife, restfully, lovingly.

And that moment the observer, continuing his study, would have forgotten
the parcel, the white slaves, the gigantic negro, the self-willed hair
and beard of pride--the face alone would have held him. The countenance
of the Sphinx has no beauty now; and standing before it, we feel no stir
of the admiration always a certificate that what we are beholding is
charming out of the common lines; yet we are drawn to it irresistibly,
and by a wish vague, foolish--so foolish we would hesitate long before
putting it in words to be heard by our best lover--a wish that the
monster would tell us all about itself. The feeling awakened by the face
of the traveller would have been similar, for it was distinctly
Israelitish, with exaggerated eyes set deeply in cavernous hollows--a
mobile mask, in fact, concealing a life in some way unlike other lives.
Unlike? That was the very attraction. If the man would only speak, what
a tale he could unfold!

But he did not speak. Indeed, he seemed to have regarded speech a
weakness to be fortified against. Putting the pleasant thought aside, he
opened the roll, and with exceeding tenderness of touch brought forth a
sheet of vellum dry to brittleness, and yellow as a faded sycamore leaf.
There were lines upon it as of a geometrical drawing, and an inscription
in strange characters. He bent over the chart, if such it may be called,
eagerly, and read it through; then, with a satisfied expression, he
folded it back into the cover, rebuckled the straps, and placed the
parcel under the pillow. Evidently the business drawing him was
proceeding as he would have had it. Next he woke the negro with a touch.
The black in salute bent his body forward, and raised his hands palm
out, the thumbs at the forehead. Attention singularly intense settled
upon his countenance; he appeared to listen with his soul. It was time
for speech, yet the master merely pointed to one of the sleepers. The
watchful negro caught the idea, and going to the man, aroused him, then
resumed his place and posture by the pallet. The action revealed his
proportions. He looked as if he could have lifted the gates of Gaza, and
borne them easily away; and to the strength there were superadded the
grace, suppleness, and softness of motion of a cat. One could not have
helped thinking the slave might have all the elements to make him a
superior agent in fields of bad as well as good.

The second slave arose, and waited respectfully. It would have been
difficult to determine his nationality. He had the lean face, the high
nose, sallow complexion, and low stature of an Armenian. His countenance
was pleasant and intelligent. In addressing him, the master made signs
with hand and finger; and they appeared sufficient, for the servant
walked away quickly as if on an errand. A short time, and he came back
bringing a companion of the genus sailor, very red-faced, heavily built,
stupid, his rolling gait unrelieved by a suggestion of good manners.
Taking position before the black-gowned personage, his feet wide apart,
the mariner said:

"You sent for me?"

The question was couched in Byzantine Greek.

"Yes," the passenger replied, in the same tongue, though with better
accent. "Where are we?"

"But for this calm we should be at Sidon. The lookout reports the
mountains in view."

The passenger reflected a moment, then asked, "Resorting to the oars,
when can we reach the city?"

"By midnight."

"Very well. Listen now."

The speaker's manner changed; fixing his big eyes upon the sailor's
lesser orbs, he continued:

"A few stadia north of Sidon there is what may be called a bay. It is
about four miles across. Two little rivers empty into it, one on each
side. Near the middle of the bend of the shore there is a well of sweet
water, with flow enough to support a few villagers and their camels. Do
you know the bay?"

The skipper would have become familiar.

"You are well acquainted with this coast," he said.

"Do you know of such a bay?" the passenger repeated.

"I have heard of it."

"Could you find it at night?"

"I believe so."

"That is enough. Take me into the bay, and land me at midnight. I will
not go to the city. Get out all the oars now. At the proper time I will
tell you what further I wish. Remember I am to be set ashore at midnight
at a place which I will show you."

The directions though few were clear. Having given them, the passenger
signed the negro to fan him, and stretched himself upon the pallet; and
thenceforth there was no longer a question who was in control. It became
the more interesting, however, to know the object of the landing at
midnight on the shore of a lonesome unnamed bay.




CHAPTER II

THE MIDNIGHT LANDING


The skipper predicted like a prophet. The ship was in the bay, and it
was midnight or nearly so; for certain stars had climbed into certain
quarters of the sky, and after their fashion were striking the hour.

The passenger was pleased.

"You have done well," he said to the mariner. "Be silent now, and get
close in shore. There are no breakers. Have the small boat ready, and do
not let the anchors go."

The calm still prevailed, and the swells of the sea were scarce
perceptible. Under the gentlest impulse of the oars the little vessel
drifted broadside on until the keel touched the sands. At the same
instant the small boat appeared. The skipper reported to the passenger.
Going to each of the slaves, the latter signed them to descend. The
negro swung himself down like a monkey, and received the baggage, which,
besides the bundles already mentioned, consisted of some tools, notably
a pick, a shovel, and a stout crowbar. An empty water-skin was also sent
down, followed by a basket suggestive of food. Then the passenger, with
a foot over the side of the vessel, gave his final directions.

"You will run now," he said to the skipper, who, to his credit, had thus
far asked no questions, "down to the city, and lie there to-morrow,
and to-morrow night. Attract little notice as possible. It is not
necessary to pass the gate. Put out in time to be here at sunrise. I
will be waiting for you. Day after to-morrow at sunrise--remember."

"But if you should not be here?" asked the sailor, thinking of extreme
probabilities.

"Then wait for me," was the answer.

The passenger, in turn, descended to the boat, and was caught in the
arms of the black, and seated carefully as he had been a child. In brief
time the party was ashore, and the boat returning to the ship; a little
later, the ship withdrew to where the night effectually curtained the
deep.

The stay on the shore was long enough to apportion the baggage amongst
the slaves. The master then led the way. Crossing the road running from
Sidon along the coast to the up-country, they came to the foothills of
the mountain, all without habitation.

Later they came upon signs of ancient life in splendor--broken columns,
and here and there Corinthian capitals in marble discolored and sunk
deeply in sand and mould. The patches of white on them had a ghastly
glimmer in the starlight. They were approaching the site of an old city,
a suburb probably of Palae-Tyre when she was one of the spectacles of
the world, sitting by the sea to rule it regally far and wide.

On further a small stream, one of those emptying into the bay, had
ploughed a ravine for itself across the route the party was pursuing.
Descending to the water, a halt was made to drink, and fill the
water-skin, which the negro took on his shoulder.

On further there was another ancient site strewn with fragments
indicative of a cemetery. Hewn stones were frequent, and mixed with them
were occasional entablatures and vases from which the ages had not yet
entirely worn the fine chiselling. At length an immense uncovered
sarcophagus barred the way. The master stopped by it to study the
heavens; when he found the north star, he gave the signal to his
followers, and moved under the trail of the steadfast beacon.

They came to a rising ground more definitely marked by sarcophagi hewn
from the solid rock, and covered by lids of such weight and solidity
that a number of them had never been disturbed. Doubtless the dead
within were lying as they had been left--but when, and by whom? What
disclosures there will be when at last the end is trumpeted in!

On further, but still connected with the once magnificent funeral site,
they encountered a wall many feet thick, and shortway beyond it, on the
mountain's side, there were two arches of a bridge of which all else had
been broken down; and these two had never spanned anything more
substantial than the air. Strange structure for such a locality!
Obviously the highway which once ran over it had begun in the city the
better to communicate with the cemetery through which the party had just
passed. So much was of easy understanding; but where was the other
terminus? At sight of the arches the master drew a long breath of
relief. They were the friends for whom he had been searching.

Nevertheless, without stopping, he led down into a hollow on all sides
sheltered from view; and there the unloading took place. The tools and
bundles were thrown down by a rock, and preparations made for the
remainder of the night. The pallet was spread for the master. The basket
gave up its contents, and the party refreshed themselves and slept the
sleep of the weary.

The secluded bivouac was kept the next day. Only the master went forth
in the afternoon. Climbing the mountain, he found the line in
continuation of the bridge; a task the two arches serving as a base made
comparatively easy. He stood then upon a bench or terrace cumbered with
rocks, and so broad that few persons casually looking would have
suspected it artificial. Facing fully about from the piers, he walked
forward following the terrace which at places was out of line, and piled
with debris tumbled from the mountain on the right hand side; in a few
minutes that silent guide turned with an easy curve and disappeared in
what had yet the appearance hardly distinguishable of an area wrenched
with enormous labor from a low cliff of solid brown limestone.

The visitor scanned the place again and again; then he said aloud:

"No one has been here since"--

The sentence was left unfinished.

That he could thus identify the spot, and with such certainty pass upon
it in relation to a former period, proved he had been there before.

Rocks, earth, and bushes filled the space. Picking footway through, he
examined the face of the cliff then in front of him, lingering longest
on the heap of breakage forming a bank over the meeting line of area and
hill.

"Yes," he repeated, this time with undisguised satisfaction, "no one has
been here since"--

Again the sentence was unfinished.

He ascended the bank next, and removed some of the stones at the top. A
carved line in low relief on the face of the rock was directly exposed;
seeing it he smiled, and replaced the stones, and descending, went back
to the terrace, and thence to the slaves in bivouac.

From one of the packages he had two iron lamps of old Roman style
brought out, and supplied with oil and wicks; then, as if everything
necessary to his project was done, he took to the pallet. Some goats had
come to the place in his absence, but no living creature else.

After nightfall the master woke the slaves, and made final preparation
for the venture upon which he had come. The tools he gave to one man,
the lamps to another, and the water-skin to the negro. Then he led out
of the hollow, and up the mountain to the terrace visited in the
afternoon; nor did he pause in the area mentioned as the abrupt terminus
of the highway over the skeleton piers. He climbed the bank of stones
covering the foot of the cliff up to the precise spot at which his
reconnoissance had ended.

Directly the slaves were removing the bank at the top; not a difficult
task since they had only to roll the loose stones down a convenient
grade. They worked industriously. At length--in half an hour
probably--an opening into the cliff was discovered. The cavity, small at
first, rapidly enlarged, until it gave assurance of a doorway of immense
proportions. When the enlargement sufficed for his admission, the master
stayed the work, and passed in. The slaves followed. The interior
descent offered a grade corresponding with that of the bank
outside--another bank, in fact, of like composition, but more difficult
to pass on account of the darkness.

With his foot the leading adventurer felt the way down to a floor; and
when his assistants came to him, he took from a pocket in his gown a
small case filled with a chemical powder which he poured at his feet;
then he produced a flint and steel, and struck them together. Some
sparks dropped upon the powder. Instantly a flame arose and filled the
place with a ruddy illumination. Lighting the lamps by the flame, the
party looked around them, the slaves with simple wonder.

They were in a vault--a burial vault of great antiquity. Either it was
an imitation of like chambers in Egypt, or they were imitations of it.
The excavation had been done with chisels. The walls were niched, giving
them an appearance of panelling, and over each of the niches there had
been an inscription in raised letters, now mostly defaced. The floor was
a confusion of fragments knocked from sarcophagi, which, massive as they
were, had been tilted, overturned, uncovered, mutilated, and robbed.
Useless to inquire whose the vandalism. It may have been of Chaldeans of
the time of Almanezor, or of the Greeks who marched with Alexander, or
of Egyptians who were seldom regardful of the dead of the peoples they
overthrew as they were of their own, or of Saracens, thrice conquerors
along the Syrian coast, or of Christians. Few of the Crusaders were like
St. Louis.

But of all this the master took no notice. With him it was right that
the vault should look the wreck it was. Careless of inscriptions,
indifferent to carving, his eyes ran rapidly along the foot of the
northern wall until they came to a sarcophagus of green marble. Thither
he proceeded. He laid his hand upon the half-turned lid, and observing
that the back of the great box--if such it may be termed--was against
the wall, he said again:

"No one has been here since"--

And again the sentence was left unfinished.

Forthwith he became all energy. The negro brought the crowbar, and, by
direction, set it under the edge of the sarcophagus, which he held
raised while the master blocked it at the bottom with a stone chip.
Another bite, and a larger chip was inserted. Good hold being thus had,
a vase was placed for fulcrum; after which, at every downward pressure
of the iron, the ponderous coffin swung round a little to the left.
Slowly and with labor the movement was continued until the space behind
was uncovered.

By this time the lamps had become the dependencies for light. With his
in hand, the master stooped and inspected the exposed wall. Involuntarily
the slaves bent forward and looked, but saw nothing different from the
general surface in that quarter. The master beckoned the negro, and
touching a stone not wider than his three fingers, but reddish in hue,
and looking like mere chinking lodged in an accidental crevice, signed
him to strike it with the end of the bar. Once--twice--the stone refused
to stir; with the third blow it was driven in out of sight, and, being
followed vigorously, was heard to drop on the other side. The wall
thereupon, to the height of the sarcophagus and the width of a broad
door, broke, and appeared about to tumble down.

When the dust cleared away, there was a crevice unseen before, and wide
enough to admit a hand. The reader must remember there were masons in
the old time who amused themselves applying their mathematics to such
puzzles. Here obviously the intention had been to screen an entrance to
an adjoining chamber, and the key to the design had been the sliver of
red granite first displaced.

A little patient use then of hand and bar enabled the workman to take
out the first large block of the combination. That the master numbered
with chalk, and had carefully set aside. A second block was taken out,
numbered, and set aside; finally the screen was demolished, and the way
stood open.




CHAPTER III

THE HIDDEN TREASURE


The slaves looked dubiously at the dusty aperture, which held out no
invitation to them; the master, however, drew his robe closer about him,
and stooping went in, lamp in hand. They then followed.

An ascending passage, low but of ample width, received them. It too had
been chiselled from the solid rock. The wheel marks of the cars used in
the work were still on the floor. The walls were bare but smoothly
dressed. Altogether the interest here lay in expectation of what was to
come; and possibly it was that which made the countenance of the master
look so grave and absorbed. He certainly was not listening to the
discordant echoes roused as he advanced.

The ascent was easy. Twenty-five or thirty steps brought them to the end
of the passage.

They then entered a spacious chamber circular and domed. The light of
the lamps was not enough to redeem the ceiling from obscurity; yet the
master led without pause to a sarcophagus standing under the centre of
the dome, and when he was come there everything else was forgotten by
him.

The receptacle of the dead thus discovered had been hewn from the rock,
and was of unusual proportions. Standing broadside to the entrance, it
was the height of an ordinary man, and twice as long as high. The
exterior had been polished smoothly as the material would allow;
otherwise it was of absolute plainness, looking not unlike a dark brown
box. The lid was a slab of the finest white marble carven into a perfect
model of Solomon's Temple. While the master surveyed the lid he was
visibly affected. He passed the lamp over it slowly, letting the light
fall into the courts of the famous building; in like manner he
illuminated the corridors, and the tabernacle; and, as he did so, his
features trembled and his eyes were suffused. He walked around the
exquisite representation several times, pausing now and then to blow
away the dust that had in places accumulated upon it. He noticed the
effect of the transparent whiteness in the chamber; so in its day the
original had lit up the surrounding world. Undoubtedly the model had
peculiar hold upon his feelings.

But shaking the weakness off he after a while addressed himself to work.
He had the negro thrust the edge of the bar under the lid, and raise it
gently. Having thoughtfully provided himself in the antechamber with
pieces of stone for the purpose, he placed one of them so as to hold the
vantage gained. Slowly, then, by working at the ends alternately, the
immense slab was turned upon its centre; slowly the hollow of the coffin
was flooded with light; slowly, and with seeming reluctance, it gave up
its secrets.

In strong contrast to the plainness of the exterior, the interior of the
sarcophagus was lined with plates and panels of gold, on which there
were cartoons chased and beaten in, representing ships, and tall trees,
doubtless cedars of Lebanon, and masons at work, and two men armed and
in royal robes greeting each other with clasped hands; and so beautiful
were the cartoons that the eccentric medalleur, Cellini, would have
studied them long, if not enviously. Yet he who now peered into the
receptacle scarcely glanced at them.

On a stone chair seated was the mummy of a man with a crown upon its
head, and over its body, for the most part covering--the linen wrappings,
was a robe of threads of gold in ample arrangement. The hands rested on
the lap; in one was a sceptre; the other held an inscribed silver tablet.
There were rings plain, and rings with jewels in setting, circling the
fingers and thumbs; the ears, ankles, even the great toes, were
ornamented in like manner. At the feet a sword of the fashion of a
cimeter had been laid. The blade was in its scabbard, but the scabbard
was a mass of jewels, and the handle a flaming ruby. The belt was webbed
with pearls and glistening brilliants. Under the sword were the
instruments sacred then and ever since to Master Masons--a square, a
gavel, a plummet, and an inscribing compass.

The man had been a king--so much the first glance proclaimed. With him,
as with his royal brethren from the tombs along the Nile, death had
asserted itself triumphantly over the embalmer. The cheeks were
shrivelled and mouldy; across the forehead the skin was drawn tight; the
temples were hollows rimmed abruptly with the frontal bones; the eyes,
pits partially filled with dried ointments of a bituminous color. The
monarch had yielded his life in its full ripeness, for the white hair
and beard still adhered in stiffened plaits to the skull, cheeks, and
chin. The nose alone was natural; it stood up thin and hooked, like the
beak of an eagle.

At sight of the figure thus caparisoned and maintaining its seat in an
attitude of calm composure the slaves drew back startled. The negro
dropped his iron bar, making the chamber ring with a dissonant clangor.

Around the mummy in careful arrangement were vessels heaped with coins
and pearls and precious stones, cut and ready for the goldsmith. Indeed,
the whole inner space of the sarcophagus was set with basins and urns,
each in itself a work of high art; and if their contents were to be
judged by what appeared overflowing them, they all held precious stones
of every variety. The corners had been draped with cloths of gold and
cloths embroidered with pearls, some of which were now falling to pieces
of their own weight.

We know that kings and queens are but men and women subject to the same
passions of common people; that they are generous or sordid according to
their natures; that there have been misers amongst them; but this
one--did he imagine he could carry his amassments with him out of the
world? Had he so loved the gems in his life as to dream he could
illumine his tomb with them? If so, O royal idiot!

The master, when an opening had been made sufficiently wide by turning
the lid upon the edge of the sarcophagus, took off his sandals, gave a
foot to one of his slaves, and swung himself into the interior. The lamp
was then given him, and he surveyed the wealth and splendor as the king
might never again. And as the king in his day had said with exultation,
Lo! it is all mine, the intruder now asserted title.

Unable, had he so wished, to carry the whole collection off, he looked
around upon this and upon that, determining where to begin. Conscious he
had nothing to fear, and least of all from the owner in the chair, he
was slow and deliberate. From his robe he drew a number of bags of
coarse hempen cloth, and a broad white napkin. The latter he spread upon
the floor, first removing several of the urns to obtain space; then he
emptied one of the vessels upon it, and from the sparkling and
varicolored heap before him proceeded to make selection.

His judgment was excellent, sure and swift. Not seldom he put the large
stones aside, giving preference to color and lustre. Those chosen he
dropped into a bag. When the lot was gone through, he returned the
rejected to the vessel, placing it back exactly in its place. Then he
betook himself to another of the vessels, and then another, until, in
course of a couple of hours, he had made choice from the collection, and
filled nine bags, and tied them securely.

Greatly relieved, he arose, rubbed the benumbed joints of his limbs
awhile, then passed the packages out to the slaves. The occupation had
been wearisome and tensive; but it was finished, and he would now
retire. He lingered to give a last look at the interior, muttering the
sentence again, and leaving it unfinished as before:

"No one has been here since"--

From the face of the king, his eyes fell to the silver tablet in the
nerveless hand. Moving close, and holding the lamp in convenient
position, he knelt and read the inscription.

I.

"There is but one God, and He was from the beginning, and will be
without end.

II.

"In my lifetime, I prepared this vault and tomb to receive my body, and
keep it safely; yet it may be visited, for the earth and sea are always
giving up their secrets.

III.

"Therefore, O Stranger, first to find me, know thou!

"That in all my days I kept intercourse with Solomon, King of the Jews,
wisest of men, and the richest and greatest. As is known, he set about
building a house to his Lord God, resolved that there should be nothing
like it in the world, nothing so spacious, so enriched, so perfect in
proportions, so in all things becoming the glory of his God. In sympathy
with him I gave him of the skill of my people, workers in brass, and
silver, and gold, and products of the quarries: and in their ships my
sailors brought him the yield of mines from the ends of the earth. At
last the house was finished; then he sent me the model of the house, and
the coins, and cloths of gold and pearl, and the precious stones, and
the vessels holding them, and the other things of value here. Ad if, O
Stranger, thou dost wonder at the greatness of the gift, know thou that
it was but a small part of what remained unto him of like kind, for he
was master of the earth, and of everything belonging to it which might
be of service to him, even the elements and their subtleties.

IV.

"Nor think, O Stranger, that I have taken the wealth into the tomb with
me, imagining it can serve me in the next life. I store it here because
I love him who gave it to me, and am jealous of his love; and that is
all.

V.

"So thou wilt use the wealth in ways pleasing in the sight of the Lord
God of Solomon, my royal friend, take thou of it in welcome. There is no
God but his God!

"Thus say I--HIRAM, KING OF TYRE."

"Rest thou thy soul, O wisest of pagan kings," said the master, rising.
"Being the first to find thee here, and basing my title to thy wealth on
that circumstance, I will use it in a way pleasing in the sight of the
Lord God of Solomon. Verily, verily, there is no God but his
God!"

This, then, was the business that brought the man to the tomb of the
king whose glory was to have been the friend of Solomon. Pondering the
idea, we begin to realize how vast the latter's fame was; and it ceases
to be matter of wonder that his contemporaries, even the most royal,
could have been jealous of his love.

Not only have we the man's business, but it is finished; and judging
from the satisfaction discernible on his face as he raised the lamp and
turned to depart, the result must have been according to his best hope.
He took off his robe, and tossed it to his slaves; then he laid a hand
upon the edge of the sarcophagus preparatory to climbing out. At the
moment, while giving a last look about him, an emerald, smoothly cut,
and of great size, larger indeed than a full-grown pomegranate, caught
his eyes in its place loose upon the floor. He turned back, and taking
it up, examined it carefully; while thus engaged his glance dropped to
the sword almost at his feet. The sparkle of the brilliants, and the
fire-flame of the great ruby in the grip, drew him irresistibly, and he
stood considering.

Directly he spoke in a low voice:

"No one has been here since"--

He hesitated--glanced hurriedly around to again assure himself it was
not possible to be overheard--then finished the sentence:

"No one has been here _since I came a thousand years ago_."

At the words so strange, so inexplicable upon any theory of nature and
common experience, the lamp shook in his hand. Involuntarily he shrank
from the admission, though to himself. But recovering, he
repeated:

"Since I came a thousand years ago."

Then he added more firmly:

"But the earth and the sea are always giving up their secrets. So saith
the good King Hiram; and since I am a witness proving the wisdom of the
speech, I at least must believe him. Wherefore it is for me to govern
myself as if another will shortly follow me. The saying of the king is
an injunction."

With that, he turned the glittering sword over and over admiringly.
Loath to let it go, he drew the blade partly from the scabbard, and its
clearness had the depth peculiar to the sky between stars at night.

"Is there anything it will not buy," he continued, reflectively. "What
king could refuse a sword once Solomon's? I will take it."

Thereupon he passed both the emerald and the sword out to the slaves,
whom he presently joined.

The conviction, but a moment before expressed, that another would follow
him to the tomb of the venerated Tyrian, was not strong enough to hinder
the master from attempting to hide every sign which might aid in the
discovery. The negro, under his direction, returned the lid exactly to
its former fitting place on the sarcophagus; the emerald and the sword
he wrapped in his gown; the bags and the tools were counted and
distributed among the slaves for easy carriage. Lamp in hand, he then
walked around to see that nothing was left behind. Incidentally he even
surveyed the brown walls and the dim dome overhead. Having reached the
certainty that everything was in its former state, he waved his hand,
and with one long look backward at the model, ghostly beautiful in its
shining white transparency, he led the way to the passage of entrance,
leaving the king to his solitude and stately sleep, unmindful of the
visitation and the despoilment.

Out in the large reception room, he paused again to restore the wall.
Beginning with the insignificant key, one by one the stones, each of
which, as we have seen, had been numbered by him, were raised and reset.
Then handfuls of dust were collected and blown into the slight crevices
till they were invisible. The final step was the restoration of the
sarcophagus; this done, the gallery leading to the real vault of the
king was once more effectually concealed.

"He who follows, come he soon or late, must have more than sharp eyes if
he would have audience with Hiram, my royal friend of Tyre," the
adventurer said, in his meditative way, feeling at the same time in the
folds of his gown for the chart so the object of solicitude on the ship.
The roll, the emerald, and the sword were also safe. Signing the slaves
to remain where they were, he moved slowly across the chamber, and by
aid of his lamp surveyed an aperture there so broad and lofty it was
suggestive of a gate rather than a door.

"It is well," he said, smiling. "The hunter of spoils, hereafter as
heretofore, will pass this way instead of the other."

The remark was shrewd. Probably nothing had so contributed to the long
concealment of the gallery just reclosed the second time in a thousand
years as the high doorway, with its invitation to rooms beyond it, all
now in iconoclastic confusion.

Rejoining his workmen, he took a knife from the girdle of one of them,
and cut a slit in the gurglet large enough to admit the bags of precious
stones. The skin was roomy, and received them, though with the loss of
much of the water. Having thus disposed of that portion of the plunder
to the best advantage both for portage and concealment, he helped swing
it securely upon the negro's shoulder, and without other delay led from
the chamber to the great outdoors, where the lamps were extinguished.

The pure sweet air, as may be imagined, was welcome to every one. While
the slaves stood breathing it in wholesome volumes, the master studied
the stars, and saw the night was not so far gone but that, with industry,
the sea-shore could be made in time for the ship.

Still pursuing the policy of hiding the road to the tomb much as
possible, he waited while the men covered the entrance as before with
stones brought up from the bank. A last survey of the face of the rock,
minute as the starlight allowed, reassured him that, as to the rest of
the world, the treasure might remain with its ancient owner undisturbed
for yet another thousand years, if not forever; after which, in a
congratulatory mood, he descended the mountain side to the place of
bivouac, and thence in good time, and without adventure, arrived at the
landing by the sea. There the negro, wading far out, flung the tools
into the water.

In the appointed time the galley came down from the city, and, under
impulsion of the oars, disappeared with the party up the coast
northward.

The negro unrolled the pallet upon the deck, and brought some bread,
Smyrna figs, and wine of Prinkipo, and the four ate and drank heartily.

The skipper was then summoned.

"You have done well, my friend," said the master. "Spare not sail or oar
now, but make Byzantium without looking into any wayside port. I will
increase your pay in proportion as you shorten the time we are out. Look
to it--go--and speed you."

Afterward the slaves in turn kept watch while he slept. And though the
coming and going of sailors was frequent, not one of them noticed the
oil-stained water-skin cast carelessly near the master's pillow, or the
negro's shaggy half-cloak, serving as a wrap for the roll, the emerald,
and the sword once Solomon's.

The run of the galley from the nameless bay near Sidon was without stop
or so much as a headwind. Always the blue sky above the deck, and the
blue sea below. In daytime the master passenger would occasionally pause
in his walk along the white planks, and, his hand on the gunwale, give a
look at some of the landmarks studding the ancient Cycladean Sea, an
island here, or a tall promontory of the continent yonder, possibly an
Olympian height faintly gray in the vaster distance. His manner at such
moments did not indicate a traveller new to the highway. A glance at the
points such as business men closely pressed give the hands on the face
of a clock to determine the minute of the hour, and he would resume
walking. At night he slept right soundly.

From the Dardanelles into the Hellespont; then the Marmora. The captain
would have coasted, but the passenger bade him keep in the open. "There
is nothing to fear from the weather," he said, "but there is time to be
saved."

In an afternoon they sighted the great stones Oxia and Plati; the first,
arid and bare as a gray egg, and conical like an irregular pyramid; the
other, a plane on top, with verdure and scattering trees. A glance at
the map shows them the most westerly group of the Isles of the Princes.

Now Nature is sometimes stupid, sometimes whimsical, doing unaccountable
things. One gazing at the other isles of the group from a softly rocking
caique out a little way on the sea divines instantly that she meant them
for summer retreats, but these two, Oxia and Plati, off by themselves,
bleak in winter, apparently always ready for spontaneous combustion in
the heated months, for what were they designed? No matter--uses were
found for them--fitting uses. Eremites in search of the hardest,
grimmest places, selected Oxia, and pecking holes and caves in its
sides, shared the abodes thus laboriously won with cormorants, the most
gluttonous of birds. In time a rude convent was built near the summit.
On the other hand, Plati was converted into a Gehenna for criminals, and
in the vats and dungeons with which it was provided, lives were spent
weeping for liberty. On this isle, tears and curses; on that, tears and
prayers.

At sundown the galley was plying its oars between Oxia and the European
shore about where St. Stephano is now situated. The dome of Sta. Sophia
was in sight; behind it, in a line to the northwest, arose the tower of
Galata. "Home by lamplighting--Blessed be the Virgin!" the mariners said
to each other piously. But no! The master passenger sent for the captain.

"I do not care to get into harbor before morning. The night is delicious,
and I will try it in the small boat. I was once a rower, and yet have a
fancy for the oars. Do thou lay off and on hereabouts. Put two lamps at
the masthead that I may know thy vessel when I desire to return. Now get
out the boat."

The captain thought his voyager queer of taste; nevertheless he did as
told. In a short time the skiff--if the familiar word can be pardoned--
put off with the negro and his master, the latter at the oars.

In preparation for the excursion the gurglet half full of water and the
sheepskin mantle of the black man were lowered into the little vessel.
The boat moved away in the direction of Prinkipo, the mother isle of the
group; and as the night deepened, it passed from view.

When out of sight from the galley's deck, the master gave the rowing to
the negro, and taking seat by the rudder, changed direction to the
southeast; after which he kept on and on, until Plati lay directly in
his course.

The southern extremity of Plati makes quite a bold bluff. In a period
long gone a stone tower had been constructed there, a lookout and
shelter for guardsmen on duty; and there being no earthly chance of
escape for prisoners, so securely were they immured, the duty must have
been against robbers from the mainland on the east, and from pirates
generally. Under the tower there was a climb difficult for most persons
in daylight, and from the manoeuvring of the boat, the climb was
obviously the object drawing the master. He at length found it, and
stepped out on a shelving stone. The gurglet and mantle were passed to
him, and soon he and his follower were feeling their way upward.

On the summit, the chief walked once around the tower, now the merest
ruin, a tumbledown without form, in places overgrown with sickly vines.
Rejoining his attendant, and staying a moment to thoroughly empty the
gurglet of water, on his hands and knees he crawled into a passage much
obstructed by debris. The negro waited outside.

The master made two trips; the first one, he took the gurglet in; the
second, he took the mantle wrapping the sword. At the end, he rubbed his
hands in self-congratulation.

"They are safe--the precious stones of Hiram, and the sword of Solomon!
Three other stores have I like this one--in India, in Egypt, in
Jerusalem--and there is the tomb by Sidon. Oh, I shall not come to
want!" and he laughed well pleased.

The descent to the small boat was effected without accident.

Next morning toward sunrise the passengers disembarked at Port St. Peter
on the south side of the Golden Horn. A little later the master was
resting at home in Byzantium.

Within three days the mysterious person whom we, wanting his proper name
and title, have termed the master, had sold his house and household
effects. In the night of the seventh day, with his servants, singular in
that all of them were deaf and dumb, he went aboard ship, and vanished
down the Marmora, going no one but himself knew whither.

The visit to the tomb of the royal friend of Solomon had evidently been
to provide for the journey; and that he took precious stones in
preference to gold and silver signified a journey indefinite as to time
and place.




BOOK II

THE PRINCE OF INDIA


CHAPTER I

A MESSENGER FROM CIPANGO


Just fifty-three years after the journey to the tomb of the Syrian
king--more particularly on the fifteenth day of May, fourteen hundred
and forty-eight--a man entered one of the stalls of a market in
Constantinople--to-day the market would be called a bazaar--and
presented a letter to the proprietor.

The Israelite thus honored delayed opening the linen envelope while he
surveyed the messenger. The liberty, it must be remarked, was not a
usual preliminary in the great city, the cosmopolitanism of which had
been long established; that is to say, a face, a figure, or a mode, to
gain a second look from one of its denizens, had then, as it has now, to
be grossly outlandish. In this instance the owner of the stall indulged
a positive stare. He had seen, he thought, representatives of all known
nationalities, but never one like the present visitor--never one so
pinkish in complexion, and so very bias-eyed--never one who wrapped and
re-wrapped himself in a single shawl so entirely, making it answer all
the other vestments habitual to men. The latter peculiarity was more
conspicuous in consequence of a sack of brown silk hanging loosely from
the shoulder, with leaves and flowers done in dazzling embroidery down
the front and around the edges. And then the slippers were of silk not
less rich with embroidery, while over the bare head a sunshade of bamboo
and paper brilliantly painted was carried.

Too well bred to persist in the stare or attempt to satisfy his
curiosity by a direct question, the proprietor opened the letter, and
began reading it. His neighbors less considerate ran together, and
formed a crowd around the stranger, who nevertheless bore the inspection
composedly, apparently unconscious of anything to make him such a
cynosure.

The paper which the removal of the envelope gave to the stall-keeper's
hand excited him the more. The delicacy of its texture, its softness to
the touch, its semi-transparency, were unlike anything he had ever seen;
it was not only foreign, but very foreign.

The lettering, however, was in Greek plainly done. He noticed first the
date; then, his curiosity becoming uncontrollable, and the missive being
of but one sheet, his eyes dropped to the place of signature. There was
no name there--only a seal--an impression on a surface of yellow wax of
the drooping figure of a man bound to a cross.

[Illustration]

At sight of the seal his eyes opened wider. He drew a long breath to
quiet a rising feeling, half astonishment, half awe. Retreating to a
bench near by, he seated himself, and presently became unmindful of the
messenger, of the crowd, of everything, indeed, except the letter and
the matters of which it treated.

The demand of the reader for a sight of the paper which could produce
such an effect upon a person who was not more than an ordinary dealer in
an Eastern market may by this time have become imperious; wherefore it
is at once submitted in free translation. Only the date is modernized.

"ISLAND IN THE OVER-SEA. FAR EAST. _May_ 15, A.D. 1447.

"Uel, Son of Jahdai.

"Peace to thee and all thine!

"If thou hast kept faithfully the heirlooms of thy progenitors, somewhere
in thy house there is now a duplication of the seal which thou wilt find
hereto attached; only that one is done in gold. The reference is to prove
to thee a matter I am pleased to assert, knowing it will at least put
thee upon inquiry--I knew thy father, thy grandfather, and his father,
and others of thy family further back than it is wise for me to declare;
and I loved them, for they were a virtuous and goodly race, studious to
do the will of the Lord God of Israel, and acknowledging no other;
therein manifesting the chiefest of human excellences. To which, as more
directly personal to thyself, I will add that qualities of men, like
qualities in plants, are transmissible, and go they unmixed through
many generations, they make a kind. Therefore, at this great distance,
and though I have never looked into thy face, or touched thy hand, or
heard thy voice, I know thee, and give thee trust confidently. The son
of thy father cannot tell the world what he has of me here, or that
there is a creature like unto me living, or that he has to do with me in
the least; and as the father would gladly undertake my requests, even
those I now reveal unto thee, not less willingly will his son undertake
them. Refusal would be the first step toward betrayal.

"With this preface, O Son of Jahdai, I write without fear, and freely;
imparting, first, that it is now fifty years since I set foot upon the
shores of this Island, which, for want of a name likely to be known to
thee, I have located and described as 'In the Over-Sea. Far East.' Its
people are by nature kindly disposed to strangers, and live simply and
affectionately. Though they never heard of the Nazarene whom the world
persists in calling the Christ, it is truth to say they better illustrate
his teachings, especially in their dealings with each other, than the
so-called Christians amongst whom thy lot is cast. Withal, however, I
have become weary, the fault being more in myself than in them. Desire
for change is the universal law. Only God is the same yesterday, to-day,
and to-morrow eternally. So I am resolved to seek once more the land of
our fathers and Jerusalem, for which I yet have tears. In her perfection,
she was more than beautiful; in her ruin, she is more than sacred.

"In the execution of my design, know thou next, O Son of Jahdai, that I
despatch my servant, Syama, intrusting him to deliver this letter. When
it is put into thy hand, note the day, and see if it be not exactly one
year from this 15 May, the time I have given him to make the journey,
which is more by sea than land. Thou mayst then know I am following him,
though with stoppages of uncertain duration; it being necessary for me
to cross from India to Mecca; thence to Kash-Cush, and down the Nile to
Cairo. Nevertheless I hope to greet thee in person within six months
after Syama hath given thee this report.

"The sending a courier thus in advance is with a design of which I think
it of next importance to inform thee.

"It is my purpose to resume residence in Constantinople; for that, I
must have a house. Syama, amongst other duties in my behalf, is charged
to purchase and furnish one, and have it ready to receive me when I
arrive. The day is long passed since a Khan had attractions for me. Much
more agreeable is it to think my own door will open instantly at my
knock. In this affair thou canst be of service which shall be both
remembered and gratefully recompensed. He hath no experience in the
matter of property in thy city; thou hast; it is but natural, therefore,
if I pray thou bring it into practice by assisting him in the selection,
in perfecting the title, and in all else the project may require doing;
remembering only that the tenement be plain and comfortable, not rich;
for, alas! the time is not yet when the children of Israel may live
conspicuously in the eye of the Christian world.

"Thou wilt find Syama shrewd and of good judgment, older than he seemeth,
and quick to render loyalty for my sake. Be advised also that he is deaf
and dumb; yet, if in speaking thou turn thy face to him, and use the
Greek tongue, he will understand thee by the motion of thy lips, and make
answer by signs.

"Finally, be not afraid to accept this commission on account of pecuniary
involvement. Syama hath means of procuring all the money he may require,
even to extravagance; at the same time he is forbidden to contract a
debt, except it be to thee for kindness done, all which he will report to
me so I may pay them fitly.

"In all essential things Syama hath full instructions; besides, he is
acquainted with my habits and tastes; wherefore I conclude this writing
by saying I hope thou wilt render him aid as indicated, and that when I
come thou wilt allow me to relate myself to thee as father to son, in
all things a help, in nothing a burden.

"Again, O Son of Jahdai, to thee and thine--Peace!"

[Seal.]

The son of Jahdai, at the conclusion of the reading, let his hands fall
heavily in his lap, while he plunged into a study which the messenger
with his foreign airs could not distract.

Very great distance is one of the sublimities most powerful over the
imagination. The letter had come from an Island he had never heard
named. An Island in the Over-Sea which doubtless washed the Eastern end
of the earth, wherever that might be. And the writer! How did he get
there? And what impelled him to go?

A chill shot the thinker's nerves. He suddenly remembered that in his
house there was a cupboard in a wall, with two shelves devoted to
storage of heirlooms; on the upper shelf lay the _torah_ of immemorial
usage in his family; the second contained cups of horn and metal, old
phylacteries, amulets, and things of vertu in general, and of such
addition and multiplication through the ages that he himself could not
have made a list of them; in fact, now his attention was aroused, he
recalled them a mass of colorless and formless objects which had ceased
to have history or value. Amongst them, however, a seal in the form of a
medallion in gold recurred to him; but whether the impression upon it
was raised or sunken he could not have certainly said; nor could he have
told what the device was. His father and grandfather had esteemed it
highly, and the story they told him about it divers times when he was a
child upon their knees he could repeat quite substantially.

A man committed an indignity to Jesus the pretended _Christ_, who, in
punishment, condemned him to linger on the earth until in the fulness
of time he should come again; and the man had gone on living through the
centuries. Both the father and grandfather affirmed the tale to be true;
they had known the unfortunate personally; yet more, they declared he
had been an intimate of the family, and had done its members through
generations friendlinesses without number; in consequence they had come
to consider him one of them in love. They had also said that to their
knowledge it was his custom to pray for death regularly as the days came
and went. He had repeatedly put himself in its way; yet curiously it
passed him by, until he at last reached a conviction he could not die.

Many years had gone since the stall-keeper last heard the tale, and
still more might have been counted since the man disappeared, going no
one knew whither.

But he was not dead! He was coming again! It was too strange to believe!
It could not be! Yet one thing was clear--whatever the messenger might
be, or presuming him a villain, whatever the lie he thought to make
profitable, appeal could be safely and cheaply made to the seal in the
cupboard. As a witness it, too, was deaf and dumb; on its face
nevertheless there was revelation and the truth.

Through the momentary numbness of his faculties so much the son of
Jahdai saw, and he did not wait. Signing the messenger to follow, he
passed into a closet forming part of the stall, and the two being alone,
he spoke in Greek.

"Be thou seated here," he said, "and wait till I return."

The messenger smiled and bowed, and took seat; thereupon Uel drew his
turban down to his ears, and, letter in hand, started home.

His going was rapid; sometimes he almost ran. Acquaintances met him on
the street, but he did not see them; if they spoke to him, he did not
hear. Arrived at his own door, he plunged into the house as if a mob
were at his heels. Now he was before the cupboard! Little mercy the
phylacteries and amulets, the bridle-spanglery of donkeys, the trinketry
of women, his ancestresses once famous for beauty or many children--
little mercy the motley collection on the second shelf received from his
hands. He tossed them here and there, and here and there again, but the
search was vain. Ah, good Lord! was the medalet lost? And of all times,
then?

The failure made him the more anxious; his hands shook while he essayed
the search once more; and he reproached himself. The medal was valuable
for its gold, and besides it was a sacred souvenir. Conscience stung
him. Over and over he shifted and turned the various properties on the
shelf, the last time systematically and with fixed attention. When he
stopped to rest, the perspiration stood on his forehead in large drops,
and he fairly wrung his hands, crying, "It is not here--it is lost! My
God, how shall I know the truth now!"

At this pause it is to be said that the son of Jahdai was wifeless. The
young woman whom he had taken as helpmeet in dying had left him a girl
baby who, at the time of our writing, was about thirteen years old.
Under the necessity thus imposed, he found a venerable daughter of
Jerusalem to serve him as housekeeper, and charge herself with care of
the child. Now he thought of that person; possibly she knew where the
seal was. He turned to seek her, and as he did so, the door of an
adjoining room opened, and the child appeared.

He held her very dear, because she had the clear olive complexion of her
mother, and the same soft black eyes with which the latter used to smile
upon him in such manner that words were never required to assure him of
her love. And the little one was bright and affectionate, and had
prettinesses in speech, and sang low and contentedly the day long. Often
as he took her on his lap and studied her fondly, he was conscious she
promised to be gentle and beautiful as the departed one; beyond which it
never occurred to him there could be superior excellences.

Distressed as the poor man was, he took the child in his arms, and
kissed her on the round cheek, and was putting her down when he saw the
medal at her throat, hanging from a string. She told him the housekeeper
had given it to her as a plaything. Untied at last--for his impatience
was nigh uncontrollable--he hurried with the recovered treasure to a
window, to look at the device raised upon it; then, his heart beating
rapidly, he made comparison with the impression sunk in the yellow wax
at the foot of the letter; he put them side by side--there could be no
mistake--the impression on the wax might have been made by the
medallion!

Let it not be supposed now that the son of Jahdai did not appreciate the
circumstance which had befallen. The idea of a man suffering a doom so
strange affected him, while the doom itself, considered as a judgment,
was simply awful; but his thought did not stop there--it carried him
behind both the man and the doom. Who was He with power by a word, not
merely to change the most fixed of the decrees of nature, but, by
suspending it entirely, hold an offending wretch alive for a period
already encroaching upon the eternal? One less firmly rooted in the
faith of his fathers would have stood aghast at the conclusion to which
the answer as an argument led--a conclusion admitting no escape once it
was reached. The affair in hand, however, despite its speculative side,
was real and urgent; and the keeper of the stall, remembering the
messenger in half imprisonment, fell to thinking of the practical
questions before him; first of which was the treatment he should accord
his correspondent's requests.

This did not occupy him long. His father, he reflected, would have
received the stranger cordially, and as became one of such close
intimacy; so should he. The requests were easy, and carried no pecuniary
liability with them; he was merely to aid an inexperienced servant in
the purchase of a dwelling-house, the servant having plenty of funds.
True, when the master presented himself in person, it would be necessary
to determine exactly the footing to be accorded him; but for the present
that might be deferred. If, in the connection, the son of Jahdai dwelt
briefly upon possible advantages to himself, the person being presumably
rich and powerful, it was human, and he is to be excused for it.

The return to the market was less hurried than the going from it. There
Uel acted promptly. He took Syama to his house, and put him into the
guest-chamber, assuring him it was a pleasure. Yet when night came he
slept poorly. The incidents of the day were mixed with much that was
unaccountable, breaking the even tenor of his tradesman's life by
unwonted perplexities. He had not the will to control his thoughts; they
would go back to the excitement of the moment when he believed the
medallion lost; and as points run together in the half-awake state on
very slender threads, he had a vision of a mysterious old man coming
into his house, and in some way taking up and absorbing the life of his
child. When the world at last fell away and left him asleep, it was with
a dread tapping heavily at his heart.

The purchase which Uel was requested to assist in making proved a light
affair. After diligent search through the city, Syama decided to take a
two-story house situated in a street running along the foot of the hill
to-day crowned by the mosque Sultan Selim, although it was then the site
of an unpretentious Christian church. Besides a direct eastern frontage,
it was in the divisional margin between the quarters of the Greeks,
which were always clean, and those of the Jews, which were always filthy.
It was also observed that neither the hill nor the church obstructed the
western view from the roof; that is to say, it was so far around the
upper curve of the hill that a thistle-down would be carried by a
south-east wind over many of the proudest Greek residences and dropped
by the Church of the Holy Virgin on Blacherne, or in the imperial garden
behind the Church. In addition to these advantages, the son of Jahdai was
not unmindful that his own dwelling, a small but comfortable structure
also of wood, was just opposite across the street. Everything considered,
the probabilities were that Syama's selection would prove satisfactory to
his master. The furnishment was a secondary matter.

It is to be added that in course of the business there were two things
from which Uel extracted great pleasure; Syama always had money to pay
promptly for everything he bought; in the next place, communication with
him was astonishingly easy. His eyes made up for the deficiency in
hearing; while his signs, gestures, and looks were the perfection of
pantomime. Of evenings the child never tired watching him in
conversation.

While we go now to bring the Wanderer up, it should not be forgotten
that the house, completely furnished, is awaiting him, and he has only
to knock at the door, enter, and be at home.




CHAPTER II

THE PILGRIM AT EL KATIF


The bay of Bahrein indents the western shore of the Persian Gulf. Hard
by the point on the north at which it begins its inland bend rise the
whitewashed, one-story mud-houses of the town El Katif. Belonging to the
Arabs, the most unchangeable of peoples, both the town and the bay were
known in the period of our story by their present names.

The old town in the old time derived importance chiefly from the road
which, leading thence westwardly through Hejr Yemameh, brought up, after
many devious stretches across waterless wastes of sand, at El Derayeh, a
tented capital of the Bedouins, and there forked, one branch going to
Medina, the other to Mecca. In other words, El Katif was to Mecca on the
east the gate Jeddo was to it on the west.

When, in annual recurrence, the time for the indispensable Hajj, or
Pilgrimage, came, the name of the town was on the lips of men and women
beyond the Green Sea, and southwardly along the coast of Oman, and in
the villages and dowars back of the coast under the peaks of Akdar, only
a little less often than those of the holy cities. Then about the first
of July the same peoples as pilgrims from Irak, Afghanistan, India, and
beyond those countries even, there being an East and a Far East, and
pilgrims from Arabia, crowded together, noisy, quarrelsome, squalid,
accordant in but one thing--a determination to make the Hajj lest they
might die as Jews or Christians.

The law required the pilgrim to be at Mecca in the month of Ramazan, the
time the Prophet himself had become a pilgrim. From El Katif the direct
journey might be made in sixty days, allowing an average march of twelve
miles. By way of Medina, it could be made to permit the votary to be
present and participate in the observances usual on the day of the
Mysterious Night of Destiny.

The journey moreover was attended with dangers. Winds, drouth, sand
storms beset the way; and there were beasts always hungry, and robbers
always watchful. The sun beat upon the hills, curtained the levels with
mirage, and in the _fiumuras_ kindled invisible fires; so in what
the unacclimated breathed and in what they drank of the waters of the
land there were diseases and death.

The Prophet having fixed the month of Ramazan for the Hajj, pilgrims
accustomed themselves to assemblage at Constantinople, Damascus, Cairo
and Bagdad. If they could not avoid the trials of the road, they could
lessen them. Borrowing the term caravan as descriptive of the march,
they established markets at all convenient places.

This is the accounting for one of the notable features of El Katif from
the incoming of June till the caravan extended itself on the road, and
finally disappeared in the yellow farness of the Desert. One could not
go amiss for purveyors in general. Dealers in horses, donkeys, camels,
and dromedaries abounded. The country for miles around appeared like a
great stock farm. Herds overran the lean earth. Makers of harness,
saddles, box-houdahs, and swinging litters of every variety and price,
and contractors of camels, horses, and trains complete did not wait to
be solicited; the competition between them was too lively for dignity.
Hither and thither shepherds drove fatted sheep in flocks, selling them
on the hoof. In shady places sandal merchants and clothiers were
established; while sample tents spotted the whole landscape. Hucksters
went about with figs, dates, dried meats and bread. In short, pilgrims
could be accommodated with every conceivable necessary. They had only to
cry out, and the commodity was at hand.

Amongst the thousands who arrived at El Katif in the last of June, 1448,
was a man whose presence made him instantly an object of general
interest. He came from the south in a galley of eight oars manned by
Indian seamen, and lay at anchor three days before landing. His ship
bore nothing indicative of nationality except the sailors. She was
trim-looking and freshly painted; otherwise there was nothing uncommon
in her appearance. She was not for war--that was plain. She floated too
lightly to be laden; wherefore those who came to look at her said she
could not be in commercial service.

Almost before furling sail, an awning was stretched over her from bow to
stern--an awning which from the shore appeared one great shawl of
variegated colors. Thereupon the wise in such matters decided the owner
was an Indian Prince vastly rich, come, like a good Mohammedan, to
approve his faith by pilgrimage.

This opinion the stranger's conduct confirmed. While he did not himself
appear ashore, he kept up a busy communication by means of his small
boat. For three days, it carried contractors of camels and supplies
aboard, and brought them back.

They described him of uncertain age; he might be sixty, he might be
seventy-five. While rather under medium height, he was active and
perfectly his own master. He sat in the shade of the awning cross-legged.
His rug was a marvel of sheeny silk. He talked Arabic, but with an Indian
accent. His dress was Indian--a silken shirt, a short jacket, large
trousers, and a tremendous white turban on a red tarbousche, held by an
aigrette in front that was a dazzle of precious stones such as only a
Rajah could own. His attendants were few, but they were gorgeously
attired, wore _shintyan_ swung in rich belts from their shoulders, and
waited before him speechless and in servile posture. One at his back
upheld an umbrella of immense spread. He indulged few words, and they
were strictly business. He wanted a full outfit for the Hajj; could the
contractor furnish him twenty camels of burden, and four swift
dromedaries? Two of the latter were to carry a litter for himself; the
other two were for his personal attendants, whom he desired furnished
with well-shaded _shugdufs_. The camels he would load with provisions.
While speaking, he would keep his eyes upon the person addressed with an
expression uncomfortably searching. Most extraordinary, however, he did
not once ask about prices.

One of the Shaykhs ventured an inquiry.

"How great will his Highness' suite be?"

"Four."

The Shaykh threw up his hands.

"O Allah! Four dromedaries and twenty camels for four men!"

"Abuser of the salt," said the stranger calmly, "hast thou not heard of
the paschal charity, and of the fine to the poor? Shall I go empty
handed to the most sacred of cities?"

Finally an agent was found who, in concert with associates, undertook to
furnish the high votary with all he asked complete.

The morning of the fourth day after his arrival the Indian was pulled
ashore, and conducted out of town a short distance to where, on a rising
ground, a camp had been set up provisionally for his inspection. There
were tents, one for storage of goods and provisions; one for the suite;
one for the chief Shaykh, the armed guards, the tent pitchers, and the
camel drivers; and a fourth one, larger than the others, for the Prince
himself. With the dromedaries, camels, and horses, the camp was
accepted; then, as was the custom, the earnest money was paid. By set of
sun the baggage was removed from the ship, and its partition into
cargoes begun. The Prince of India had no difficulty in hiring all the
help he required.

Of the thirty persons who constituted the train ten were armed horsemen,
whose appearance was such that, if it were answered by a commensurate
performance, the Prince might at his leisure march irrespective of the
caravan. Nor was he unmindful in the selection of stores for the
journey. Long before the sharp bargainers with whom he dealt were
through with him, he had won their best opinion, not less by his
liberality than for his sound judgment. They ceased speaking of him
sneeringly as the _miyan_. [Footnote: Barbarous Indian]

Soon as the bargain was bound, the stranger's attendants set about the
furnishment of the master's tent. Outside they painted it green. The
interior they divided into two equal compartments; one for reception,
the other for a _maglis_ or drawing-room; and besides giving the
latter divans and carpets, they draped the ceiling in the most tasteful
manner with the shawls which on the ship had served for awning.

At length, everything in the catalogue of preparation having been
attended to, it remained only to wait the day of general departure; and
for that, as became his greatness, the Prince kept his own quarters,
paying no attention to what went on around him. He appeared a man who
loved solitude, and was averse to thinking in public.




CHAPTER III

THE YELLOW AIR
[Footnote: The plague is known amongst Arabs as "the Yellow Air."]


One evening the reputed Indian sat by the door of his tent alone. The
red afterglow of the day hung in the western sky. Overhead the stars
were venturing timidly out. The camels were at rest, some chewing their
cuds, others asleep, their necks stretched full length upon the warm
earth. The watchmen in a group talked in low voices. Presently the cry
of a muezzin, calling to prayer, flew in long, quavering, swelling notes
through the hushed air. Others took up the call, clearer or fainter
according to the distance; and so was it attuned to the feeling invoked
by the conditions of the moment that no effort was required of a listener
to think it a refrain from the sky. The watchmen ceased debating, drew a
little apart from each other, spread their _abbas_ on the ground, and
stepping upon them barefooted, their faces turned to where Mecca lay,
began the old unchangeable prayer of Islam--_God is God, and Mahomet is
His Prophet_.

The pilgrim at the tent door arose, and when his rude employes were
absorbed in their devotions, like them, he too prayed, but very
differently.

"God of Israel--my God!" he said, in a tone hardly more than speaking to
himself. "These about me, my fellow creatures, pray thee in the hope of
life, I pray thee in the hope of death. I have come up from the sea, and
the end was not there; now I will go into the Desert in search of it. Or
if I must live, Lord, give me the happiness there is in serving thee.
Thou hast need of instruments of good; let me henceforth be one of them,
that by working for thy honor, I may at last enjoy the peace of the
blessed--Amen."

Timing his movements with those of the watchmen, he sank to his knees,
and repeated the prayer; when they fell forward, their faces to the
earth in the _rik'raths_ so essential by the Mohammedan code, he
did the same. When they were through the service, he went on with it
that they might see him. A careful adherence to this conduct gained him
in a short time great repute for sanctity, making the pilgrimage
enjoyable as well as possible to him.

The evening afterglow faded out, giving the world to night and the quiet
it affects; still the melancholy Indian walked before his tent, his
hands clasped behind him, his chin in the beard on his breast. Let us
presume to follow his reflections.

"Fifty years! A lifetime to all but me. Lord, how heavy is thy hand when
thou art in anger!"

He drew a long breath, and groaned.

"Fifty years! That they are gone, let those mourn to whom time is
measured in scanty dole."

He became retrospective.

"The going to Cipango was like leaving the world. War had yielded to
contentions about religion. I wearied of them also. My curse is to weary
of everything. I wonder if the happiness found in the affection of women
is more lasting?"

He pursued the thought awhile, finishing with a resolution.

"If the opportunity comes my way, I will try it. I remember yet the
mother of my Lael, though I did not understand the measure of the
happiness she brought me until she died."

He returned then to the first subject.

"When will men learn that faith is a natural impulse, and pure religion
but faith refined of doubt?"

The question was succeeded by a wordless lapse in his mind, the better
apparently to prolong the pleasure he found in the idea.

"God help me," he presently resumed, "to bring about an agreement in
that definition of religion! There can be no reform or refinement of
faith except God be its exclusive subject; and so certainly it leads to
lopping off all parasitical worships such as are given to Christ and
Mahomet.... Fifty years ago the sects would have tortured me had I
mentioned God as a principle broad and holy enough for them to stand
upon in compromise of their disputes; they may not be better disposed
now, yet I will try them. If I succeed I will not be a vulgar monument
builder like Alexander; neither will I divide a doubtful fame with
Caesar. My glory will be unique. I will have restored mankind to their
true relations with God. I will be their Arbiter in Religion. Then
surely"--he lifted his face appealingly as to a person enthroned amidst
the stars--"surely thou wilt release me from this too long life.... If I
fail"--he clinched his hands--"if I fail, they may exile me, they may
imprison me, they may stretch me on the rack, but they cannot kill me."

Then he walked rapidly, his head down, like a man driven. When he
stopped it was to say to himself uncertainly:

"I feel weak at heart. Misgivings beset me. Lord, Lord, how long am I to
go on thus cheating myself? If thou wilt not pardon me, how can I hope
honor from my fellow men? Why should I struggle to serve them?"

Again he clinched his hands.

"Oh, the fools, the fools! Will they never be done? When I went away
they were debating, Was Mahomet a Prophet? Was Christ the Messiah? And
they are debating yet. What miseries I have seen come of the dispute!"

From this to the end, the monologue was an incoherent discursive medley,
now plaintive, now passionate, at times prayerful, then exultant. As he
proceeded, he seemed to lose sight of his present aim at doing good in
the hope of release from termless life, and become the Jew he was born.

"The orators called in the sword, and they plied each other with it
through two hundred years and more. There were highways across Europe
blazoned with corpses.... But they were great days. I remember them.
remember Manuel's appeal to Gregory. I was present at the Council of
Clermont. I heard Urban's speech. I saw Walter, the beggar of Burgundy,
a fugitive in Constantinople; but his followers, those who went out with
him--where were they? I saw Peter, the eremite and coward, dragged back,
a deserter, to the plague-smitten camps of Antioch. I helped vote
Godfrey King of Jerusalem, and carried a candle at his coronation. I saw
the hosts of Louis VII and Conrad, a million and more, swallowed up in
Iconia and the Pisidian mountains. Then, that the persecutors of my race
might not have rest, I marched with Saladin to the re-conquest of the
Holy City, and heard Philip and Richard answer his challenge. The brave
Kurd, pitying the sorrows of men, at last agreed to tolerate Christians
in Jerusalem as pilgrims; and there the strife might have ended, but I
played upon the ambition of Baldwin, and set Europe in motion again. No
fault of mine that the knight stopped at Constantinople as King of the
East. Then the second Frederick presumed to make a Christian city of
Jerusalem. I resorted to the Turks, and they burned and pillaged it, and
captured St. Louis, the purest and best of the crusaders. He died in my
arms. Never before had I a tear for man or woman of his faith! Then came
Edward I., and with him the struggle as a contest of armies terminated.
By decision of the sword, Mahomet _was_ the Prophet of God, and
Christ but the carpenter's son.... By permission of the Kaliphs, the
Christians might visit Jerusalem as pilgrims. A palmer's staff in place
of a sword! For shield, a beggar's scrip! But the bishops accepted, and
then ushered in an age of fraud, Christian against Christian.... The
knoll on which the Byzantine built his church of the Holy Sepulchre is
not the Calvary. That the cowled liars call the Sepulchre never held the
body of Christ. The tears of the millions of penitents have but watered
a monkish deceit.... Fools and blasphemers! The Via Dolorosa led out of
the Damascus gate on the north. The skull-shaped hill beyond that gate
is the Golgotha. Who should know it better than I? The Centurion asked
for a guide; I walked with him. Hyssop was the only green thing growing
upon the mount; nothing but hyssop has grown there since. At the base on
the west was a garden, and the Sepulchre was in the garden. From the
foot of the cross I looked toward the city, and there was a sea of men
extending down to the gate.... I know!--I know!--I and misery know!...
When I went out fifty years ago there was an agreement between the
ancient combatants; each vied with the other in hating and persecuting
the Jew, and there was no limit to the afflictions he endured from
them.... Speak thou, O Hebron, city of the patriarchs! By him who sits
afar, and by him near unto thee, by the stars this peaceful night, and
by the Everlasting who is above the stars, be thou heard a witness
testifying! There was a day when thou didst stand open to the children
of Israel; for the cave and the dead within it belonged to them. Then
Herod built over it, and shut it up, though without excluding the
tribes. The Christian followed Herod; yet the Hebrew might pay his way
in. After the Christian, the Moslem; and now nor David the King, nor son
of his, though they alighted at the doors from chariots, and beat upon
them with their crowns and sceptres, could pass in and live.... Kings
have come and gone, and generations, and there is a new map from which
old names have been dropped. As respects religion, alas! the divisions
remain--here a Mohammedan, there a Christian, yonder a Judean.... From
my door I study these men, the children of those in life at my going
into exile. Their ardor is not diminished. To kiss a stone in which
tradition has planted a saying of God, they will defy the terrors of the
Desert, heat, thirst, famine, disease, death. I bring them an old idea
in a new relation--God, giver of life and power to Son and Prophet--God,
alone entitled to worship--God, a principle of Supreme Holiness to which
believers can bring their creeds and doctrines for mergence in a treaty
of universal brotherhood. Will they accept it? ... Yesterday I saw a
Schiah and a Sunite meet, and the old hate darkened their faces as they
looked at each other. Between them there is only a feud of Islamites;
how much greater is their feud with Christians? How immeasurably greater
the feud between Christian and Jew? ... My heart misgives me! Lord! Can
it be I am but cherishing a dream?"

At sight of a man approaching through the dusk, he calmed himself.

"Peace to thee, Hadji," said the visitor, halting.

"Is it thou, Shaykh?"

"It is I, my father's son. I have a report to make."

"I was thinking of certain holy things of priceless worth, sayings of
the Prophet. Tell me what thou hast?"

The Shaykh saluted him, and returned, "The caravan will depart to-morrow
at sunrise."

"Be it so. We are ready. I will designate our place in the movement.
Thou art dismissed."

"O Prince! I have more to report."

"More?"

"A vessel came in to-day from Hormuz on the eastern shore, bringing a
horde of beggars."

"Bismillah! It was well I hired of thee a herd of camels, and loaded
them with food. I shall pay my fine to the poor early."

The Shaykh shook his head.

"That they are beggars is nothing," he said. "Allah is good to all his
creatures. The jackals are his, and must be fed. For this perhaps the
unfortunates were blown here by the angel that rides the yellow air.
Four corpses were landed, and their clothes sold in the camp."

"Thou wouldst say," the Prince rejoined, "that the plague will go with
us to the Kaaba. Content thee, Shaykh. Allah will have his
way."

"But my men are afraid."

"I will place a drop of sweetened water on their lips, and bring them
safe through, though they are dying. Tell them as much."

The Shaykh was departing when the Prince, shrewdly suspecting it was he
who feared, called him back.

"How call ye the afternoon prayer, O Shaykh?"

"El Asr."

"What didst thou when it was called?"

"Am I not a believer? I prayed."

"And thou hast heard the Arafat sermon?"

"Even so, O Prince."

"Then, as thou art a believer, and a hadji, O Shaykh, thou and all with
thee shalt see the Khatib on his dromedary, and hear him again. Only
promise me to stay till his last _Amin_."

"I promise," said the Shaykh, solemnly.

"Go--but remember prayer is the bread of faith."

The Shaykh was comforted, and withdrew.

With the rising of the sun next day the caravan, numbering about three
thousand souls, defiled confusedly out of the town. The Prince, who
might have been first, of choice fell in behind the rest.

"Why dost thou take this place, O Prince?" asked the Shaykh, who was
proud of his company, and their comparative good order.

He received for answer, "The blessings of Allah are with the dying whom
the well-to-do and selfish in front have passed unnoticed."

The Shaykh repeated the saying to his men, and they replied: "Ebn-Hanife
was a Dervish: so is this Prince--exalted be his name!"

Eulogy could go no further.




CHAPTER IV

EL ZARIBAH


"I will be their Arbiter in Religion," said the Indian Mystic in his
monologue.

This is to be accepted as the motive of the scheme the singular man was
pursuing in the wastes of Arabia.

It must be taken of course with his other declaration--"There can be no
reform or refinement of faith except God be its exclusive subject; and
so certainly it leads to lopping off all parasitical worships such as
are given to Christ and Mahomet."

Fifty years prior, disgusted with the endless and inconsequential
debates and wars between Islam and Christianity, he had betaken himself
to Cipango, [Footnote: Supposably Japan.] wherever that might be. There,
in a repentant hour, he had conceived the idea of a Universal Religious
Brotherhood, with God for its accordant principle; and he was now
returned to present and urge the compromise. In more distinct statement,
he was making the pilgrimage to ascertain from personal observation if
the Mohammedan portion of the world was in a consenting mood. It was not
his first visit to Mecca; but the purpose in mind gave the journey a new
zest; and, as can be imagined, nothing in the least indicative of the
prevalent spirit of the Hajj escaped him. Readers following the
narrative should keep this explanation before them.

From El Derayah the noble pilgrim had taken the longer route by way of
Medina, where he scrupulously performed the observances decreed for the
faithful at the Mosque of the Prophet. Thence he descended with the
caravan from Damascus.

Dawn of the sixth of September broke over the rolling plain known as the
Valley of El Zaribah, disclosing four tents pitched on an eminence to
the right of a road running thence south-west. These tents, connected by
ropes, helped perfect an enclosure occupied by horses, donkeys, camels
and dromedaries, and their cumbrous equipments. Several armed men kept
watch over the camp.

The Valley out to the pink granite hills rimming it round wore a fresh
green tint in charming contrast with the tawny-black complexion of the
region through which the day's journey had stretched. Water at a shallow
depth nourished camel grass in patches, and Theban palms, the latter
much scattered and too small to be termed trees. The water, and the
nearness of the Holy City--only one day distant--had, in a time long
gone, won for El Zaribah its double appointment of meeting place for the
caravans and place of the final ceremony of assumption of the costume
and vows _El Ihram_.

The Prophet himself had prescribed the ceremony; so the pilgrims in the
camp on the eminence, the better to observe it and at the same time get
a needful rest, had come up during the night in advance of the caravans.
In other words, the Prince of India--the title by which he was now
generally known--might, at the opening hour of the day, have been found
asleep in the larger of the four tents; the one with the minaret in
miniature so handsomely gilded and of such happy effect over the centre
pole.

Along the roadsides and on the high grounds of the Valley other tints
were visible, while faint columns of smoke arising out of the hollows
told of preparations for breakfast. These signified the presence of
hucksters, barbers, costume dealers, and traders generally, who, in
anticipation of the arrival of the caravans, had come from the city to
exercise their callings. Amongst them, worthy of special attention, was
a multitude of professional guides, [Footnote: _Mutawif_.] ready
for a trifling hire to take charge of uninitiated pilgrims, and lead
them regardfully through the numerous ceremonies to which they were
going.

Shortly after noon the Prince called in a guide, and several barbers,
men with long gowns, green turbans, brass basins, sharp knives, and
bright bladed scissors. The assumption of the real pilgrimage by his
people was then begun. Each man submitted his head, mustaches, and nails
to the experts, and bathed and perfumed himself, and was dusted with
musk. Next the whole party put off their old garments, and attired
themselves in the two white vestments _El Ihram_.[Footnote: A mantle and
skirt of white cloth unsewn.] The change of apparel was for the better.
Finally the votaries put on sandals peculiar in that nothing pertaining
to them might cover the instep; then they stood up in a row faced toward
Mecca, and repeated the ancient formula of dedication of the _Ihram_ to
the Almighty slowly intoned for them by the guide.

The solemn demeanor of the men during the ceremony, which was tedious
and interspersed with prayers and curious recitals, deeply impressed the
Prince, who at the end of the scene retired into his tent, with his
three mute attendants, and there performed the vows for himself and
them. There also they all assumed the indispensable costume. Then, as he
well might do, the law permitting him to seek the shade of a house or a
tent, he had a rug spread before his door, where, in the fresh white
attire, he seated himself, and with a jar of expressed juice of
pomegranates at his side made ready to witness the passing of the
caravans, the dust of which was reported visible in the east.

Afterwhile the cloud of dust momentarily deepening over in that
direction was enlivened by a clash of cymbals and drums, blent with
peals of horns, the fine, high music yet cherished by warriors of the
Orient. Presently a body of horsemen appeared, their spear points
glistening in the sunlight. A glance at them, then his gaze fixed upon a
chief in leading.

The sun had been hot all day; the profiles of the low hills were dim
with tremulous haze lying scorchingly upon them; the furred hulks of the
camels in the enclosure looked as if they were smoking; the sky held
nothing living except two kites which sailed the upper air slowly, their
broad wings at widest extension; yet the chief persisted in wearing his
arms and armor, like the soldiers behind him. Ere long he rode up and
halted in front of the Prince, and near by.

His head was covered with a visorless casque, slightly conical, from the
edge of which, beginning about the temples, a cape of fine steel rings,
buckled under the chin, enveloped the neck and throat, and fell loosely
over the neck and shoulders, and part way down the back. A shirt of
linked mail, pliable as wool, defended the body and the arms to the
elbows; overalls of like material, save that the parts next the saddle
were leather, clothed the thighs and legs. As the casque and every other
link of the mail were plated with gold, the general effect at a distance
was as if the whole suit were gold. A surcoat of light green cloth hung
at the back half hiding a small round shield of burnished brass; at the
left side there was a cimeter, and in the right hand a lance. The saddle
was of the high-seated style yet affected by horsemen of Circassia; at
the pommel a bow and well-filled quiver were suspended, and as the
stirrups were in fact steel slippers the feet were amply protected by
them.

At sight of the martial figure, the Indian, in admiration, arose to a
sitting posture. Such, he thought, were the warriors who followed
Saladin! And when the stranger, reaching the summit of the eminence,
turned out of the road coming apparently to the door of the tent, he
involuntarily sprang to his feet ready to do him honor.

The face, then plainly seen, though strong of feature, and thoroughly
bronzed, was that of a young man not more than twenty-two or three,
dark-eyed, mustached and bearded, and of a serious though pleasant
expression. He kept his seat with ease and grace; if he and the
broad-chested dark-bay horse were not really one, they were one in
spirit; together they wrought the impression which was the origin of
_majesty_, a title for kings.

While the Prince was turning this in his mind, the soldier pulled rein,
and stopped long enough to glance at him and at the camp; then, turning
the horse, he looked the other way, making it apparent he had taken
position on the rise to overlook the plain, and observe the coming and
dispersion of the caravans.

Another mounted man ascended the hill, armed and armored like the first
one, though not so richly, and bearing a standard of dulled yellow silk
hanging from a gilded staff. The ground of the standard was filled with
inscriptions in red lettering, leaving the golden crescent and star on
the point of the staff to speak of nationality. The bearer of the flag
dismounted, and at a sign planted it in the ground.

Seeing his Shaykh, the Prince called him:

"Who is the warrior yonder?--He in the golden armor?"

"The Emir El Hajj, [Footnote: Chief officer of the Pilgrimage. The
appointment was considered the highest favor in the Sultan's gift.] O
Prince."

"He the Emir El Hajj!--And so young?--Oh! a hero of the Serail. The
Kislar Aga extolled him one day."

"Thy remark and common report, O excellent Prince, could not journey
together on the same camel," said the Shaykh. "In the Khan at Medina I
heard his story. There is a famous enemy of the Turks, Iskander Bey, in
strength a Jinn, whose sword two men can scarcely lift. He appeared
before the army of the Sultan one day with a challenge. He whom thou
seest yonder alone dared go forth to meet him. The fought from morning
till noon; then they rested. 'Who art thou?' asked Iskander. 'I am a
slave of Amurath, the Commander of the Faithful, who hath commissioned
me to take thee to him dead or alive.' Iskander laughed, and said, 'I
know by thy tongue now thou art not a Turk; and to see if the Commander
of the Faithful, as thou callest him, hath it in soul to make much of
thy merit as a warrior, I will leave thee the honors of the combat, and
to go thy way.' Whereat they say he lifted his ponderous blade as not
heavier than the leaf of a dead palm, and strode from the field."

The Prince listened, and at the end said, like a man in haste:

"Thou knowest Nilo, my black man. Bring him hither."

The Shaykh saluted gravely, and hurried away, leaving his patron with
eyes fixed on the Emir, and muttering:

"So young!--and in such favor with the old Amurath! I will know him. If
I fail, he may be useful to me. Who knows? Who knows?"

He looked upward as if speaking to some one there.

Meantime the Emir was questioning the ensign.

"This pilgrim," he said, "appears well provided."

And the ensign answered:

"He is the Indian Prince of whom I have been hearing since we left
Medina."

"What hast thou heard?"

"That being rich, he is open-handed, making free with his aspers as
sowers with their seed."

"What more?"

"He is devout and learned as an Imam. His people call him Malik. Of the
prayers he knows everything. As the hours arrive, he lifts the curtains
of his litter, and calls them with a voice like Belal's. The students in
the mosque would expire of envy could they see him bend his back in the
benedictions."

"_Bismillah!_"

"They say also that in the journey from El Katif to Medina he travelled
behind the caravan when he might have been first."

"I see not the virtue in that. The hill-men love best to attack the
van."

"Tell me, O Emir, which wouldst thou rather face, a hill-man or the
Yellow Air?"

"The hill-man," said the other decidedly.

"And thou knowest when those in front abandon a man struck with the
disease?"

"Yes."

"And then?"

"The vultures and the jackals have their rights."

"True, O Emir, but listen. The caravan left El Katif three thousand
strong. Three hundred and more were struck with the plague, and left to
die; of those, over one hundred were brought in by the Indian. They say
it was for this he preferred to march in the rear. He himself teaches a
saying of the _Hadis_, that Allah leaves his choicest blessings to
be gathered from amidst the poor and the dying."

"If he thou describest be not a Prince of India as he claims, he is a"--

"A _Mashaikh_." [Footnote: Holier than a Dervish.]

"Ay, by the Most Merciful! But how did he save the castaways?"

"By a specific known only to kings and lords in his country. Can he but
reach the plague-struck before death, a drop on the tongue will work a
cure. Thou heardst what he did at Medina?"

"No."

"The Masjid El Nabawi [Footnote: Tomb of the Prophet.] as thou knowest,
O Emir, hath many poor who somehow live in its holy shade."

"I know it," said the Emir, with a laugh. "I went in the house rich, and
come out of it poorer than the poorest of the many who fell upon me at
the doors."

"Well," the ensign continued, not heeding the interruption, "he called
them in, and fed them; not with rice, and leeks, and bread ten days
sour, but with dishes to rejoice a Kaliph; and they went away swearing
the soul of the Prophet was returned to the world."

At this juncture a troop of horsemen ascending the hill brought the
conversation to a stop. The uniformity of arms and armor, the furniture
of the steeds, the order and regularity of the general movement,
identified the body as some favorite corps of the Turkish army; while
the music, the bristling lances, the many-folded turbans, and the
half-petticoated trousers threw about it a glamor of purest orientalism.

In the midst of the troop, a vanguard in front, a rearguard behind them,
central objects of care and reverence, moved the sacred camels, tall,
powerful brutes, more gigantic in appearance because of their
caparisoning and the extraordinary burdens they bore. They too were in
full regalia, their faces visored in silk and gold, their heads
resplendent with coronets of drooping feathers, their ample neck cloths
heavy with tasselled metallic fringing falling to the knees. Each one
was covered with a mantle of brocaded silk arranged upon a crinoline
form to give the effect somewhat of the curved expansion on the rim of a
bell. On the humps rose pavilions of silk in flowing draperies, on some
of which the entire _Fatihah_ was superbly embroidered. Over the
pavilions arose enormous aigrettes of green and black feathers. Such
were the _mahmals_, containing, among other things of splendor and
fabulous value, the _Kiswah_ which the Sultan was forwarding to the
Scherif of Mecca to take the place of the worn curtains then draping the
Tabernacle or House of God.

The plumed heads of the camels, and the yet more richly plumed pavilions,
exalted high above the horsemen, moved like things afloat. One may not
tell what calamities to body and soul would overtake the Emir El Hajj did
he fail to deliver the _mahmals_ according to consignment.

While the cavalry came up the hill the musicians exerted themselves; at
the top, the column turned and formed line left of the Emir, followed by
strings of camels loaded with military properties, and a horde of
camp-followers known as _farrash_. Presently another camp was reared upon
the eminence, its white roofs shining afar over the plain, and in their
midst one of unusual dimensions for the Sultan's gifts.

The caravans in the meantime began to emerge from the dun cloud of their
own raising, and spread at large over the land; and when the young Emir
was most absorbed in the spectacle the Prince's Shaykh approached him.

"O Emir!" the Arab said, after a salaam.

A wild fanfare of clarions, cymbals, and drums drowning his voice, he
drew nearer, almost to the stirrup.

"O Emir!" he said again.

This time he was heard.

"What wouldst thou?"

There was the slightest irritation in the tone, and on the countenance
of the speaker as he looked down; but the feeling behind it vanished at
sight of a negro whose native blackness was intensified by the spotless
white of the Ihram in which he was clad. Perhaps the bright platter of
beaten copper the black man bore, and the earthen bottle upon it,
flanked by two cups, one of silver, the other of crystal, had something
to do with the Emir's change of manner and mind.

"What wouldst thou?" he asked, slightly bending towards them.

The Shaykh answered:

"The most excellent Hadji, my patron, whom thou mayst see reclining at
the door of his tent, sends thee greeting such as is lawful from one
true believer to another travelling for the good of their souls to the
most Holy of Cities; and he prays thou wilt accept from him a draught of
this water of pomegranates, which he vouches cooling to the tongue and
healthful to the spirit, since he bought it at the door of the House of
the Prophet--to whom be prayer and praise forever."

During the speech, the negro, with a not unpractised hand, and conscious
doubtless of the persuasion there was in the sound and sparkle of the
beverage, especially to one not yet dismounted from a long ride on the
desert, filled the cups, and held them up for acceptance.

Stripping the left hand of its steel-backed gauntlet, the Emir lifted
the glass, and, with a bow to the pilgrim then arisen and standing by
the tent-door, drank it at a draught; whereupon, leaving the ensign to
pay like honor to the offered hospitality, he wheeled his horse, and
rode to make acknowledgment in person.

"The favor thou hast done me, O Hadji," he said, dismounted, "is in
keeping with the acts of mercy to thy fellow-men with which I hear thou
hast paved the road from El Katif as with mother-of-pearl."

"Speak not of them, I pray," the Wanderer answered, returning the bow he
received. "Who shall refuse obedience to the law?"

"I see plainly thou art a good man," the Emir said, bowing again.

"It would not become me to say so. Turning to something better, this
tent in the wilderness is mine, and as the sun is not declined to its
evening quarter, perhaps, O gallant Emir, it would be more to thy
comfort were we to go within. I, and all I have, are at thy command."

"I am grateful for the offer, most excellent Hadji--if the address be
lower than thy true entitlement, thou shouldst bring the Shaykh yonder
to account for misleading a stranger--but the sun and I have become
unmindful of each other, and duty is always the same in its demands at
least. Here, because the valley is the _micath_, [Footnote: Meeting
place.] the caravans are apt to run wild, and need a restraining hand. I
plead the circumstance in excuse for presuming to request that thou wilt
allow me to amend thy offer of courtesy."

The Emir paused, waiting for the permission.

"So thou dost accept the offer, amend it as thou wilt," and the Prince
smiled.

Then the other returned, with evident satisfaction: "When our brethren
of the caravans are settled, and the plain is quiet, and I too have
taken the required vows, I will return to thee. My quarters are so close
to thine it would please me to be allowed to come alone."

"Granted, O Emir, granted--if, on thy side, thou wilt consent to permit
me to give thee of the fare I may yet have at disposal. I can promise
thou shalt not go away hungry."

"Be it so."

Thereupon the Emir remounted, and went back to his stand overlooking the
plain, and the coming of the multitude.




CHAPTER V

THE PASSING OF THE CARAVANS


From his position the Wanderer could see the advancing caravans; but as
the spectacle would consume the afternoon, he called his three
attendants, and issued directions for the entertainment of the Emir in
the evening; this done, he cast himself upon the rug, and gave rein to
his curiosity, thinking, not unreasonably, to find in what would pass
before him something bearing on the subject ever present in his mind.

The sky could not be called blue of any tint; it seemed rather to be
filled with common dust mixed with powder of crushed brick. The effect
was of a semi-transparent ceiling flushed with heat from the direct
down-beating action of the sun, itself a disk of flame. Low mountains,
purplish black in hue, made a horizon on which the ceiling appeared set,
like the crystal in the upper valve of a watch. Thus shut in, but still
fair to view east and south of the position the spectator occupied, lay
El Zaribah, whither, as the appointed meeting place, so many pilgrims
had for days and weeks ever wearier growing been "walking with their
eyes." In their thought the Valley was not so much a garden or landscape
of beauty as an ante-chamber of the House of Allah. As they neared it
now, journeying since the break of day, impatience seized them; so when
the cry sped down the irregular column--"It is here! It is here!" they
answered with a universal _labbayaki_, signifying, "Thou hast called us--
here we are, here we are!" Then breaking into a rabble, they rushed
multitudinously forward. To give the reader an idea of the pageant
advancing to possess itself of the Valley, it will be well to refresh his
memory with a few details. He should remember, in the first place, that
it was not merely the caravan which left El Katif over on the western
shore of the Green Sea, but two great caravans merged into one--_El
Shemi_, from Damascus, and _Misri_, from Cairo. To comprehend these, the
region they drained of pilgrims should be next considered. For example,
at Cairo there was a concentration from the two Egypts, Upper and Lower,
from the mysterious deserts of Africa, and from the cities and countries
along the southern shore of the Mediterranean far as Gibraltar; while the
whole East, using the term in its most comprehensive sense, emptied
contingents of the devout into Damascus. In forwarding the myriads thus
poured down upon them the Arabs were common carriers, like the Venetians
to the hordes of western Europe in some of the later crusades; so to
their thousands of votaries proper, the other thousands of them engaged
in the business are also to be computed. El Medina was the great
secondary rendezvous. Hardly could he be accounted of the Faithful who in
making the pilgrimage would turn his back upon the bones of the Prophet;
of such merit was the saying, "One prayer in this thy mosque is of more
virtue than a thousand in other places, save only the Masjid El Haram."
Once at Medina, how could the pilgrim refuse his presence, if not his
tears, at El Kuba, forever sacred to the Mohammedan heart as the first
place of public prayer in Islam? Finally, it should not be forgotten that
the year we write of belonged to a cycle when readers of the Koran and
worshippers at Mecca were more numerous than now, if not more zealous and
believing. And it was to witness the passing of this procession, so
numerous, so motley, so strangely furnished, so uncontrolled except as it
pleased, the Prince of India was seated at the door of his tent upon the
hill. Long before the spectacle was sighted in the distance, its approach
was announced by an overhanging pillar of cloud, not unlike that which
went before the Israelites in their exodus through similar wastes.
Shortly after the interview with the Emir, the Prince, looking under the
pillar, saw a darkening line appear, not more at first than a thread
stretched across a section of the east.

The apparition was without a break; nor might he have said it was in
motion or of any depth. A sound came from the direction not unlike that
of a sibilant wind. Presently out of the perspective, which reduced the
many to one and all sizes to a level, the line developed into unequal
divisions, with intervals between them; about the same time the noise
became recognizable as the voices fiercely strained and inarticulate of
an innumerable host of men. Then the divisions broke into groups, some
larger than others; a little later individuals became discernible;
finally what had appeared a line resolved itself into a convulsing mass,
without front, without wings, but of a depth immeasurable.

The pilgrims did not attempt to keep the road; having converted their
march into a race, they spread right and left over the country, each
seeking a near way; sometimes the object was attained, sometimes not;
the end was a confusion beyond description. The very inequalities of the
ground helped the confusion. A group was one moment visible on a height;
then it vanished in a hollow. Now there were thousands on a level; then,
as if sinking, they went down, down, and presently where they were there
was only dust or a single individual.

Afterwhile, so wide was the inrolling tide, the field of vision
overflowed, and the eye was driven to ranging from point to point,
object to object. Then it was discernible that the mass was mixed of
animals and men--here horses, there camels--some with riders, some
without--all, the burdened as well as unburdened, straining forward
under urgency of shriek and stick--forward for life--forward as if of
the two "comforts," Success beckoned them in front, and Despair behind
plied them with spears. [Footnote: In the philosophy of the Arabs
Success and Despair are treated as comforts.]

At length the eastern boundary of the Valley was reached. There one
would suppose the foremost of the racers, the happy victors, would rest
or, at their leisure, take of the many sites those they preferred; but
no--the penalty attaching to the triumph was the danger of being run
down by the thousands behind. In going on there was safety--and on they
went.

To this time the spectacle had been a kind of panoramic generality; now
the details came to view, and accustomed as he was to marvels of
pageantry, the Prince exclaimed: "These are not men, but devils fleeing
from the wrath of God!" and involuntarily he went nearer, down to the
brink of the height. It seemed the land was being inundated with camels;
not the patient brutes we are used to thinking of by that name, with
which domestication means ill-treatment and suffering--the slow-going
burden-bearers, always appealing to our sympathy because always
apparently tired, hungry, sleepy, worn-out--always reeling on as if
looking for quiet places in which to slip their loads of whatever kind,
and lie down and die; but the camel aroused, enraged, frightened,
panic-struck, rebellious, sending forth strange cries, and running with
all its might--an army of camels hurling their gigantic hulks along at a
rate little less than blind impetus. And they went, singly, and in
strings, and yonder a mass. The slower, and those turned to the right or
left of the direct course, and all such as had hesitated upon coming to
a descent, were speedily distanced or lost to sight; so the ensemble was
constantly shifting. And then the rolling and tossing of the cargoes and
packages on the backs of the animals, and the streaming out of curtains,
scarfs, shawls, and loose draperies of every shape and color, lent
touches of drollery and bright contrasts to the scene. One instant the
spectator on the hill was disposed to laugh, then to admire, then to
shiver at the immensity of a danger; over and over again amidst his
quick variation of feeling, he repeated the exclamation: "These are not
men, but devils fleeing from the wrath of God!"

Such was the spectacle in what may be called the second act; presently
it reached a third; and then the fury of the movement, so inconsistent
with the habits and patient nature of the camel, was explained. In the
midst of the hurly-burly, governing and directing it, were horsemen, an
army of themselves. Some rode in front, and the leading straps on which
they pulled with the combined strength of man and horse identified them
as drivers; others rode as assistants of the drivers, and they were
armed with goads which they used skilfully and without mercy. There were
many collisions, upsets, and entanglements; yet the danger did not deter
the riders from sharing the excitement, and helping it forward to their
utmost. They too used knotted ropes, and stabbed with sharpened sticks;
they also contributed to the unearthly tumult of sounds which travelled
with the mob, a compound of prayers, imprecations, and senseless
screams--the medley that may be occasionally heard from a modern
mad-house.

In the height of the rush the Shaykh came up.

"How long," said the Prince--"in the Prophet's name, how long will this
endure?"

"Till night, O most excellent Hadji--if the caravans be so long in
coming."

"Is it usual?"

"It has been so from the beginning."

Thereupon the curiosity of the Prince took another turn. A band of
horsemen galloped into view--free riders, with long lances carried
upright, their caftans flying, and altogether noble looking.

"These are Arabs. I know by their horses and their bearing," said he,
with admiration; "but possibly thou canst give me the name of their
tribe."

The Shaykh answered with pride: "Their horses are gray, and by the sign,
O lover of the Prophet, they are the Beni-Yarb. Every other one of them
is a poet; in the face of an enemy, they are all warriors."

The camps on the hill, with the yellow flag giving notice of the Emir's
station, had effect upon others besides the Yarbis; all who wished to
draw out of the _melange_ turned towards them, bringing the spectacle in
part to the very feet of the Wanderer; whereas he thought with a quicker
beating of the heart, "The followers of the Prophet are coming to show me
of what they are this day composed." Then he said to the Shaykh, "Stand
thou here, and tell me as I shall ask."

The conversation between them may be thus summarized:

The current which poured past then, its details in perfect view, carried
along with it all the conditions and nationalities of the pilgrimage.
Natives of the desert on bare-backed camels, clinging to the humps with
one hand, while they pounded with the other--natives on beautiful
horses, not needing whip or spur--natives on dromedaries so swift,
sure-footed, and strong there was no occasion for fear. Men, and often
women and children, on ragged saddle-cloths, others in pretentious
boxes, and now and then a person whose wealth and rank were published by
the magnificence of the litter in which he was borne, swinging
luxuriously between long-stepping dromedaries from El Sbark.

"By Allah!" the Prince exclaimed. "Here hath barbarism its limit!
Behold!"

They of whom he spoke came up in irregular array mounted on dromedaries
without housing. At their head rode one with a white lettered green
flag, and beating an immense drum. They were armed with long spears of
Indian bamboo, garnished below the slender points with swinging tufts of
ostrich feathers. Each carried a woman behind him disdainful of a veil.
The feminine screams of exultation rose high above the yells of the men,
helping not a little to the recklessness with which the latter bore
onward.

Woe to such in their way as were poorly mounted. In a twinkling they
were ridden down. Nor did those fare better who were overtaken
struggling with a string of camels. The crash of bursting boxes, the
sharp report of rending ropes, the warning cry, the maddening cheer; a
battle of men, another of beasts--and when the collision had passed, the
earth was strewn with its wreck.

"They are Wahabbas, O Hadji," said the Shaykh. "Thou seest the tufts on
their spears. Under them they carry _Jehannum_."

"And these now coming?" asked the Prince. "Their long white hats remind
me of Persia."

"Persians they are," replied the Shaykh, his lip curling, his eyes
gleaming. "They will tear their clothes, and cut their shaven crowns,
and wail, 'Woe's me, O Ali!' then kiss the Kaaba with defilement on
their beards. The curse of the _Shaykaim_ is on them--may it stay
there!"

Then the Prince knew it was a Sunite speaking of Schiahs.

Yet others of the Cafila of Bagdad passed with the despised sons of
Iran; notably Deccanese, Hindoos, Afghans, and people from the
Himalayas, and beyond them far as Kathay, and China, and Siam, all
better known to the Prince than to his Shaykh, who spoke of them,
saying, "Thou shouldst know thine own, O Hadji! Thou art their father!"

Next, in a blending that permitted no choice of associates, along swept
the chief constituents of the caravans--Moors and Blackamoors,
Egyptians, Syrians, Turks, Kurds, Caucasians, and Arabs of every tribe,
each a multitude of themselves, and their passing filled up the
afternoon.

Towards sundown the hurry and rush of the movement perceptibly
slackened. Over in the west there were signs of a halt; tents were
rising, and the smoke of multiplying fires began to deepen the blue of
the distance. It actually appeared as if settlement for the night would
creep back upon the east, whence the irruption had burst.

At a moment when the Prince's interest in the scene was commencing to
flag, and he was thinking of returning to his tent, the rearmost
divisions of the pilgrims entered the Valley. They were composed of
footmen and donkey-riders, for whom the speed of the advance bodies had
been too great. High-capped Persians, and Turks whose turbans were
reduced to faded fezes, marched in the van, followed closely by a rabble
of Takruris, ragged, moneyless, living upon meat of abandoned animals.
Last of all were the sick and dying, who yet persisted in dragging their
fainting limbs along as best they could. Might they but reach the Holy
City! Then if they died it would be as martyrs for whom the doors of
Paradise are always open. With them, expectants of easy prey, like the
_rakham_ [Footnote: Vultures.] sailing in slow circles overhead,
flocked the beggars, thieves, outcasts and assassins; but night came
quickly, and covered them, and all the things they did, for evil and
night have been partners from the beginning.

At last the Prince returned to his tent. He had seen the sun set over El
Zaribah; he had seen the passing of the caravans. Out there in the
Valley they lay. They--to him, and for his purposes, the Mohammedan
world unchanged--the same in composition, in practice, in creed--only he
felt now a consciousness of understanding them as never before. Mahomet,
in his re-introduction of God to man, had imposed himself upon their
faith, its master idea, its central figure, the superior in sanctity,
the essential condition--the ONE! Knowingly or unknowingly, he left a
standard of religious excellence behind him--Himself. And by that
standard the thief in the wake of the mighty caravans robbing the dead,
the Thug strangling a victim because he was too slow in dying, were
worthy Paradise, and would attain it, for they believed in him. Faith in
the Prophet of God was more essential than faith in God. Such was the
inspiration of Islam. A sinking of spirit fell upon the unhappy man. He
felt a twinge of the bitterness always waiting on failure, where the
undertaking, whatever it be, has enlisted the whole heart. At such times
instinctively we turn here and there for help, and in its absence, for
comfort and consolation; what should he do now but advert to
Christianity? What would Christians say of his idea? Was God lost in
Christ as he was here in Mahomet?




CHAPTER VI

THE PRINCE AND THE EMIR


In the reception room of the Prince's tent the lamps are lighted; one
fastened to the stout centre pole, and five others on as many palings
planted in the ground, all burning brightly. The illumination is
enriched by the admirable blending of colors in the canopy of shawls.
Within the space defined by the five lamps, on a tufted rug, the Mystic
and the Emir are seated, both in _Ihram_, and looking cool and
comfortable, though the night outside still testifies to the heat of the
day.

A wooden trencher, scoured white as ivory, separates the friends,
leaving them face to face. In supping they have reached what we call the
dessert.

On the trencher are slender baskets containing grapes, figs, and dates,
the choicest of the gardens of Medina. A jar of honey, an assortment of
dry biscuits, and two jugs, one of water, the other of juice of
pomegranates, with drinking cups, complete the board.

At this age, Orientals lingering at table have the cheer of coffee and
tobacco; unhappily for the two of whom we are writing, neither of the
great narcotics was discovered. Nevertheless it should not be supposed
the fruits, the honey, and the waters failed to content them. Behind the
host is the negro we already know as Nilo. He is very watchful of his
master's every motion.

As guest and host appear now the formalism of acquaintanceship just made
has somewhat disappeared, and they are talking easily and with freedom.
Occasionally a movement of one or the other brings his head to a
favorable angle, whereat the light, dropping on the freshly shaven
crown, is sharply glinted back.

The Emir has been speaking of the plague.

"At Medina I was told it had run its course," the host remarked.

"True, O Hadji, but it has returned, and with greater violence. The
stragglers were its victims; now it attacks indiscriminately. Yesterday
the guard I keep in the rear came to a pilgrim of rank. His litter was
deserted, and he was lying in it dead."

"The man may have been murdered."

"Nay," said the Emir, "gold in large amount was found on his person."

"But he had other property doubtless?"

"Of great value."

"What disposition was made of it?"

"It was brought to me, and is now with other stores in my tent; a law of
ancient institution vesting it in the Emir El Hajj."

The countenance of the Jew became serious.

"The ownership was not in my thought," he said, waving his hand. "I knew
the law; but this scourge of Allah has its laws also, and by one of them
we are enjoined to burn or bury whatever is found with the body."

The Emir, seeing the kindly concern of his host, smiled as he
answered:

"But there is a higher law, O Hadji."

"I spoke without thinking danger of any kind could disturb thee."

The host drew forward the date basket, and the Emir, fancying he
discerned something on his mind besides the fruit, waited his further
speech.

"I am reminded of another matter, O brave Emir; but as it also is
personal I hesitate. Indeed I will not speak of it except with
permission."

"As you will," the other replied, "I will answer--May the Prophet help
me!"

"Blessed be the Prophet!" said the Prince, reverently. "Thy confidence
doeth me honor, and I thank thee; at the same time I would not presume
upon it if thy tongue were less suggestive of a land whose name is
music--Italy. It is in my knowledge, O Emir, that the Sultan, thy
master--may Allah keep him in countenance!--hath in his service many
excellent soldiers by birth of other countries than his own, broad as it
is--Christians, who are none the less of the true faith. Wherefore, wilt
thou tell me of thyself?"

The question did not embarrass the Emir.

"The answer must be brief," he answered, without hesitation, "because
there is little to tell. I do not know my native country. The
peculiarity of accent you have mentioned has been observed by others;
and as they agreed with you in assigning it to Italy, I am nothing loath
to account myself an Italian. The few shreds of circumstance which came
to me in course of time confirmed the opinion, and I availed myself of a
favorable opportunity to acquire the tongue. In our further speech, O
Hadji, you may prefer its use."

"At thy pleasure," the host replied; "though there is no danger of our
being overheard. Nilo, the slave behind me, has been a mute from birth."

Then, without the slightest interruption, the Emir changed his speech
from Greek to Italian.

"My earliest remembrance is of being borne in a woman's arms out of
doors, under a blue sky, along a margin of white sand, an orchard on one
hand, the sea on the other. The report of the waves breaking upon the
shore lives distinctly in my memory; so does the color of the trees in
the orchard which has since become familiar to me as the green of
olives. Equally clear is the recollection that, returning in-doors, I
was carried into a house of stone so large it must have been a castle. I
speak of it, as of the orchard, and the sea, and the roar of the
breakers, quite as much by reference to what I have subsequently seen as
from trust in my memory."

Here the host interrupted him to remark:

"Though an Eastern, I have been a traveller in the west, and the
description reminds me of the eastern shore of Italy in the region of
Brindisi."

"My next recollection," the Emir resumed, "is a child's fright,
occasioned by furious flames, and thick smoke, and noises familiar now
as of battle. There was then a voyage on the sea during which I saw
none but bearded men. The period of perfect knowledge so far as my
history is concerned began when I found myself an object of the love and
care of the wife of a renowned Pacha, governor of the city of Brousa.
She called me _Mirza_. My childhood was spent in a harem, and I
passed from it into a school to enter upon my training as a soldier. In
good time I became a Janissary. An opportunity presented itself one day,
and I distinguished myself. My master, the Sultan, rewarded me by
promotion and transfer to the _Silihdars_, [Footnote: D'Oheson.] the
most ancient and favored corps of the Imperial army, it being the
body-guard of the Padisha, and garrison of his palace. The yellow flag
my ensign carries belongs to that corps. As a further token of his
confidence, the Sultan appointed me Emir El Hajj. In these few words, O
Hadji, you have my history."

The listener was impressed with the simplicity of the narrative, and the
speaker's freedom from regret, sorrow, or passion of any kind.

"It is a sad story, O Emir," he said, sympathetically, "and I cannot
think it ended. Knowest thou not more?"

"Nothing of incident," was the reply. "All that remains is inferential.
The castle was attacked at night by Turks landed from their galleys."

"And thy father and mother?"

"I never knew them."

"There is another inference," said the Prince, suggestively--"they were
Christians."

"Yes, but unbelievers."

The suppression of natural affection betrayed by the remark still more
astonished the host.

"But they believed in God," he said.

"They should have believed Mahomet was his Prophet."

"I fear I am giving you pain, O Emir."

"Dismiss the fear, O Hadji."

Again the Jew sought the choicest date in the basket. The indifference
of his guest was quick fuel to the misgivings which we have already
noticed as taking form about his purpose, and sapping and weakening it.
To be arbiter in the religious disputes of men, the unique consummation
called for by his scheme, the disputants must concede him room and
hearing. Were all Mohammedans, from whom he hoped most, like this one
born of Christians, then the two conditions would be sternly refused
him. By the testimony of this witness, there was nothing in the heredity
of faith; and it went to his soul incisively that, in stimulating the
passions which made the crusades a recurrence of the centuries, he
himself had contributed to the defeat now threatening his latest
ambition. The sting went to his soul; yet, by force of will, always at
command in the presence of strangers, he repressed his feeling, and
said:

"Everything is as Allah wills. Let us rejoice that he is our keeper. The
determination of our fate, in the sense of what shall happen to us, and
what we shall be, and when and where the end shall overtake us, is no
more to him than deciding the tint of the rose before the bud is formed.
O Emir, I congratulate you on the resignation with which you accept his
judgment. I congratulate you upon the age in which he has cast your
life. He who in a moment of uncertainty would inform himself of his
future should not heed his intentions and hopes; by studying his present
conditions, he will find himself an oracle unto himself. He should
address his best mind to the question, 'I am now in a road; if I keep
it, where will I arrive?' And wisdom will answer, 'What are thy desires?
For what art thou fitted? What are the opportunities of the time?' Most
fortunate, O Emir, if there be correspondence between the desire, the
fitness, and the opportunity!"

The Emir did not comprehend, and seeing it, the host added with a
directness approaching the abrupt:

"And now to make the reason of my congratulations clear, it is necessary
that thou consent to my putting a seal upon your lips. What sayest thou?"

"If I engage my silence, O Hadji, it is because I believe you are a good
man."

The dignity of the Emir's answer did not entirely hide the effect of the
Prince's manner.

"Know thou then," the latter continued, with a steady, penetrating
gaze--"know thou then, there is a Brahman of my acquaintance who is a
Magus. I use the word to distinguish him from the necromancers whom the
Koran has set in everlasting prohibition. He keeps school in a chapel
hid away in the heart of jungles overgrowing a bank of the Bermapootra,
not far from the mountain gates of the river. He has many scholars, and
his intelligence has compassed all knowledge. He is familiar with the
supernatural as with the natural. On my way, I visited him.... Know thou
next, O Emir, I too have had occasion to make inquiries of the future.
The vulgar would call me an astrologer--not a professional practising
for profit, but an adept seeking information because it lifts me so much
nearer Allah and his sublimest mysteries. Very lately I found a celestial
horoscope announcing a change in the status of the world. The masterful
waves, as you may know, have for many ages flowed from the West; but now,
the old Roman impetus having at last spent itself, a refluence is to set
in, and the East in its turn pour a dominating flood upon the West. The
determining stars have slipped their influences. They are in motion.
_Constantinople is doomed!_"

The guest drew a quick breath. Understanding was flooding him with
light.

"And now, O Emir, say, if the revelation had stopped there--stopped, I
mean, with the overthrow of the Christian capital--wouldst thou have
been satisfied with it?"

"No, by Allah, no!"

"Further, Emir. The stars being communicable yet, what wouldst thou have
asked them next?"

"I would not have rested until I had from them the name of him who is to
be leader in the movement."

The Mystic smiled at the young man's fervor.

"Thou hast saved me telling what I did, and affirmed the logic of our
human nature," he said. "Thy imperial master is old, and much worn by
wars and cares of government, is he not?"

"Old in greatness," answered the Emir, diplomatically.

"Hath he not a son?"

"A son with all the royal qualities of the father."

"But young--not more than eighteen."

"Not more."

"And the Prophet hath lent him his name?"

"Even so."

The host released the eager face of the Emir from his gaze, while he
sought a date in the basket.

"Another horoscope--the second"--he then said, quietly, "revealed
everything but the hero's name. He is to be of kingly birth, and a Turk.
Though a lad, he is already used to arms and armor."

"Oh! by Allah, Hadji," cried the guest, his face flushed, his words
quick, his voice mandatory. "Release me from my pledge of silence. Tell
me who thou art, that I may report thee, and the things thou sayest.
There was never such news to warm a heroic heart."

The Prince pursued his explanation without apparently noticing the
interruption noticing the interruption.

"To verify the confidences of the stars, I sought the Magus in his
chapel by the sacred river. Together we consulted them, and made the
calculations. He embraced me; but it was agreed between us that absolute
verity of the finding could only be had by re-casting the horoscopes at
Constantinople. Thou must know, O Emir, there is an astral alphabet
which has its origin in the inter-relations of the heavenly bodies,
represented by lines impalpable to the common eye; know also that the
most favored adept cannot read the mystic letters with the assurance
best comporting with verity, except he be at the place of the destined
event or revolution. To possess myself of the advantage, I shall ere
long visit the ancient capital. More plainly, I am on the way thither
now."

Instead of allaying the eagerness of the Emir, the words excited it the
more.

"Release me from my pledge," he repeated, entreatingly, "and tell me who
thou art. Mahommed is my pupil; he rides, carries shield, lays lance,
draws arrow, and strikes with sword and axe as I have taught him. Thou
canst not name a quality characteristic of heroes he does not possess.
Doth Allah permit me safe return from the Hajj, he will be first to meet
me at his father's gate. Think what happiness I should have in saluting
him there with the title--Hail Mahommed, Conqueror of Constantinople!"

The Jew answered:

"I would gladly help thee, O Emir, to happiness and promotion; for I see
what afterwhile, if not presently, they would follow such a salutation
of thy pupil, if coupled with a sufficient explanation; but his
interests are paramount; at the same time it becomes me to be allegiant
to the divinatory stars. What rivalries the story might awaken! It is
not uncommon in history, as thou mayst know, that sons of promise have
been cut off by jealous fathers. I am not accusing the great Amurath;
nevertheless precautions are always proper."

The speaker then became dramatic.

"Nay, brave Emir, the will to help thee has been already seconded by the
deed. I spoke but now of lines of correspondence between the shining
lights that are the life of the sky at night. Let me illustrate my
meaning. Observe the lamps about us. The five on the uprights. Between
them, in the air, two stars of interwoven form are drawn. Take the lamps
as determining points, and use thy fancy a moment."

The Emir turned to the lamps; and the host, swift to understand the
impulse, gave him time to gratify it; then he resumed:

"So the fields of Heaven between the stars, where the vulgar see only
darkness, are filled with traceries infinite in form yet separable as
the letters of the alphabet. They are the ciphers in which Allah writes
his reasons for every creation, and his will concerning it. There the
sands are numbered, and the plants and trees, and their leaves, and the
birds, and everything animate; there is thy history, and mine, and all
of little and great and good and bad that shall befall us in this life.
Death does not blot out the records. Everlastingly writ, they shall be
everlastingly read--for the shame of some, for the delight of others."

"Allah is good," said the Emir, bending his head.

"And now," the Mystic continued, "thou hast eaten and drunk with me in
the Pentagram of the Magii. Such is the astral drawing between the five
lamps. Henceforth in conflicts of interest, fortune against fortune,
influences undreamt of will come to thy assistance. So much have I
already done for thee."

The Emir bowed lower than before.

"Nor that alone," the Jew continued. "Henceforth our lives will run
together on lines never divergent, never crossing. Be not astonished,
if, within a week, I furnish, to thy full satisfaction, proof of what I
am saying."

The expression could not be viewed except as of more than friendly
interest.

"Should it so happen," the Emir said, with warmth, "consider how
unfortunate my situation would be, not knowing the name or country of my
benefactor."

The host answered simply, though evasively:

"There are reasons of state, O Emir, requiring me to make this
pilgrimage unknown to any one."

The Emir apologized.

"It is enough," the host added, "that thou remember me as the Prince of
India, whose greatest happiness is to believe in Allah and Mahomet his
Prophet; at the same time I concede we should have the means of
certainly knowing each other should communication become desirable
hereafter."

He made a sign with his right hand which the negro in waiting responded
to by passing around in front of him.

"Nilo," the master said in Greek, "bring me the two malachite
rings--those with the turquoise eyes."

The slave disappeared.

"Touching the request to be released from the promise of secrecy, pardon
me, O Emir, if I decline to grant it. The verification to be made in
Constantinople should advise thee that the revolution to which I referred
is not ripe for publication to the world. A son might be excused for
dishonoring his parents; but the Magus who would subject the divine
science to danger of ridicule or contempt by premature disclosure is
fallen past hope--he would betray Allah himself."

The Emir bowed, but with evident discontent. At length the slave
returned with the rings.

"Observe, O Emir," the Jew said, passing them both to his guest, "they
are rare, curious, and exactly alike."

The circlets were of gold, with raised settings of deep green stone, cut
so as to leave a drop of pure turquoise on the top of each, suggestive
of birds' eyes.

"They are exactly the same, O Prince," said the Emir, tendering them
back.

The Jew waved his hand.

"Select one of them," he said, "and I will retain the other. Borne by
messengers, they will always identify us each to the other."

The two grew more cordial, and there was much further conversation across
the board, interspersed with attentions to the fruit basket and
pomegranate water. About midnight the Emir took his departure. When he
was gone, the host walked to and fro a long time; once he halted, and
said aloud--"I hear his salute, 'Hail Mahommed, Conqueror of
Constantinople !' It is always well to have a store of strings for one's
bow."

And to himself he laughed heartily.

Next day at dawn the great caravan was afoot, every man, woman, and
child clad in _Ihram_, and whitening the pale green Valley.




CHAPTER VII

AT THE KAABA


The day before the pilgrimage.

A cloud had hung over the valley where Mecca lies like drift in the bed
of a winding gorge. About ten o'clock in the morning the cloud
disappeared over the summit of Abu Kubays in the east. The promise of
rain was followed by a simoom so stifling that it plunged every
breathing thing into a struggle for air. The dogs burrowed in the shade
of old walls; birds flew about with open beaks; the herbage wilted, and
the leaves on the stunted shrubs ruffled, then rolled up, like drying
cinnamon. If the denizens of the city found no comfort in their houses
of stone and mud, what suffering was there for the multitude not yet
fully settled in the blistering plain beyond the bluffs of Arafat?

The zealous pilgrim, obedient to the law, always makes haste to
celebrate his arrival at the Holy City by an immediate visit to the
Haram. If perchance he is to see the enclosure for the first time, his
curiosity, in itself pardonable, derives a tinge of piety from duty. The
Prince of India but illustrated the rule. He left his tents pitched
close to those of the Emir El Hajj and the Scherif of Mecca, under the
Mountain of Mercy, as Arafat was practically translated by the very
faithful. Having thus assured the safety of his property, for
conveniency and greater personal comfort he took a house with windows
looking into the Mosque. By so doing, he maintained the dignity of his
character as a Prince of India. The beggars thronging his door furnished
lively evidence of the expectations his title and greatness had already
excited.

With a guide, his suite, and Nilo shading his head with an umbrella of
light green paper, the Prince appeared in front of the chief entrance to
the sacred square from the north. [Footnote: The Bab el Vzyadeh.]

The heads of the party were bare; their countenances becomingly solemn;
their _Ihram_ fresh and spotlessly white. Passing slowly on, they were
conducted under several outside arches, and down a stairway into a hall,
where they left the umbrella and their shoes.

The visitor found himself then in a cloister of the Mosque with which
the area around the Kaaba is completely enclosed. There was a pavement
of undressed flags, and to the right and left a wilderness of tall
pillars tied together by arches, which in turn supported domes. Numbers
of people, bareheaded and barefooted, to whom the heat outside was
insupportable, were in refuge there; some, seated upon the stones,
revolved their rosaries; others walked slowly about. None spoke. The
silence was a tribute to the ineffable sanctity of the place. The
refreshing shade, the solemn hush, the whiteness of the garments were
suggestive of sepulchres and their spectral tenantry.

In the square whither the Prince next passed, the first object to
challenge his attention was the Kaaba itself. At sight of it he
involuntarily stopped.

The cloisters, seen from the square, were open colonnades. Seven
minarets, belted in red, blue and yellow, arose in columnar relief
against the sky and the mountains in the south. A gravelled plot
received from the cloisters; next that, toward the centre, was a narrow
pavement of rough stone in transverse extension down a shallow step to
another gravelled plot; then another pavement wider than the first, and
ending, like it, in a downward step; after which there was a third
sanded plot, and then a third pavement defined by gilded posts upholding
a continuous row of lamps, ready for lighting at the going down of the
sun. The last pavement was of gray granite polished mirror-like by the
friction of millions of bare feet; and upon it, like the pedestal of a
monument upon a plinth, rested the base of the Holy House, a structure
of glassy white marble about two feet in height, with a bench of sharp
inclination from the top. At intervals it was studded with massive brass
rings. Upon the base the Kaaba rose, an oblong cube forty feet tall,
eighteen paces lengthwise, and fourteen in breadth, shrouded all in
black silk wholly unrelieved, except by one broad band of the appearance
of gold, and inscriptions from the Koran, of a like appearance, wrought
in boldest lettering. The freshness of the great gloomy curtain told how
quickly the gift of the Sultan had been made available, and that
whatever else might betide him, the young Emir was already happily
discharged of his trust.

Of the details, the only one the Jew actually coupled with a thought was
the Kaaba. A hundred millions of human beings pray five times every day,
their faces turned to this funereal object! The idea, though commonplace,
called up that other always in waiting with him. In a space too brief for
the formulation of words, he felt the Arbitership of his dreams blow
away. The work of the founder of Islam was too well done and now too far
gone to be disturbed, except with the sanction of God. Had he the
sanction? A writhing of the soul, accompanied with a glare, like
lightning, and followed, like lightning, by an engulfing darkness, wrung
his features, and instinctively he covered them with his hands. The guide
saw the action, and misjudged it.

"Let us not be in haste," he said. "Others before you have found the
House at first sight blinding. Blessed be Allah!"

The commiseration affected the Prince strangely. The darkness, under
pressure of his hands upon the eyeballs, gave place to an atmosphere of
roseate light, in the fulness of which he saw the House of God projected
by Solomon and rebuilt by Herod. The realism of the apparition was
absolute, and comparison unavoidable. That he, familiar with the glory
of the conception of the Israelite, should be thought blinded by this
_Beit Allah_ of the Arab, so without grace of form or lines, so primitive
and expressionless, so palpably uninspired by taste, or genius, or the
Deity it was designed to honor, restored him at once: indeed, in the
succeeding reaction, he found it difficult to keep down resentment.
Dropping his hands, he took another survey of the shrouded pile, and
swept all the square under eye.

He beheld a crowd of devotees at the northeast corner of the House, and
over their heads two small open structures which, from descriptions
often heard, he recognized as praying places. A stream of worshippers
was circling around the marble base of the Most Holy, some walking,
others trotting; these, arriving at the northeast corner, halted--the
Black Stone was there! A babel of voices kept the echoes of the
enclosure in unremitting exercise. The view taken, the Jew said,
calmly:

"Blessed be Allah! I will go forward."

In his heart he longed to be in Constantinople--Islam, it was clear,
would lend him no ear; Christendom might be more amenable.

He was carried next through the Gate of the Sons of the Old Woman;
thence to the space in front of the well Zem-Zem; mindful of the prayers
and prostrations required at each place, and of the dumb servants who
went with him.

The famous well was surrounded by a throng apparently impassable.

"Room for the Royal Hadji--for the Prince of India!" the guide yelled.
"There are no poor where he is--make way!"

A thousand eyes sought the noble pilgrim; and as a path opened for him,
a score of _Zem-Zemis_ refilled their earthen cups with the bitter
water afresh. A Prince of Hind did not come to them every day.

He tasted from a cup--his followers drank--and when the party turned
away there were jars paid for to help all the blind in the caravan back
to healthful vision.

"There is no God but Allah! Be merciful to him, O Allah," the crowd
shouted, in approval of the charity.

The press of pilgrims around the northeastern corner of the Kaaba, to
which the guide would have conducted the Prince next, was greater than
at the well. Each was waiting his turn to kiss the Black Stone before
beginning the seven circuits of the House.

Never had the new-comer seen a concourse so wrought upon by fanaticism;
never had he seen a concourse so peculiarly constituted. All complexions,
even that of the interior African, were a reddish desert tan. Eyes
fiercely bright appeared unnaturally swollen from the colirium with which
they were generally stained. The diversities the penitential costume
would have masked were effectually exposed whenever mouths opened for
utterance. Many sang, regardless of time or melody, the _tilbiye_ they
had hideously vocalized in their advance toward the city. For the most
part, however, the effort at expression spent itself in a long cry,
literally rendered--"Thou hast called me--I am here! I am here!" The
deliverance was in the vernacular of the devotee, and low or loud, shrill
or hoarse, according to the intensity of the passion possessing him.

To realize the discordancy, the reader must recall the multiplicity of
the tribes and nations represented; then will he fancy the agitation of
the mass, the swaying of the white-clad bodies, the tossing of bare arms
and distended hands, the working of tearful faces turned up to the
black-curtained pile regardless of the smiting of the sun--here men on
their knees, there men grovelling on the pavement--yonder one beating
his breast till it resounds like an empty cask--some comprehension of
the living obstruction in front of the Jew can be had.

Then the guide, calling him, tried the throng.

"The Prince of India!" he shouted, at the top of his voice. "Room for
the beloved of the Prophet! Stand not in his way--Room, room!"

After much persistence the object was achieved. A pilgrim, the last one
in front of the Prince, with arms extended along the two sides of the
angle of the wall where the curtain was looped up, seemed struggling to
embrace the House; suddenly, as in despair he beat his head frantically
against the sharp corner--a second thrust more desperate than the
first--then a groan, and he dropped blindly to the pavement. The guide
rejoicing made haste to push the Prince into the vacant place.

Without the enthusiasm of a traveller, calmly as a philosopher, the Jew,
himself again, looked at the Stone which more nearly than any other
material thing commanded idolatrous regard from the Mohammedan world. He
had known personally most of the great men of that world--its poets,
lawmakers, warriors, ascetics, kings--even the Prophet. And now they
came one by one, as one by one they had come in their several days, and
kissed the insensate thing; and between the coming and going time was
scarcely perceptible. The mind has the faculty of compressing, by one
mighty effort, the incidents of a life, even of centuries, into a
flash-like reenactment.

As all the way from the first view of the sanctuary to arrival at the
gate, and thence to this point, the Jew had promptly followed his guide,
especially in recitation of the prescribed prayers, he was about to do
so now; already his hands were raised.

"Great God! O my God! I believe in Thee--I Believe in thy Book--I
believe in thy Word--I believe in thy Promise," the zealous prompter
said, and waited.

For the first time the votary was slow to respond. How could he, at such
a juncture, refuse a thought to the Innumerables whose ghosts had been
rendered up in vain struggles to obey the law which required them to
come and make proof of faith before this Stone! The Innumerables, lost
at sea, lost in the desert--lost body and soul, as in their dying they
themselves had imagined! Symbolism! An invention of men--a necessity of
necromancers! God had his ministers and priests, the living media of his
will, but of symbols--nothing!

"Great God! O my God!" the guide began again. A paroxysm of disgust
seized the votary. The Phariseeism in which he was born and bred, and
which he could no more outlive than he could outlive his body asserted
itself.

In the crisis of the effort at self-control, he heard a groan, and,
looking down, saw the mad devotee at his feet. In sliding from the shelf
of the base, the man had been turned upon his back, so that he was lying
face upward. On the forehead there were two cruel wounds; and the blood,
yet flowing, had partially filled the hollows of the eyes, making the
countenance unrecognizable.

"The wretch is dying," the Prince exclaimed.

"Allah is merciful--let us attend to the prayers," the guide returned,
intent on business.

"But he will die, if not helped."

"When we have finished, the porters will come for him."

The sufferer stirred, then raised a hand.

"O Hadji--O Prince of India!" he said faintly, in Italian.

The Wanderer bent down to get a nearer view.

"It is the Yellow Air--save me!"

Though hardly articulate, the words were full of light to the listener.

"The virtues of the Pentagram endure," he said, with absolute
self-possession. "The week is not ended, and, lo!--I save him."

Rising to his full stature, he glanced here and there over the throng,
as if commanding attention, and proclaimed:

"A mercy of the Most Merciful! It is the Emir El Hajj."

There was a general silence. Every man had seen the martial figure of
the young chief in his arms and armor, and on horseback; many of them
had spoken to him.

"The Emir El Hajj--dying," passed rapidly from mouth to mouth.

"O Allah!" burst forth in general refrain; after which the ejaculations
were all excerpted from prayers.

"'O Allah! This is the place of him who flies to thee from fire!--Shadow
him, O Allah, in thy shadow!--Give him drink from the cup of thy
Prophet!'"

A Bedouin, tall, almost black, and with a tremendous mouth open until
the red lining was exposed between the white teeth down to the larynx,
shouted shrilly the inscription on the marble over the breast of the
Prophet--"In the name of Allah! Allah have mercy upon him!"--and every
man repeated the words, but not one so much as reached a hand in help.

The Prince waited--still the _Amins_, and prayerful ejaculations. Then
his wonder ceased. Not a pilgrim but envied the Emir--that he should die
so young was a pity--that he should die at the base of the sanctuary, in
the crowning act of the Hajj, was a grace of God. Each felt Paradise
stooping low to receive a martyr, and that its beatitude was near. They
trembled with ecstasy at hearing the gates opening on their crystal
hinges, and seeing light as from the robe of the Prophet glimmering
through them. O happy Emir!

The Jew drew within himself. Compromise with such fanaticism was
impossible. Then, with crushing distinctness, he saw what had not before
occurred to him. In the estimation of the Mohammedan world, the role of
Arbiter was already filled; that which he thought of being, Mahomet was.
Too late, too late! In bitterness of soul he flung his arms up and
shouted:

"The Emir is dying of the plague!"

He would have found satisfaction in seeing the blatant crowd take to its
heels, and hie away into the cloisters and the world outside; not one
moved!

"By Allah!" he shouted, more vehemently than before. "The Yellow Air
hath blown upon the Emir--is blowing upon you--Fly!"

"_Amin! Amin!_--Peace be with thee, O Prince of Martyrs! O Prince of the
Happy! Peace be with thee, O Lion of Allah! O Lion of the Prophet!" Such
the answers returned him.

The general voice became a howl. Surely here was something more than
fanaticism. Then it entered his understanding. What he beheld was Faith
exulting above the horrors of disease, above the fear of death--Faith
bidding Death welcome! His arms fell down. The crowd, the sanctuary, the
hopes he had built on Islam, were no more to him. He signed to his three
attendants, and they advanced and raised the Emir from the pavement.

"To-morrow I will return with thee, and complete my vows;" he said to
his guide. "For the present, lead out of the square to my house."

The exit was effected without opposition.

Next day the Emir, under treatment of the Prince, was strong enough to
tell his story. The plague had struck him about noon of the day
following the interview in the tent at El Zaribah. Determined to deliver
the gifts he had in keeping, and discharge his trust to the satisfaction
of his sovereign, he struggled resolutely with the disease. After
securing the Scherif's receipt he bore up long enough to superintend the
pitching his camp. Believing death inevitable, he was carried into his
tent, where he issued his final orders and bade his attendants farewell.
In the morning, though weak, half-delirious, his faith the strongest
surviving impulse, he called for his horse, and being lifted into the
saddle, rode to the city, resolved to assure himself of the blessings of
Allah by dying in the shadow of the sanctuary.

The Prince, listening to the explanation, was more than ever impressed
with the futility of attempting a compromise with people so devoted to
their religion. There was nothing for him but to make haste to
Constantinople, the centre of Christian sentiment and movement. There he
might meet encouragement and ultimate success.

In the ensuing week, having performed the two pilgrimages, and seen the
Emir convalescent, he took the road again, and in good time reached
Jedda, where he found his ship waiting to convey him across the Red Sea
to the African coast. The embarkation was without incident, and he
departed, leaving a reputation odorous for sanctity, with numberless
witnesses to carry it into every quarter of Islam.




CHAPTER VIII

THE ARRIVAL IN CONSTANTINOPLE


Uel, the son of Jahdai, was in the habit of carrying the letter received
from the mysterious stranger about with him in a breast pocket. How many
times a day he took it out for reexamination would be difficult to say.
Observing the appearance of signs of usage, he at length wrapped it in
an envelope of yellow silk. If he had thought less of it, he would have
resorted to plain linen.

There were certain points in the missive which seemed of greater
interest to him than others. For example, the place whence it had been
addressed was an ever recurring puzzle; he also dwelt long upon the
sentence which referred so delicately to a paternal relationship. The
most exigent passages, however, were those relative to the time he might
look for the man's coming. As specially directed, he had taken note of
the day of the delivery of the letter, and was greatly surprised to find
the messenger had arrived the last day of the year permitted him. The
punctuality of the servant might be in imitation of a like virtue of the
master. If so, at the uttermost, the latter might be expected six months
after receipt of the letter. Or he might appear within the six months.
The journeys laid out were of vast distances, and through wild and
dangerous countries, and by sea as well. Only a good traveller could
survive them at all; to execute them in such brief space seemed
something superhuman.

So it befell that the son of Jahdai was at first but little concerned.
The months--three, four, five--rolled away, and the sixth was close at
hand; then every day brought him an increase of interest. In fact, he
found himself looking for the arrival each morning, and at noon
promising it an event of the evening.

November was the sixth and last month of the time fixed. The first of
that month passed without the stranger. Uel became anxious. The
fifteenth he turned the keeping of his shop over to a friend; and
knowing the passage from Alexandria must be by sea, he betook himself,
with Syama, to the port on the Golden Horn known as the Gate of St.
Peter, at the time most frequented by Egyptian sailing masters. In
waiting there, he saw the sun rise over the heights of Scutari, and it
was the morning of the very last day. Syama, meantime, occupied himself
in final preparation of the house for the reception. He was not excited,
like Uel, because he had no doubt of the arrival within the period set.
He was also positively certain of finding his master, when at length he
did appear, exactly as when he separated from him in Cipango. He was
used to seeing Time waste itself upon the changeless man; he had even
caught from him a kind of contempt for what other men shrank from as
dangers and difficulties.

The site of the house has been described; it remains to give the reader
an idea of its interior. There were four rooms on the ground floor
furnished comfortably for servants, of whom the arrangement indicated
three besides Syama. The first floor was of three apartments communicable
by doorways with portieres of camel's hair. The furniture was Roman,
Greek, and Egyptian mixed. Of the three the middle chamber was largest,
and as its fittings were in a style of luxury supposed to be peculiar to
princes, the conclusion was fair that it was designed for the
proprietor's occupancy during his waking hours. A dark blue rug clothed
the floor. In the centre, upon a shield of clear copper, arose a silver
brazier. The arms and legs of the stools here and there on the rug were
carven in grotesque imitation of reptiles and animals of the ultra
dragonish mode. The divans against the walls were of striped silk. In
each corner stood a tall post of silvered bronze, holding at the end
of a graceful crook several lamps of Pompeiian model. A wide window in
the east end, filled with plants in bloom, admitted ample light, which,
glancing through the flowers, fell on a table dressed in elegant cloth,
and bearing a lacquered waiter garnished with cups of metal and glass,
and one hand-painted porcelain decanter for drinking water. An enormous
tiger-skin, the head intact and finished with extraordinary realism, was
spread on the floor in front of the table. The walls were brilliant with
fresh Byzantine frescoing. The air of the room was faintly pervaded with
a sweet incense of intoxicating effect upon one just admitted to it.
Indeed the whole interior partook of this sweetness.

The care of the faithful servant had not been confined to the rooms; he
had constructed a summer house upon the roof, knowing that when the
weather permitted his master would pass the nights there in preference
to the chambers below. This structure looked not unlike a modern belfry,
except that the pillars and shallow dome of the top were of Moorish
lightness. Thence, to a familiar, the heavens in the absence of the sun
would be an unrolled map.

When the last touch of the preparation had been given, and Syama said to
himself, "He may come now," one point was especially noticeable--nowhere
in the house was there provision for a woman.

The morning of the last day Syama accompanied Uel to the port
reluctantly. Feeling sure his master had not arrived in the night, he
left his friend on the watch, and returned home early.

The noise and stir of business at the ancient landing were engaging.
With a great outcry, a vessel would be drawn up, and made fast, and the
unloading begun. A drove of donkeys, or a string of camels, or a mob of
porters would issue from the gate, receive the cargo and disappear with
it. Now and then a ship rounded the classic Point, its square sail bent
and all the oars at work: sweeping past Galata on the north side of the
Horn, then past the Fish Market Gate on the south, up it would come
gracefully as a flying bird; if there was place for it at the quay,
well; if not, after hovering around awhile, it would push out to a berth
in the open water. Such incidents were crises to Uel. To this one and to
that he would run with the question:

"Where is she from?"

If from the upper sea, he subsided; but if from the Marmora, he kept
eager lookout upon her, hoping to recognize in every disembarkee the man
he was expecting.

That he had never seen the person was of little consequence. He had
thought of him so much awake, and seen him so repeatedly in dreams, he
was confident of knowing him at sight. Imagining a stranger's appearance
is for the most part a gentle tribute of respect; the mistakes we make
are for the most part ludicrous.

No one answering the preconception came. Noon, and still no one; then,
cast down and disappointed, Uel went home, ate something, held the usual
childish dialogue with his little girl, and about mid afternoon crossed
the street to the new residence. Great was his astonishment at finding a
pyramid of coals glowing in the silver brazier, and the chill already
driven from the sitting-room. Here--there--upstairs, downstairs--the
signs were of present occupancy. For a moment he thought the master had
slipped by him or landed at some other port of the city.

"Is he here? Has he come?" he asked, excitedly, and Syama answered with
a shake of the head.

"Then why the fire?"

Syama, briefly waving his hand as if following the great Marmorean lake,
turned the finger ends into the other palm, saying plainly and
emphatically:

"He is coming--he will be here directly."

Uel smiled--faith could not be better illustrated--and it was so in
contrast with his own incredulity!

He lingered awhile. Restlessness getting the mastery, he returned home,
reflecting on the folly of counting so implicitly upon the conclusion to
a day of a tour so vast. More likely, he thought, the traveller's bones
were somewhere whitening the desert, or the savages of Kash-Cush had
eaten him. He had heard of their cannibalism.

Want of faith, however, did not prevent the shopkeeper from going to his
friend's house after supper. It was night, and dark, and the chilling
moisture of a winter wind blowing steadily from the Black Sea charged
the world outside with discomfort. The brazier with its heap of living
coals had astonished him before; now the house was all alight! He
hastened upstairs. In the sitting-room the lamps were burning, and the
illumination was brilliant. Syama was there, calm and smiling as usual.

"What--he is here?" Uel said, looking from door to door.

The servant shook his head, and waved his hand negatively, as to say:

"Not yet--be patient--observe me."

To indulge his wonder, Uel took seat. Later on he tried to get from
Syama an explanation of his amazing confidence, but the latter's
substitute for speech was too limited and uncertain to be satisfactory.

About ten o'clock Syama went below, and presently returned with food and
drink on a large waiter.

"Ah, good Lord!" Uel thought. "He is making a meal ready. What a man!
What a master!"

Then he gave attention to the fare, which was of wheaten wafers, cold
fowl, preserved fruits, and wine in a stoneware bottle. These Syama set
on a circular table not higher than the divan in front of which it was
drawn. A white napkin and a bowl for laving the fingers completed the
preparation, as Uel supposed. But no. Syama went below again, and
reappeared with a metal pot and a small wooden box. The pot he placed on
the coals in the brazier, and soon a delicate volume of steam was
pouring from the spout; after handling the box daintily as if the
contents were vastly precious, he deposited it unopened by the napkin
and bowl. Then, with an expression of content upon his face, he too took
seat, and surrendered himself to expectancy. The lisping of the steam
escaping from the pot on the fire was the only sound in the room.

The assurance of the servant was contagious. Uel began to believe the
master would come. He was congratulating himself upon the precaution he
had taken in leaving a man at the port to conduct him rightly when he
heard a shuffling of feet below stairs. He listened startled. There were
several men in the company. Steps shook the floor. Uel and Syama arose.

The latter's countenance flushed with pleasure; giving one triumphal
glance at his friend, much as to say, There--did I not tell you so? he
walked forward quickly, and reached the head of the steps just as a
stranger finished their ascent. In a moment Syama was on his knees,
kissing the hand held out to him. Uel needed no prompter--it was the
master!

If only on account of the mutuality of affection shown between the two,
the meeting was a pleasant sight. That feature, however, was lost to the
shopkeeper, who had no thought except of the master's appearance. He had
imagined him modelled after the popular conceptions of kings and
warriors--tall, majestic, awe-inspiring. He saw instead a figure rather
undersized, slightly stoop-shouldered, thin; at least it seemed so then,
hid as it was under a dark brown burnoose of the amplitude affected by
Arab sheiks. The head was covered by a woollen handkerchief of reddish
tint, held by a scarlet cord. The edge of the handkerchief projected
over the forehead enough to cast the entire face in shade, leaving to
view only a mass of white beard overflowing the breast.

The master ended the reception at the head of the stairs by gently
raising Syama to his feet. Then he subjected the room to a swift
inspection, and, in proof of satisfaction, he patted the happy retainer
on the shoulder. Invited by the fire, and the assurance of comfort in
its glow, he advanced to the brazier, and while extending his hands over
it, observed Uel. Without surprise or hesitation he walked to him.

"Son of Jahdai!" he said, offering his hand.

The voice was of exceeding kindness. As an overture to peace and
goodwill, it was reenforced by very large eyes, the intense blackness of
which was softened by a perceptible glow of pleasure. Uel was won on the
instant. A recollection of the one supreme singularity of the new
acquaintance--his immunity from death--recurred to him, and he could not
have escaped its effect had he wished. He was conscious also that the
eyes were impressing him. Without distinct thought, certainly without
the slightest courtierly design, he obeyed the impulse of the moment,
and stooped and touched the extended hand with his lips. And before
rising he heard the beginning of further speech:

"I see the truth of my judgment. The family of my ancient friends has
trodden the ways of righteousness under the commandments of the Lord
until it has become a kind unto itself. I see too my trust has been
verified. O Son of Jahdai, you did assist my servant, as I requested,
and to your kindness, doubtless, I am indebted for this home full of
comforts after a long absence among strangers. I hold you my creditor."

The tendency of the speech was to relieve Uel of embarrassment.

"Do not thank me," he answered. "The business was ordinary, and strictly
within Syama's capacity. Indeed, the good man could have finished it
without my help."

The master, rich in experience, noticed the deferential manner of the
reply, and was agreeably assured on his side.

"Very well. There will be no harm in reserving an opinion," he said.
"The good man, as you call him, is making ready a drink with which he
has preceded me from his country, and which you must stay and share, as
it is something unknown in the West."

"Let me first welcome you here," Uel returned.

"Oh, I saw the welcome in your face. But let us get nearer the fire. The
night is chilling. If I were owner of a garden under whatever hill along
the Bosphorus, verily I should tremble for my roses."

Thus briefly, and in such simple manner, the wise Mystic put the
shopkeeper perfectly at ease.

At the brazier they watched Syama in the operation since become of
universal knowledge under title of "drawing tea." The fragrance of the
decoction presently filled the room to the suppression of the incense,
and they drank, ate, and were sociable. The host outlined his travels.
Uel, in return, gave him information of the city. When the latter
departed, it was with a light heart, and an elastic step; the white
beard and patriarchal manner of the man had laid his fears, and the
future was to him like a cloudless sky.

Afterwhile the master signified a wish to retire; whereupon his
household came, as was their wont, to bid him good-night. Of these there
were two white men. At sight of Syama, they rushed to embrace him as
became brethren of old acquaintance long in the same service. A third
one remained at the door. Syama looked at him, and then at the master;
for the man was a stranger. Then the Jew, with quick intuition of the
requirement of the time, went, and took him by the hand, and led him to
the others. Addressing Syama, he said gravely:

"This is Nilo, son of the Nilo whom you knew. As you held the father in
love, so you shall hold the son."

The man was young, very black, and gigantic in stature. Syama embraced
him as he had the others.

In the great city there was not a more united household under roof than
that of the shopkeeper's friend.




CHAPTER IX

THE PRINCE AT HOME

A wise man wishing to know another always attends him when he is in
narrative. The reader may be familiar with the principle, and a believer
in it; for his better satisfaction, therefore, a portion of the Prince's
conversation with Uel over the tea-table the night of his arrival in
Constantinople shall be reported nearly as possible in his own words. It
will be found helpful to the story as well as an expose of character.

"I said in my letter, as thou mayst remember, O son of Jahdai"--the
voice of the speaker was low, but earnest, and admirably in harmony with
the sentiment, "that I hoped thou wouldst allow me to relate myself to
thee as father to son. Thou hast not forgotten it, I am sure."

"I recall it distinctly," Uel answered, respectfully.

"Thou wilt remember not less clearly then that I added the words, 'in
all things a help, in nothing a burden.'"

Uel assented.

"The addition I thought of great importance," the Prince continued; "for
it was very desirable that thou shouldst not imagine me coming to sit
down upon thee, and in idleness fatten upon the fruits of thy industry.
As something of even greater importance, thou shouldst know now, at this
earliest moment of our intercourse, that I am abundantly able from what
I have of goods and treasure to keep any condition I may choose to
assume. Indeed thou shouldst not be too much astonished did I practise
the style and manner of the nobles who are privileged in the palaces of
thy Caesar. At home I shall be as thou seest me now, thy friend of
simplest habits, because my tastes really incline to them; when I go
abroad, the officials of the Church and State whom I chance to encounter
shall be challenged to comparison of appearance, and be piqued to
inquire about me. Then when the city observes thou art intimate with me,
the demand for thy wares will increase; thou mayst even be put to stress
to keep apace with it. In speaking thus, I trust thy natural shrewdness,
sharpened as it must have become by much dealing as a merchant."

He paused here to give his cup to Syama for replenishment; whereupon Uel
said: "I have followed thy discourse with interest, and I hope with
understanding; yet I am conscious of a disadvantage. I do not know thy
name, nor if thou hast a title."

"Yes, and thou mightest have set down in the table of defaults," the
Wanderer began pleasantly in reply, but broke off to receive the cup
smoking hot from the servant, and say--"Thanks, Syama. I see thy hand
hath not lost its deftness; neither has the green leaf suffered from its
long journey over the sea."

Uel noticed with what intentness Syama watched the master's lips while
he was speaking, and the gratification that beamed from his face in
answer to the compliment; and he thought, "Verily this must be a good
man to be so beloved by his dependents."

"I was saying, O son of Jahdai, that thou mightest have set down the
other points of information equally necessary to our intercourse--Whence
I come? And why? And I will not leave thee in the dark respecting them.
Only let me caution thee--It is not required that the public should be
taken into our confidence. I have seen a flower good to look upon, but
viscous, and with a scent irresistible to insects. That flower represents
the world; and what is the folly of its victims but the madness of men
who yield themselves with too easy faith to the seductions of the world?
Nay, my son--observe thou the term--I use it to begin the relationship I
seek--observe also I begin the relationship by confidences which were
unwisely given without the injunction that they are intended to be put
away in thy inner-conscience. Tell me if I am understood."

The question was emphasized by a look whose magnetism thrilled Uel's
every nerve.

"I believe I understand you," he replied.

Then, as if the Prince knew the effect he had wrought, and that it
relieved him from danger of betrayal, he returned to his former easy
manner.

"And yet, as thou shalt see, my son, the confidences are not crimes--But
thy cup is empty, and Syama waiting for it."

"The drink is new to me," Uel replied, yielding to the invitation.

"New? And wilt thou not also say it is better than wine? The world of
which we are talking, will one day take up the admission, and be happier
of it."

Turning then to serious matter:

"Afterwhile," he said, "thou wilt be importuned by the curious to know
who I am, and thou shouldst be able to answer according to the fact--He
is a Prince of India. The vulgar will be satisfied with the reply.
Others will come demanding more. Refer them to me. As to thyself, O son
of Jahdai, call me as I have instructed thee to speak of me--call me
Prince. At the same time I would have thee know that on my eighth day I
was carried into a temple and registered a son of a son of Jerusalem.
The title I give thee for my designation did not ennoble me. The
birthright of a circumcised heritor under the covenant with Israel is
superior to every purely human dignity whatever its derivation."

"In other words, O Prince, thou art"--Uel hesitated.

"A Jew!" the other answered promptly--"A Jew, as thy father was--as thou
art."

The look of pleasure that appeared on the shopkeeper's face was swiftly
interpreted by the Prince, who felt he had indeed evoked a tie of blood,
and bound the man with it.

"So much is despatched," he said, with evident satisfaction; then, after
a draught from the tea-cup, and a re-delivery to Syania for more, he
continued: "Possibly thou wilt also remember my letter mentions a
necessity for my crossing from India to Mecca on the way to Kash-Cush,
and that, despite the stoppage, I hoped to greet thee in person within
six months after Syama reported himself. How stands the time?"

"This is the last day of the six months," Uel answered.

"Yes, there was never man"--the Prince paused, as if the thought were
attended with a painful recollection--"never a man," he presently
resumed, "who kept account of time more exactly than myself."

A copious draught of tea assuaged the passing regret.

"I wrote the letter while in Cipango, an island of the great eastern
sea. Thirty years after I set foot upon its shore, theretofore unvisited
by a white man, a countryman of ours from this city, the sole survivor of
a shipwreck, joined me. From him I heard of thy father's death. He also
gave me thy name.... My life on the island was comparatively untroubled.
Indeed, for thy perfect comprehension, my son, it is best to make an
explanation now; then thou wilt have a key to many things in my conduct
to come as well as conduct gone which would otherwise keep thee in
doubtful reflection. The study of greatest interest is religion. I have
travelled the world over--I mean the inhabited parts--and in its broad
extent there is not a people without worship of some kind. Wherefore my
assertion, that beyond the arts, above the sciences, above commerce,
above any or all other human concernments, religion is the superlative
interest. It alone is divine. The study of it is worship. Knowledge of
it is knowledge of God. Can as much be said of any other subject?"

Uel did not answer; he was following the speech too intently, and the
Prince, seeing it, drank again, and proceeded:

"The divine study took me to Cipango. Fifty years thou mayst say to
thyself was a long term in such a country. Not so, my son. I found there
two faiths; the one Sin-Siu, which I turned my back upon as mythologic,
without the poetry of the Greek and Roman; the other--well, a life given
to the laws of Buddha were well spent. To say truth, there is such
similitude between them and the teachings of him we are in the habit of
calling the carpenter's son that, if I did not know better, it were easy
to believe the latter spent the years of his disappearance in some
Buddhistic temple.... Leaving explanation to another time, the same
study carried me to Mecca. The binding of men, the putting yokes about
their necks, trampling them in the dust, are the events supposed most
important and therefore most noticeable in history; but they are as
nothing in comparison with winning belief in matters indeterminable by
familiar tests. The process there is so mysterious, the achievement so
miraculous that where the operator is vastly successful one may well
look under them for the permission of God. The day was when Islamism did
but stir contemptuous laughter; now it is the faith acceptable to more
men than any other. Is it not worthy the vigils of a student? And then
it happens, my son, that in the depths of their delusion, people
sometimes presume to make their own gods, and reform them or cast them
out. Deities have been set up or thrown down by their makers in the
changes of a moon. I wanted to see if such calamity had befallen the
Allah of Mahomet.... My going to Kash-Cush was on what thou wouldst call
business, and of it I will also tell thee. At Jedda, whither I betook
myself after making the pilgrimages at Mecca, I regained my ship, and
descended the Red Sea, landing at a village on the extreme inland shore
of the bay of Tajurrah, below the Straits of Bab-el-Mandel. I was then
in Kash-Cush. From the village on the coast, I passed into the interior,
travelling in a litter on the shoulders of native porters, and, after
many days, reached my destination--a collection of bungalows pitched on
the bank of a tributary of the Blue Nile called the Dedhesa. The journey
would have been difficult and tedious but that one of my attendants--a
black man--had been king of the tribe I sought. His name was Nilo, and
his tribe paramount throughout the uncivilized parts of Kash-Cush. More
than fifty years before,--prior, in fact, to my setting out for
Cipango,--I made the same tour, and found the king. He gave me welcome;
and so well did he please me that I invited him to share my wanderings.
He accepted the proposal upon condition that in his old age he should be
returned home, and exchanged for a younger man of his blood. I agreed,
provided one younger could be found who, besides the requisite physique
and the virtues of intellect and courage, was also deaf and dumb, like
himself. A treaty was thus perfected. I call it a treaty as distinct
from a purchase, for Nilo was my friend and attendant--my ally, if you
please--never my slave. There was a reception for us the like of which
for feasting and merriment was without mention in the traditions of the
tribe. A grandson filled my friend's throne; but he gave it back to him,
and voluntarily took his place with me. Thou shalt see him to-morrow. I
call him Nilo, and spend the morning hours teaching him to talk; for
while he keeps me reminded of a Greek demi-god--so tall, strong and
brave is he--he is yet deaf and dumb, and has to be taught as Syama was.
When thou hast to do with him be gentle and courteous. I wish it kept in
mind he is my friend and ally, bound to me by treaty as his grandfather
was.... The only part of the tour given thee in my letter which I
omitted was the descent of the Nile. Having performed it before, my
curiosity was sated, and I allowed my impatience to be in thy city here
to determine my course. I made way back to the village on the bay of
Tajurrah where, in anticipation of such a change, my vessel was held in
detention. Thence, up the sea and across the Isthmus, I proceeded to
Alexandria, and to-night happily find myself at home, in hope of rest
for my body and renewal of my spirit."

With this, the explanation appeared concluded; for the Prince notified
Syama that he did not desire more tea, and lapsed into a thoughtful
silence. Presently Uel arose, saying: "You must be weary. With
permission I will take my leave now. I confess you have given me much to
think over, and made me happy by taking me into your confidence. If it
be agreeable, I will call at noon to-morrow."

The Prince went with him to the head of the stairs, and there bade him
peace and good-night.




CHAPTER X

THE ROSE OF SPRING


The Prince, as the Jew preferred to be called, kept his house closely
quite a month, resting, not hibernating. He took exercise daily on the
flat roof; and walking to and fro there, found three objects of
attraction: the hill to the southwest with the church upon it, the
Palace of Blacherne off further in the west, and the Tower of Galata.
The latter, across the Golden Horn in the north, arose boldly, like a
light-house on a cliff; yet, for a reason--probably because it had
connection with the subject of his incessant meditations--he paused
oftenest to gaze at the Palace.

He was in his study one day deeply absorbed. The sun, nearing meridian,
poured a stream of white light through the south window, flooding the
table at which he sat. That the reader may know something of the paths
the Mystic most frequented when in meditation, we will make free with
one of the privileges belonging to us as a chronicler.

The volume directly in front of him on the table, done in olive wood
strengthened at the corners with silver, was near two feet in length,
and one and a half in width; when closed, it would be about one foot
thick. Now he had many wonderful rare and rich _antiques_, but none
so the apple of his eye as this; for it was one of the fifty Holy Bibles
of Greek transcription ordered by Constantine the Great.

At his right, held flat by weights, were the _Sacred Books_ of China, in
form a roll of broad-leafed vellum.

At his left, a roll somewhat similar in form and at the moment open, lay
the _Rig-Veda_ of the Aryans in Sanscrit.

The fourth book was the _Avesta_ of Zoroaster--a collection of MSS.
stitched together, and exquisitely rendered by Parse devas into the Zend
language.

A fifth book was the _Koran_.

The arrangement of the volumes around the Judean Bible was silently
expressive of the student's superior respect; and as from time to time,
after reading a paragraph from one of the others, he returned to the
great central treasure, it was apparent he was making a close comparison
of texts with reference to a particular theme, using the Scriptures as a
standard. Most of the time he kept the forefinger of his left hand on
what is now known as the fourteenth verse of the third chapter of
Exodus--"And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus
shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you."
If, as the Prince himself had declared, religion were indeed the study
of most interest to the greatest number of men, he was logically
consistent in comparing the definitions of _God_ in the Bibles of
theistic nations. So had he occupied himself since morning. The shrewd
reader will at once discern the theme of his comparative study.

At length he grew weary of bending over the books, and of the persistent
fixedness of attention required for the pursuit of fine shades of
meaning in many different languages. He threw his arms up in aid of a
yawn, and turned partly around, his eyes outrunning the movement of his
body. The half-introverted glance brightened with a gleam, and remained
fixed, while the arms dropped down. He could only look in wonder at what
he saw--eyes black and almost large as his own gazing at him in timid
surprise. Beholding nothing but the eyes, he had the awesome feeling
which attends imagining a spirit suddenly risen; then he saw a forehead
low, round, and white, half shaded by fluffs of dark hair; then a face
of cherubic color and regularity, to which the eyes gave an indefinable
innocency of expression.

Every one knows the effect of trifles on the memory. A verse or a word,
the smell of a flower, a lock of hair, a turn in music, will not merely
bring the past back, but invest it with a miraculous recurrency of
events. The Prince's gaze endured. He stretched his hand out as if
fearful lest what he saw might vanish. The gesture was at once an
impulse and an expression. There was a time--tradition says it was the
year in which he provoked the curse--when he had wife and child. To one
of them, possibly both, the eyes then looking into his might have
belonged. The likeness unmanned him. The hand he stretched forth fell
lightly upon the head of the intruder.

"What are you?" he said.

The vagueness of the expression will serve excellently as a definition
of his condition; at the same time it plunged the child addressed into
doubt. Presently she answered:

"I am a little girl."

Accepting the simplicity of the reply as evidence of innocency too
extreme for fear, he took the visitor in his arms, and sat her on his
knee.

"I did not mean to ask what you are, but who?" he said.

"Uel is my father."

"Uel? Well, he is my friend, and I am his; therefore you and I should be
friends. What is your name?"

"He calls me Gul Bahar."

"Oh! That is Turkish, and means Rose of Spring. How came you by it?"

"My mother was from Iconium."

"Yes--where the Sultans used to live."

"And she could speak Turkish."

"I see! Gul Bahar is an endearment, not a real name."

"My real name is Lael."

The Prince paled from cheek to brow; his lips trembled; the arm
encircling her shook; and looking into his eyes, she saw tears dim them.
After a long breath, he said, with inexpressible tenderness, and as if
speaking to one standing just behind her--"Lael!" Then, the tears full
formed, he laid his forehead on her shoulder so his white hair blent
freely with her chestnut locks; and sitting passively, but wondering,
she heard him sob and sob again and again, like another child. Soon, from
pure sympathy, unknowing why, she too began sobbing. Several minutes
passed thus; then, raising his face, and observing her responsive sorrow,
he felt the need of explanation.

"Forgive me," he said, kissing her, "and do not wonder at me. I am
old--very old--older than thy father, and there have been so many things
to distress me which other men know nothing of, and never can. I had
once"--

He stopped, repeated the long breath, and gazed as at a far object.

"I too had once a little girl."

Pausing, he dropped his eyes to hers.

"How old are you?"

"Next spring I shall be fourteen," she answered.

"And she was just your age, and so like you--so small, and with such
hair and eyes and face; and she was named Lael. I wanted to call her
_Rimah_, for she seemed a song to me; but her mother said, as she was a
gift from the Lord, she wanted in the fulness of days to give her back to
him, and that the wish might become a covenant, she insisted on calling
her Lael, which, in Hebrew--thy father's tongue and mine--means To God."

The child, listening with all her soul, was now not in the least afraid
of him; without waiting, she made the application.

"You loved her, I know," she said

"How much--Oh, how much!"

"Where is she now?"

"At Jerusalem there was a gate called the Golden Gate. It looked to the
east. The sun, rising over the top of Mount Olivet, struck the plates of
gold and Corinthian brass more precious than gold, so it seemed one rosy
flame. The dust at its rocky sill, and the ground about it are holy.
There, deep down, my Lael lies. A stone that tasked many oxen to move it
covers her; yet, in the last day, she will be among the first to
rise--Of such excellence is it to be buried before that Golden Gate."

"Oh! she is dead!" the child exclaimed.

"She is dead;" and seeing her much affected, he hastened to say, "I shed
many tears thinking of her. Ah, how gentle and truthful she was! And how
beautiful! I cannot forget her. I would not if I could; but you who look
so like her will take her place in my heart now, and love me as she did;
and I will love you even as I loved her. I will take you into my life,
believing she has come again. In the morning I will ask first, Where is
my Lael? At noon, I will demand if the day has been kind to her; and the
night shall not be half set in except I know it has brought her the
sweetness of sleep. Will you be my Lael?"

The question perplexed the child, and she was silent.

Again he asked, "Will you be my Lael?"

The earnestness with which he put the question was that of a hunger less
for love than an object to love. The latter is not often accounted a
passion, yet it creates necessities which are peremptory as those of any
passion. One of the incidents of the curse he was suffering was that he
knew the certainty of the coming of a day when he must be a mourner for
whomsoever he should take into his heart, and in this way expiate
whatever happiness the indulgence might bring him. Nevertheless the
craving endured, at times a positive hunger. In other words, his was
still a human nature. The simplicity and beauty of the girl were enough
to win him of themselves; but when she reminded him of the other asleep
under a great rock before the gate of the Holy City, when the name of
the lost one was brought to him so unexpectedly, it seemed there had
been a resurrection, making it possible for him to go about once more as
he was accustomed to in his first household. A third time he asked, "You
will be my Lael?"

"Can I have two fathers?" she returned.

"Oh, yes!" he answered quickly. "One in fact, the other by adoption; and
they can both love you the same."

Immediately her face became a picture of childish trust.

"Then I will be your Lael too."

He clasped her close to his breast, and kissed her, crying:

"My Lael has come back to me! God of my fathers, I thank thee!"

She respected his emotion, but at length, with her hand upon his
shoulder, said:

"You and my father are friends, and thinking he came here, I came too."

"Is he at home?"

"I think so."

"Then we will go to him. You cannot be my Lael without his consent."

Presently, hand in hand, they descended the stairs, crossed the street,
and were in the shopkeeper's presence.

The room was plainly but comfortably furnished as became the proprietor's
fortune and occupation. Closer acquaintance, it is to be said, had
dissipated the latent dread, which, as has been seen, marked Uel's first
thought of intimacy between the stranger and the child. Seeing him old,
and rich, and given to study, not to say careless of ordinary things, the
father was beginning to entertain the idea that it might in some way be
of advantage to the child could she become an object of interest to him.
Wherefore, as they entered now, he received them with a smile.

Traces of the emotion he had undergone were in the Prince's face, and
when he spoke his voice was tremulous.

"Son of Jahdai," he said, standing, "I had once a wife and child. They
perished-how and when, I cannot trust myself to tell. I have been
faithful to their memory. From the day I lost them, I have gone up and
down the world hunting for many things which I imagined might renew the
happiness I had from them. I have been prodigal of gratitude,
admiration, friendship, and goodwill, and bestowed them singly and
together, and often; but never have I been without consciousness of
something else demanding to be given. Happiness is not all in receiving.
I passed on a long time before it came to me that we are rich in
affections not intended for hoarding, and that no one can be truly
content without at least one object on which to lavish them. Here"--and
he laid his hand on the child's head--"here is mine, found at last."

"Lael is a good girl," Uel said with pride.

"Yes, and as thou lovest her let me love her," the Prince responded.
Then, seeing Uel become serious, he added, "To help thee to my meaning,
Lael was my child's name, and she was the image of this one; and as she
died when fourteen, thy Lael's age, it is to me as if the tomb had
miraculously rendered its victim back to me."

"Prince," said Uel, "had I thought she would not be agreeable to you, I
should have been sorry."

"Understand, son of Jahdai," the other interposed, "I seek more of thee
than thy permission to love her. I want to do by her as though she were
mine naturally."

"You would not take her from me?"

"No. That would leave thee bereft as I have been. Like me, thou wouldst
then go up and down looking for some one to take her place in thy heart.
Be thou her father still; only let me help thee fashion her future."

"Her birthrights are humble," the shopkeeper answered, doubtfully; for
while in his secret heart he was flattered, his paternal feeling started
a scruple hard to distinguish from fear.

A light shone brightly in the eyes of the elder Jew, and his head arose.

"Humble!" he said. "She is a daughter of Israel, an inheritor of the
favor of the Lord God, to whom all things are possible. He keeps the
destinies of his people. He--not thou or I--knows to what this little
one may come. As we love her, let us hope the happiest and the highest,
and prepare her for it. To this end it were best you allow her to come
to me as to another father. I who teach the deaf and dumb to speak--Syama
and Nilo the elder--will make her a scholar such as does not often grace
a palace. She shall speak the Mediterranean tongues. There shall be no
mysteries of India unknown to her. Mathematics shall bring the heavens to
her feet. Especially shall she become wise in the Chronicles of God. At
the same time, lest she be educated into unfitness for the present
conditions of life, and be unsexed, thou shalt find a woman familiar with
society, and instal her in thy house as governess and example. If the
woman be also of Israel, so much the better; for then we may expect
faithfulness without jealousy. And further, son of Jahdai, be niggardly
in nothing concerning our Lael. Clothe her as she were the King's
daughter. At going abroad, which she shall do with me in the street and
on the water, I would have her sparkle with jewels, the observed of
everybody, even the Emperor. And ask not doubtingly, 'Whence the money
for all this?' I will find it. What sayest thou now?"

Uel did not hesitate.

"O Prince, as thou dost these things for her--so far beyond the best I
can dream of--take her for thine, not less than mine."

With a beaming countenance, the elder raised the child, and kissed her
on the forehead.

"Dost hear?" he said to her. "Now art thou my daughter."

She put her arms about his neck, then held them out to Uel, who took
her, and kissed her, saying:

"Oh my Gul Bahar!"

"Good!" cried the Prince. "I accept the name. To distinguish the living
from the dead, I too will call her my Gul Bahar."

Thereupon the men sat, and arranged the new relation, omitting nothing
possible of anticipation.

Next day the Prince's house was opened with every privilege to the
child. A little later on a woman of courtly accomplishment was found and
established under Uel's roof as governess. Thereupon the Mystic entered
upon a season during which he forgot the judgment upon him, and all else
save Gul Bahar, and the scheme he brought from Cipango. He was for the
time as other men. In the lavishment of his love, richer of its long
accumulation, he was faithful to his duty of teacher, and was amply
rewarded by her progress in study.




BOOK III

THE PRINCESS IRENE


CHAPTER I

MORNING ON THE BOSPHORUS


Our narrative proceeds now from a day in the third year after Lael, the
daughter of the son of Jahdai, dropped into the life of the Prince of
India--a day in the vernal freshness of June.

From a low perch above the mountain behind Becos, the sun is delivering
the opposite European shore of the Bosphorus from the lingering shades
of night. Out on the bosom of the classic channel vessels are swinging
lazily at their anchorages. The masthead of each displays a flag
bespeaking the nationality of the owner; here a Venetian, there a
Genoese, yonder a Byzantine. Tremulous flares of mist, rising around the
dark hulls, become entangled in the cordage, and as if there were no
other escape, resolve themselves into air. Fisher boats are bringing
their owners home from night-work over in the shallows of Indjerkeui.
Gulls and cormorants in contentious flocks, drive hither and thither,
turning and tacking as the schools of small fish they are following turn
and tack down in the warm blue-green depths to which they are native.
The many wings, in quick eccentric motion, give sparkling life to the
empurpled distance.

The bay of Therapia, on the same European shore over against Becos, was
not omitted from rescue by the sun. Within its lines this morning the
ships were in greater number than out in the channel--ships of all
grades, from the sea going commercial galley to the pleasure shallop
which, if not the modern _caique_, was at least its ante-type in
lightness and grace.

And as to the town, one had but to look at it to be sure it had
undergone no recent change--that in the day of Constantine Dragases it
was the same summer resort it had been in the day of Medea the
sorceress--the same it yet is under sway of the benignant Abdul-Hamid.

From the lower point northwardly jutting finger-like into the current of
the channel, the beach swept in a graceful curve around to the base of
the promontory on the south. Then as now children amused themselves
gathering the white and black pebbles with which it was strewn, and
danced in and out with the friendly foam-capped waves. Then as now the
houses seemed tied to the face of the hill one above another in
streetless disarrangement; insomuch that the stranger viewing them from
his boat below shuddered thinking of the wild play which would ensue did
an earthquake shake the hill ever so lightly.

And then as now the promontory south served the bay as a partial
land-lock. Then as now it arose boldly a half mountain densely
verdurous, leaving barely space enough for a roadway around its base.
Then as now a descending terrace of easy grade and lined with rock pine
trees of broadest umbrella tops, slashed its whole townward front.
Sometime in the post-Medean period a sharp-eyed Greek discerned the
advantages it offered for aesthetic purposes, and availed himself of
them; so that in the age of our story its summit was tastefully
embellished with water basins, white-roofed pavilions, and tessellated
pavements Roman style. Alas, for the perishability of things human! And
twice alas, that the beautiful should ever be the most perishable!

But it is now to be said we have spoken thus of the Bosphorus, and the
bay and town of Therapia, and the high promontory, as accessories merely
to a plot of ground under the promontory and linked to it by the
descending terrace. There is no word fitly descriptive of the place.
Ravine implies narrowness; gorge signifies depth; valley means width;
dell is too toylike. A summer retreat more delicious could not be
imagined. Except at noon the sun did but barely glance into it. Extending
hundreds of yards back from the bay toward the highlands west of the
town, it was a perfected garden of roses and flowering vines and shrubs,
with avenues of boxwood and acacias leading up to ample reservoirs hidden
away in a grove of beeches. The water flowing thence became brooks or was
diverted to enliven fountains. One pipe carried it in generous flow to
the summit of the promontory. In this leafy Eden the birds of the climate
made their home the year round. There the migratory nightingale came
earliest and lingered longest, singing in the day as well as in the
night. There one went regaled with the breath of roses commingled with
that of the jasmine. There the bloom of the pomegranate flashed through
the ordered thicket like red stars; there the luscious fig, ripening in
its "beggar's jacket," offered itself for the plucking; there the murmur
of the brooks was always in the listening ear.

Along the whole front of the garden, so perfectly a poet's ideal,
stretched a landing defended from the incessant swash of the bay by a
stone revetment. There was then a pavement of smoothly laid flags, and
then a higher wall of dark rubble-work, coped with bevelled slabs. An
open pavilion, with a bell-fashioned dome on slender pillars, all of
wood red painted, gave admission to the garden. Then a roadway of gray
pebbles and flesh-tinted shells invited a visitor, whether afoot or on
horseback, through clumps of acacias undergrown with carefully tended
rosebushes, to a palace, which was to the garden what the central jewel
is to the cluster of stones on "my lady's" ring.

Standing on a tumulus, a little removed from the foot of the promontory,
the palace could be seen from cornice to base by voyagers on the bay, a
quadrangular pile of dressed marble one story in height, its front
relieved by a portico of many pillars finished in the purest Corinthian
style. A stranger needed only to look at it once, glittering in the sun,
creamy white in the shade, to decide that its owner was of high
rank--possibly a noble--possibly the Emperor himself.

It was the country palace of the Princess Irene, of whom we will now
speak.[Footnote: During the Crimean war a military hospital was built
over the basement vaults and cisterns of the palace here described. The
hospital was destroyed by fire. For years it was then known as the
"Khedive's Garden," being a favorite resort for festive parties from the
capital. At present the promontory and the retreat it shelters pertain
to the German Embassy, a munificent gift from His Majesty, Sultan
Abdul-Hamid.]




CHAPTER II

THE PRINCESS IRENE
[Footnote: This name is of three syllables, and is pronounced as if
spelled E-ren-ay; the last syllable to rhyme with day, say, may.]


During the reign of the last Manuel, in 1412, as a writer has placed the
incident--that is to say, about thirty-nine years prior to the epoch
occupying us--a naval battle occurred between the Turks and Christians
off Plati, one of the Isles of the Princes. The issue was of interest to
all the peoples who were in the habit of commercial resort in the
region, to the Venetians and Genoese as well as the Byzantines. To the
latter it was of most vital moment, since defeat would have brought them
a serious interruption of communication with the islands which still
remained to the Emperor and the powers in the West upon which their
dependency grew as year after year their capacity for self-defence
diminished.

The Turkish ships had been visible in the offing several days. At last
the Emperor concluded to allow his mariners to go out and engage them.
His indecision had been from a difficulty in naming a commander. The
admiral proper was old and inexperienced, and his fighting impulses,
admitting they had ever really existed, had been lost in the habitudes
of courtierly life. He had become little more than a ceremonial marker.
The need of the hour was a genuine sailor who could manoeuvre a
squadron. On that score there was but one voice among the seamen and
with the public--

"Manuel--give us Manuel!"

The cry, passing from the ships to the multitude in the city, assailed
the palace.

The reader should understand the Manuel wanted was not the Emperor, but
one of his brothers who could lay no claim to birth in the purple. His
mother had not been a lawful spouse; yet the Manuel thus on the tongues
of the many had made a hero of himself. He proved his temper and
abilities in many successful affairs on the sea, and at length became a
popular idol; insomuch that the imperial jealousy descended upon him
like a cloud, and hid him away. Nor could his admirers say he lived; he
had a palace and a family, and it was not known that any of the
monasteries in the city or on the Isles of the Princes had opened to
receive him.

On these shreds of evidence, affirmative and negative, slender as they
may appear, it was believed he was yet alive. Hence the clamor; and
sooth to say it sufficed to produce the favorite; so at least the
commonalty were pleased to think, though a sharper speculation would
have scored the advent quite as much to the emergency then holding the
Empire in its tightening grip.

Restored to active life, Manuel the sailor was given a reception in the
Hippodrome; then after a moment of gladness with his family, and another
in which he was informed of the situation and trial before him, he
hurried to assume the command.

Next morning, with the rising of the sun, the squadron under oar and
sail issued gallantly from its retreat in the Golden Horn, and in order
of battle sought the boastful enemy of Plati. The struggle was long and
desperate. Its circumstances were dimly under view from the seaward wall
in the vicinity of the Seven Towers. A cry of rejoicing from the anxious
people at last rose strong enough to shake the turrets massive as they
were--"Kyrie Eleison! Kyrie Eleison!" Christ had made his cause
victorious. His Cross was in the ascendant. The Turks drew out of the
defeat as best they could, and made haste to beach the galleys remaining
to them on the Asiatic shore behind the low-lying islands.

Manuel the sailor became more than a hero; to the vulgar he was a
savior. All Byzantium and all Galata assembled on the walls and water
along the famous harbor to welcome him when, with many prizes and a
horde of prisoners, he sailed back under the sun newly risen over the
redeemed Propontis. Trumpets answered trumpets in brazen cheer as he
landed. A procession which was a reminder of the triumphs of the ancient
and better times of the Empire escorted him to the Hippodrome. The
overhanging gallery reserved for the Emperor there was crowded with the
dignitaries of the court; the factions were out with their symbols of
blue and green; the scene was gorgeous; yet the public looked in vain
for Manuel the Emperor; he alone was absent; and when the dispersion
took place, the Byzantine spectators sought their homes shaking their
heads and muttering of things in store for their idol worse than had yet
befallen him. Wherefore there was little or no surprise when the
unfortunate again disappeared, this time with his whole family. The
victory, the ensuing triumph, and the too evident popularity were more
than the jealous Emperor could overlook.

There was then a long lapse of years. John Palaeologus succeeded Manuel
on the throne, and was in turn succeeded by Constantine, the last of the
Byzantine monarchs.

Constantine signalized his advent, the great Greek event of 1448, by
numerous acts of clemency, for he was a just man. He opened many prison
doors long hopelessly shut. He conferred honors and rewards that had
been remorselessly erased from account. He condoned offences against his
predecessors, mercifully holding them wanting in evil against himself.
So it came to pass that Manuel, the hero of the sea fight off Plati,
attained a second release, or, in better speech, a second resurrection.
He had been all the years practically buried in certain cells of the
convent of St. Irene on the island of Prinkipo, and now he came forth an
old man, blind and too enfeebled to walk. Borne into private audience,
he was regarded by Constantine with tender sympathy.

"And thou art that Manuel who made the good fight at Plati?"

"Say rather I am he who was that Manuel," the ancient replied. "Death
despises me now because he could not call my decease a victory."

The inquisitor, visibly affected, next spoke in an uncertain voice.

"Is what I have heard true, that at thy going into the Monastery thou
hadst a family?"

The eyes of the unfortunate were not too far gone for tears; some rolled
down his cheeks; others apparently dropped into his throat.

"I had a wife and three children. It is creditable to the feeling called
love that they chose to share my fate. One only survives, and"--he
paused as if feebly aware of the incoherency--"and she was born a
prisoner."

"Born a prisoner!" exclaimed Constantine. "Where is she now?"

"She ought to be here."

The old man turned as he spoke, and called out anxiously:

"Irene--Irene, where art thou, child?"

An attendant, moved like his master, explained.

"Your Majesty, his daughter is in the ante-room."

"Bring her here."

There was a painful hush in the chamber during the waiting. When the
daughter appeared, all eyes were directed to her--all but the father's,
and even he was instantly aware of her presence; for which, doubtless,
the sensibility known only to the long-time blind was sufficiently
alive.

"Where hast thou been?" he asked, with a show of petulance.

"Calm thee, father, I am here."

She took his hand to assure him, and then returned the look of the
Emperor; only his was of open astonishment, while hers was
self-possessed.

Two points were afterwards remembered against her by the courtiers
present; first, contrary to the custom of Byzantine women, she wore no
veil or other covering for the face; in the next place, she tendered no
salutation to the Emperor. Far from prostrating herself, as immemorial
etiquette required, she did not so much as kneel or bow her head. They,
however, excused her, saying truly her days had been passed in the
Monastery without opportunity to acquire courtly manners. In fact they
did not at the time notice the omissions. She was so beautiful, and her
beauty reposed so naturally in an air of grace, modesty, intelligence,
and purity that they saw nothing else. Constantine recovered himself,
and rising from his seat, advanced to the edge of the dais, which in
such audiences, almost wholly without state, raised him slightly above
his guests and attendants, and spoke to the father:

"I know thy history, most noble Greek--noble in blood, noble in loyalty,
noble by virtue of what thou hast done for the Empire--and I honor thee.
I grieve for the suffering thou hast endured, and wish myself surrounded
with many more spirits like thine, for then, from my exalted place, I
could view the future and its portents with greater calmness of
expectation, if not with more of hope. Perhaps thou hast heard how sadly
my inheritance has been weakened by enemies without and within; how,
like limbs lopped from a stately tree, the themes [Footnote: Provinces.]
richest in their yield of revenue have been wrested from the body of our
State, until scarce more than the capital remains. I make the allusion
in apology and excuse for the meagreness of what I have to bestow for
thy many heroic services. Wert thou in the prime of manhood, I would
bring thee into the palace. That being impossible, I must confine myself
to amends within my power. First, take thou liberty."

The sailor sunk to his knees; then he fell upon his hands, and touched
the floor with his forehead. In that posture, he waited the further
speech. Such was the prostration practised by the Greeks in formally
saluting their Basileus.

Constantine proceeded.

"Take next the house here in the city which was thine when the judgment
fell upon thee. It has been tenantless since, and may be in need of
repairs; if so, report the cost they put thee to, and I will charge the
amount to my civil list." Looking then at the daughter, he added: "On
our Roumelian shore, up by Therapia, there is a summer house which once
belonged to a learned Greek who was the happy possessor of a Homer
written masterfully on stainless parchment. He had a saying that the
book should be opened only in a palace specially built for it; and,
being rich, he indulged the fancy. He brought the marble from the
Pentelic quarries; nothing grosser was permitted in the construction. In
the shade of a portico of many columns of Corinthian model he passed his
days reading to chosen friends, and living as the Athenians were wont to
live in the days of Pericles. In my youth I dwelt much with him, and he
so loved me that at dying he gave me the house, and the gardens and
groves around it. They will help me now to make partial amends for
injustice done; and when will a claimant appear with better right than
the daughter of this brave man? In speaking but now, did he not call
thee Irene?"

A flush overspread her neck and face, but she answered without other
sign of feeling:

"Irene."

"The house--it may be called a palace--and all that pertains to it, are
thine," he continued. "Go thither at will, and begin thy life anew."

She took one step forward, but stopped as suddenly, her color coming and
going. Never had Constantine seen wife or maid more beautiful. He almost
dreaded lest the spell she cast over him would be broken by the speech
trembling upon her lips. She moved quickly to the dais then, and taking
his hand, kissed it fervently, saying:

"Almost I believe we have a Christian Emperor."

She paused, retaining the hand, and looking up into his face.

The spectators, mostly dignitaries of high degree, with their attendants,
were surprised. Some of them were shocked; for it should be remembered
the court was the most rigidly ceremonial in the world. The rules
governing it were the excerpt of an idea that the Basileus or Emperor was
the incarnation of power and majesty. When spoken to by him, the proudest
of his officials dropped their eyes to his embroidered slippers; when
required to speak to him, they fell to their knees, and kept the posture
till he was pleased to bid them rise. Not one of them had ever touched
his fingers, except when he deigned to hold them out to be most humbly
saluted. Their manner at such times was more than servility; in
appearance, at least, it was worship. This explanation will enable the
reader to understand the feeling with which they beheld the young woman
keep the royal hand a prisoner in hers. Some of them shuddered and turned
their faces not to witness a familiarity so closely resembling
profanation.

Constantine, on his part, looked down into the eyes of his fair
kinswoman, knowing her speech was not finished. The slight inclination
of his person toward her was intended for encouragement. Indeed, he made
no attempt to conceal the interest possessing him.

"The Empire may be shorn, even as thou hast said," she resumed presently,
in a voice slightly raised. "But is not this city of our fathers by site
and many advantages as much the capital of the world as ever? A Christian
Emperor founded it, and his name was Constantine; may it not be its
perfect restoration is reserved for another Constantine, also a Christian
Emperor? Search thy heart, O my Lord! I have heard how noble impulses are
often prophets without voices."

Constantine was impressed. From a young person, bred in what were really
prison walls, the speech was amazing. He was pleased with the opinion
she was evidently forming of himself; he was pleased with the hope she
admitted touching the Empire; he was pleased with the Christian faith,
the strength of mind, the character manifested. Her loyalty to the old
Greek regime was unquestionable. The courtiers thought she might at
least have made some acknowledgment of his princely kindness; but if he
thought of the want of form, he passed it; enough for him that she was a
lovely enthusiast. In the uncertainty of the moment, he hesitated; then,
descending from the dais, he kissed her hand gracefully, courteously,
reverently, and said simply:

"May thy hope be God's will."

Turning from her, he helped the blind man to his feet, and declared the
audience dismissed.

Alone with his secretary, the Grand _Logothete_, he sat awhile
musing.

"Give ear," he at length said. "Write it, a decree. Fifty thousand gold
pieces annually for the maintenance of Manuel and Irene, his daughter."

The secretary at the first word became absorbed in studying his master's
purple slippers; then, having a reply, he knelt.

"Speak," said Constantine.

"Your Majesty," the secretary responded, "there are not one thousand
pieces in the treasury unappropriated."

"Are we indeed so poor?"

The Emperor sighed, but plucking spirit, went on bravely:

"It may be God has reserved for me the restoration, not only of this
city, but of the Empire. I shall try to deserve the glory. And it may be
that noble impulses _are_ speechless prophets. Let the decree stand.
Heaven willing, we will find a way to make it good."




CHAPTER III

THE HOMERIC PALACE


The reader is now informed of the history of Irene, which is to he
remembered as of an important personage in the succeeding pages. Knowing
also how she became possessed of the palace we have been at some pains
to describe, he is prepared to see her at home.

The night has retreated from the European shore of the Bosphorus,
although the morning is yet very young. The sun in the cloudless sky
beyond Becos, where it appears standing as if to rest from the fatigue
of climbing the hills, is lifting Therapia bodily out of its sparkling
waters. In the bay moreover there are many calls of mariner to mariner,
and much creaking of windlasses, and clashing of oars cast loose in
their leather slings. To make the scene perfectly realistic there is a
smell of breakfast cooking, not unpleasant to those within its waftage
who are yet to have their appetites appeased. These sights, these
sounds, these smells, none of them reach the palace in the garden under
the promontory opposite the town. There the birds are singing their
matin songs, the flowers loading the air with perfume, and vine and tree
drinking the moisture borne down to them from the unresting sea so near
in the north. [Footnote: The Black Sea.]

Under the marble portico the mistress is sitting exactly in the place we
can imagine the old Greek loved most what time he read from his
masterful copy of Homer. Between columns she saw the Bosphorean expanse
clear to the wooded Asiatic shore. Below was a portion of the garden
through which the walk ran, with a graceful curve, to the red kiosk by
the front gate. Just beyond it the landing lay. Around her were palm and
rose trees in painted tubs, and in their midst, springing from a tall
vase carven over with mythologic figures, a jasmine vine affected all
the graces of its most delicate nature. Within reach of her right hand
there were platters of burnished brass on a table of ebony, its thin,
spider legs inlaid with silver in lines. One of the platters bore a heap
of white biscuits such as at this day are called crackers; the others
supported pitchers, and some drinking cups, all of silver.

The mistress sat in an arm-chair very smooth in finish despite the
lineations sunk into its surfaces, and so roomy as to permit her to drop
easily into a half-reclining posture. A footstool dressed in dark
stamped leather was ready to lend its aid to gracefulness and comfort.

We will presume now to introduce the reader to the Princess Irene,
though, as the introduction must be in the way of description, our
inability to render the subject adequately is admitted in advance.

At the moment of first sight, she is sitting erect, her head turned
slightly to the left shoulder, and both hands resting on the dog's head
garnishing the right arm of the chair. She is gazing abstractedly out at
the landing, as if waiting for some one overdue. The face is uncovered;
and it is to be said here that, abhorring the custom which bound her
Byzantine sisterhood to veils, except when in the retiracy of their
chambers, she was at all times brave enough to emphasize the abhorrence
by discarding the encumbrance. She was never afraid of the effects of
the sun on her complexion, and had the art of moving modestly and with
composure among men, who, on their side, were used in meeting her to
conceal their admiration and wonder under cover of grave respect.

Her figure, tall, slender, perfectly rounded, is clad in drapery of the
purest classic mode. Outwardly it consists of but two garments--a robe
of fine white woollen stuff, and over it a mantle of the same texture
and hue, hanging from a yoke of close-fitting flesh-colored silk richly
embroidered with Tyrian floss. A red rope loosely twisted girdles her
body close under the breasts, from which, when she is standing, the gown
in front falls to the feet, leaving a decided train. The mantle begins
at a point just in front of the arm, under which, and along the sides,
it hangs, like a long open sleeve, being cut away behind about half down
the figure. The contrivance of the yoke enabled the artist, by gathering
the drapery, to determine the lines in which it should drop, and they
were few but positive. In movement, the train was to draw the gown to
the form so its outlines could be easily followed from the girdle.

The hair, of the tint of old gold, is dressed in the Grecian style; and
its abundance making the knot unusually ample, there was necessity for
the two fillets of pink silk to keep it securely in place.

The real difficulty in the description is now reached. To a reader of
sharp imagination it might be sufficient to say the face of the Princess
Irene, seen the morning in question, was perfectly regular, the brows
like pencilling, the nose delicate, the eyes of violet shading into
blackness, the mouth small with deep corners and lips threads of
scarlet, the cheeks and brow precisely as the received law of beauty
would have them. This would authorize a conception of surpassing
loveliness; and perhaps it were better did we stop with the suggestions
given, since the fancy would then be left to do its own painting. But
patience is besought, for vastly more than a face of unrivalled
perfection, the conjuration is a woman who yet lives in history as such
a combination of intellect, spirit, character, and personal charm that
men, themselves rulers and conquerors, fell before her at sight. Under
necessity therefore of going on with the description, what words are at
command to convey an idea of the complexion--a property so wholly
unartificial with her that the veins at the temples were as transparent
shadows on snow, and the coloring of the cheeks like a wash of roses?
What more is there than to point to the eyes of the healthful freshness
peculiar to children of tender nurture; the teeth exquisitely regular
and of the whiteness of milk and the lustre of pearls; the ears small,
critically set, and tinted pink and white, like certain shells washed
ashore last night? What more? Ah, yes! There are the arms bare from the
shoulder, long and round as a woman's should be, and terminating in
flexile wrists, and hands so gracefully modelled we shrink from thought
of their doing more than making wreaths of flowers and playing with harp
strings. There too is the pose of the head expressive of breeding and
delicacy of thought and feeling, of pride and courage--the pose
unattainable by effort or affectation, and impossible except where the
head, itself faultless, is complemented by a neck long, slender, yet
round, pliant, always graceful, and set upon shoulders the despair of
every one but the master who found perfection of form and finish in the
lilies of the Madonna. Finally there is the correspondence, in action as
well as repose, of body, limbs, head, and face, to which, under
inspiration of the soul, the air and manner of lovely women are always
referable.

The Princess was yet intensely observing the stretch of water before
her, and the rapid changes of the light upon its face, when a boat,
driven by a single oarsman, drew up to the landing, and disembarked a
passenger. That he was not the person she was expecting became instantly
apparent. She glanced at him once, and then, satisfied he was a stranger
in whom she had no interest, resumed study of the bay. He, however,
after dropping something in the boatman's hand, turned, and walked to
the gateway, and through it towards the palace.

Ere long a servant, whose very venerable appearance belied the
steel-pointed javelin he carried, hobbled slowly along the floor of the
portico marshalling a visitor. She touched the golden knot at the back
of her head to be assured of its arrangement, arose, shook out the folds
of her gown and mantle, and was prepared for the interruption.

The costume of the stranger was new to the Princess. A cassock of mixed
white and brown wool that had gone through a primitive loom with little
of any curative process except washing, hung from his neck to his heels.
Aside from the coarseness of warp and woof, it fitted so closely that
but for a slit on each side of the skirt walking would have been
seriously impeded. The sleeves were long and loose, and covered the
hands. From the girdle of untanned skin a double string of black horn
beads, each large as a walnut, dropped to his knees. The buckle of the
girdle, which might have been silver deeply oxidized, was conspicuously
large, and of the rudest workmanship. But withal much the most curious
part of the garb was the cowl, if such it may be called. Projecting over
the face so far as to cast the features in shadow, it carried on the
sides of the head broad flaps, not unlike the ears of an elephant. This
envelope was hideous, yet it served to exalt the man within to
giantesque proportions.

The Princess surveyed the visitor with astonishment hardly concealed.
What part of the world could produce a creature so utterly barbarous?
What business could he have with her? Was he young or old? Twice she
scanned him from head to foot. He was a monk; so much the costume
certified; and while he stopped before her with one foot advanced from
the edge of the skirt, and resting lightly in the clasp of the thongs of
a very old-fashioned sandal, she saw it was white, and blue veined, and
at the edges pink, like a child's, and she said to herself, "He is
young--a young monastic."

The stranger drew from his girdle a linen package carefully folded,
kissed it reverently, and said:

"Would the Princess Irene be pleased if I open the favor for her?"

The voice was manly, the manner deferential.

"Is it a letter?" she asked.

"A letter from the Holy Father, the Archimandrite of the greatest of the
northern Lavras." [Footnote: Monasteries.]

"Its name?"

"Bielo-Osero."

"The Bielo-Osero? Where is it?"

"In the country of the Great Prince." [Footnote: Russia.]

"I knew not that I had an acquaintance in so distant a region as the
north of Russia. You may open the letter."

Unmindful of the indifferent air of the Princess, the monk removed the
cloth, leaving its folds hanging loosely from his hand. A sheet of
vellum was exposed lying on the covered palm.

"The Holy Father bade me when I delivered the writing, O Princess, to
deliver his blessing also; which--the saying is mine, not his--is of
more worth to the soul than a coffer of gold for the wants of the body."

The pious comment was not lost; but without a word, she took the vellum,
and resuming her seat, addressed herself to the reading. First, her eyes
dropped to the signature. There was a look of surprise--another of
uncertainty--then an exclamation:

"Hilarion! Not my Father Hilarion! He is but a sacred memory! He went
away and died--and yet this is his hand. I know it as I know my own."

The monk essayed to remove the doubt.

"Permit me," he said, then asked, "Is there not an island hereabouts
called Prinkipo?"

She gave him instant attention.

"And on the side of the island over against the Asiatic coast, under a
hill named Kamares, is there not a convent built centuries ago by an
Empress?"

"Irene," she interposed.

"Yes, Irene--and was not Father Hilarion for many years Abbot of the
convent? Then, on account of his fame for learning and piety, did not
the Patriarch exalt him to attendance on his own person as Doctor of the
Gospels? Still later, was he not summoned to serve the Emperor in the
capacity of Warden of the Purple Ink?"

"From whom have you all these things?" she asked.

"Excellent Princess, from whom could I have them save the good Father
himself?"

"Thou art then his messenger?"

"It becomes me better to refer you to what he has there written."

So saying, the monk stepped backward, and stood a little way off in a
respectful attitude. She raised the missive, and kissed the signature
several times, exclaiming:

"Now hath God taken care of his own!"

Then she said to the monk, "Thou art indeed a messenger with good
tidings."

And he, accepting the welcome, uncovered his head, by raising the
hideous _klobouk_, [Footnote: Cowl.] and letting it fall back pendant
from his shoulders. The violet eyes of the Princess opened wider,
brightening as with a sudden influx of light. She could not remember a
finer head or a face more perfect in manly beauty, and at the same time
so refined and gentle.

And he was so young--young even as herself--certainly not more than
twenty. Such was her first general impression of him. For the pleasure
there was in the surprise, she would not allow it to be observed, but
said:

"The Father in his letter, no doubt, tells me thy name, but since I wish
to reserve the reading, I hope thou wilt not be offended if I ask it
directly."

"The name my mother gave me is Andre; but when I came to be a deacon in
our Bielo-Osero, Father Hilarion, who presided at the raising, asked me
how I wished to be known in the priesthood, and I answered him, Sergius.
Andre was a good christening, and serves well to remind me of my dear
mother; but Sergius is better, because at hearing it I am always
reminded that by vows and solemn rites of ordination I am a servant of
God."

"I will endeavor to remember thy preference," the Princess said; "but
just now, good Sergius, it is of next importance to know if thou hast
yet had breakfast?"

A smile helped his face to even more of pleasantness.

"No," he answered, "but I am used to fasting, and the great city is not
more than two hours away."

She looked concerned.

"Thy patron Saint hath not deserted thee. Here is a table already set.
He for whom I held it is long on the road; thou shalt take his place,
and be not less welcome." To the old servant she added: "We have a
guest, not an enemy, Lysander. Put up thy javelin, and bring a seat for
him; then stand behind him, lest it happen one service of the cups be
not enough."

Directly the two were at the table opposite each other.




CHAPTER IV

THE RUSSIAN MONK


Sergius took a glass of red wine from the old attendant, and said:

"I should like your permission, O Princess, to make a confession."

His manner was that of one unused to the society of women. He was
conscious she was studying him, and spoke to divert her. As she was slow
answering, he added: "That you may not think me disposed to abuse the
acquaintance you honor me with, especially as you have not yet read the
letter of the good Father Hilarion upon which I rely for your better
regard, I ask the permission rather to show the degree of your kindness
to me. It may interest you also to learn of the confirmation of a certain
faith you are perhaps unwittingly lending a novice in the ways of the
world."

She had been studying him, and her first impression was now confirmed.
His head in shape and pose was a poet's; the long, wavy, flaxen hair,
parted in the middle, left small space for the forehead, which was
nevertheless broad and white, with high-arched, well-defined brows for
base. The eyes were gray. In repose they had a dreamy introspectional
expression. The mustache and beard, the first growth of youth spent
entirely indoors, were as yet too light to shade any part of the face.
The nose was not enough _retrousse_ to be irregular. In brief, the
monk was of the type now well known as Russian. Aside from height and
apparent muscularity, he very nearly realized the Byzantine ideal of
Christ as seen in the cartoons excellently preserved in a mosque of
Stamboul not far from the gate anciently San Romain now _Top Kapoussi_.

The appearance of the young monk, so strikingly suggestive of the being
most sacred in the estimation of the Princess, was at the moment less
curious to her than a certain habit observable in him. The look of
brightness attendant upon the thought he was putting into form would,
when the utterance was through, suffer a lapse which, for want of
strictly definite words, may be described as a sombering of the eyes
when they were widest open, a gazing beyond at something else than the
opposite speaker; implying that the soul was become mysteriously
occupied apart from the mind. The effect was as if she had before her
two widely different characters making themselves present at the same
time in one person. Unquestionably, though rarely, there is a duality of
nature in men, by which, to put it extremely, a seeming incapable may be
vastly capable, outward gentleness a mask for a spirit of Neronian
violence, dulness a low-lying cloud surcharged with genius. What shall
be done with such a nature? When may it be relied upon? Who shall ever
come to really know it?

Occupied with the idea, the Princess heard but the conclusion of the
monk's somewhat awkward apology, and she answered:

"The confession must be of something lighter than a sin. I will listen."

"A sin!" he exclaimed, with a blush. "Pardon me, O Princess. It was a
trifle of which I spoke too seriously. I promise thou shalt take from it
nothing worse than a laugh at my simplicity. See thou these things?"

He gave her a glance full of boyish humor, and from a breast pocket of
his cassock drew a bag of coarse yellow silk; thrusting a hand into its
mouth, he then brought out a number of square leathern chips stamped
with sunken letters, and laid them on the table before her.

"This you must know is our money." The Princess examined the pieces, and
said:

"I doubt if our tradesmen would accept them."

"They will not. I am a witness to the fact. Nevertheless they will carry
a traveller, go he either way, from one end of our Great Prince's realm
to the other. When I left the Lavra, setting out on my journey, Father
Hilarion gave me the bag, saying, as he put it into my hand, 'Now upon
coming to the port where the ship awaits thee, be sure to exchange the
money with the merchants there for Byzantine gold; else, unless God come
to thy aid, thou wilt be turned into a mendicant.' And so I fully meant
to do; but when I reached the port, I found it a city large, and full of
people and sights wonderful to me, demanding to be seen. I forgot the
injunction. Indeed I never thought of it until this morning."

Here he laughed at himself, proving he was not yet seriously alive to
the consequences of his negligence. Presently he resumed:

"I landed only last night, and sick from the tossing of the sea, put up
at an inn in the town yonder. I ordered breakfast, and, according to a
custom of my people, offered to pay before tasting. The master of the
house looked at my money, and told me to show him coin of gold; if not
that, then copper or brass, or even iron, in pieces bearing the name of
the Emperor. Being told I had only this, he bade me look elsewhere for
breakfast. Now I had designed going to the great city to kiss the hand
of the Patriarch, of whom I have always heard as the wisest of men,
before coming to thee; but the strait I was in was hard. Could I expect
better of the innkeepers there? I had a button of gold--a memorial of my
entry into the Lavra. That day Father Hilarion blessed it three times;
and it bore a cross upon its face which I thought might make it
acceptable as if it were lettered with the name of Constantine. A
boatman consented to take it for rowing me to thy landing. Behold! Thou
hast my confession!"

His speech to this time had been in Greek singularly pure and fluent;
now he hesitated, while his eyes, open to the full, sombered, as if from
a field in the brain back of them a shadow was being cast through his
face. When next he spoke it was in his native tongue.

The Princess observed her guest with increasing interest; for she was
wholly unused to such artlessness in men. How could Father Hilarion have
intrusted business of importance to an envoy so negligent? His
confession, as he termed it, was an admission, neither more nor less,
that he had no money of the country into which he was come. And further,
how could the habit of lapsing in thought, or more simply, of passing
abruptly from the present subject, be explained except on the theory of
something to which he had so given himself it had become overmastering
and all absorbent? This, she saw intuitively, would prove the key to the
man; and she set about finding it out.

"Your Greek, good Sergius, is excellent; yet I did not understand the
words with which you concluded."

"I beg pardon," he replied, with a change of countenance. "In my
mother's tongue I repeated a saying of the Psalmist, which you shall
have voice and look as Father Hilarion has given it to me oftener than I
am days old." Then his voice lowered into a sweet intensity fitting the
text: "'The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.' Those were the
words, Princess; and who shall say they do not comprehend all there is
of religion?"

The answer was unexpected, the manner affecting; never had she heard
conviction and faith more perfectly affirmed. More than a monk, the
young man might be a preacher! And Father Hilarion might have grown
wiser of his years! Perhaps he knew, though at a vast distance, that the
need of the hour in Constantinople was not a new notable--a bishop or a
legate--so much as a voice with power of persuasion to still the
contentions with which her seven hills were then resounding. The idea,
though a surmise, was strong enough to excite a desire to read the holy
man's letter. She even reproached herself for not having done so.

"The worthy priest gave me the same saying in the same words," she said,
rising, "and they lose nothing of their meaning by thy repetition. We
may speak of them hereafter. For the present, to keep thee from
breakfast were cruel. I will go and make terms with my conscience by
reading what thou hast brought me from the Father. Help thyself freely
as if thou wert the most favored of guests; or rather "--she paused to
emphasize the meaning--"as though I had been bidden to prepare for thy
coining. Should there be failure in anything before thee, scruple not to
ask for more. Lysander will be at thy service. I may return presently."

The monk arose respectfully, and stood until she disappeared behind the
vases and flowers, leaving in his memory a fadeless recollection of
graciousness and beauty, which did not prevent him from immediately
addressing himself as became a hungry traveller.




CHAPTER V

A VOICE FROM THE CLOISTER


While the Princess Irene traversed the portico, she repeated the words,
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want; and she could see how the
negligent, moneyless monk, turned away at the inn, was provided for in
his moment of need, and also that she was the chosen purveyor; if so, by
whom chosen? The young man had intended calling on the Patriarch first;
who brought him to her? The breakfast was set for an invited guest; what
held him back, if not the power that led the stranger to her gate?

In saying now that one of the consequences of the religious passion
characteristic of the day in the East--particularly in Constantinople--a
passion so extreme as to induce the strongest minds to believe God, and
the Son, and even the Holy Mother discernible in the most commonplace
affairs--our hope is to save the Princess from misjudgment. Really the
most independent and fearless of spirits, if now and then she fell into
the habit of translating the natural into the supernatural, she is
entitled to mercy, since few things are harder to escape than those of
universal practice.

Through a doorway, chiselled top and jambs, she entered a spacious hall
nude of furniture, though richly frescoed, and thence passed into a
plain open, court coolly shaded, having in the centre a jet of water
which arose and fell into a bowl of alabaster. The water overflowing the
bowl was caught again in a circular basin which, besides the ornamental
carving on the edge and outside, furnished an ample pool for the gold
fish disporting in it.

In the court there were also a number of women, mostly young Greeks,
sewing, knitting, and embroidering vestments. Upon her entrance they
arose, let their work drop on the spotless white marble at their feet,
and received her in respectful silence. Signing them to resume their
labor, she took a reserved chair by the fountain. The letter was in her
hand, but a thought had the precedence.

Admitting she had been chosen to fulfil the saying quoted, was the call
for the once only? When the monk went up to the city, was her ministry
to end? Would not that be a half-performance? How much farther should
she go? She felt a little pang of trouble, due to the uncertainty that
beset her, but quieted it by an appeal to the letter. Crossing herself,
and again kissing the signature, she began the reading, which, as the
hand was familiar to her, and the composition in the most faultless
Greek of the period, was in nowise a perplexity.

"BIELO-OSERO, 3_d June_, 1452.

"From Hilarion, the Hegumen, to Irene, his well-beloved daughter.

"Thou hast thought of me this longtime as at rest forever--at rest with
the Redeemer. While there is nothing so the equivalent of death as
silence, there is no happiness so sweet as that which springs upon us
unexpectedly. In the same sense the resurrection was the perfect
complement of the crucifixion. More than all else, more than the sermon
on the mount, more than His miracles, more than His unexampled life, it
lifted our Lord above the repute of a mere philosopher like Socrates. We
have tears for His much suffering; but we sing as Miriam sang when we
think of His victory over the grave. I would not compare myself to Him;
yet it pleases me believing these lines, so unexpected, will give thee a
taste of the feeling the Marys had, when, with their spices in hand,
they sought the sepulchre and found only the Angels there.

"Let me tell thee first of my disappearance from Constantinople. I
repented greatly my taking from the old convent by the Patriarch; partly
because it separated me from thee at a time when thy mind was opening to
receive the truth and understand it. Yet the call had a sound as if from
God. I feared to disobey it.

"Then came the summons of the Emperor. He had heard of my life, and, as
a counteraction of vice, he wanted its example in the palace. I held
back. But the Patriarch prevailed on me, and I went up and suffered
myself to be installed Keeper of the Purple Ink. Then indeed I became
miserable. To such as I, what is sitting near the throne? What is power
when not an instrument of mercy, justice and charity? What is easy life,
except walking in danger of habits enervating to the hope of salvation?
Oh, the miseries I witnessed! And how wretched the sight of them,
knowing they were beyond my help! I saw moreover the wickedness of the
court. Did I speak, who listened except to revile me? Went I to
celebrations in this or that church, I beheld only hypocrisy in scarlet.
How often, knowing the sin-stains upon the hands of the celebrants at
the altar in Sta. Sophia, the house in holiness next to the temple of
Solomon--how often, seeing those hands raise the blood of Christ in the
cup before the altar, have I trembled, and looked for the dome above to
let consuming vengeance in upon us, the innocent with the guilty!

"At last fear filled all my thoughts, and forbade sleep or any comfort.
I felt I must go, and quickly, or be lost for denial of covenants made
with Him, the ultimate Judge, in whose approval there is the peace that
passeth understanding. I was like one pursued by a spirit making its
presence known to me in sobs and plaints, stinging as conscience stings.

"Consent to my departure was not to be expected; for great men dislike
to have their favors slighted. It was not less clear that formal
resignation of the official honor I was supposed to be enjoying would be
serviceable to the courtiers who were not so much my enemies personally
as they were enemies of religion and contemners of all holy observances.
And there were so many of them! Alas, for the admission! What then was
left but flight?

"Whither? I thought first of Jerusalem; but who without abasement can
inhabit with infidels? Then Hagion Oras, the Holy Hill, occurred to me;
the same argument applied against it as against return to the convent of
Irene-I would be in reach of the Emperor's displeasure. One can study
his own heart. Holding mine off, and looking at it alive with desires
holy and unholy, I detected in it a yearning for hermitage. How
beautiful solitude appears! In what condition can one wishing to change
his nature for the better more certainly attain the end than without
companionship except of God always present? The spirit of prayer is a
delicate minister; where can we find purer nourishment for it than in
the silence which at noon is deep as at midnight?

"In this mood the story of the Russian St. Sergius reverted to me. He
was born at Rostoff. Filled with pious impulses more than dissatisfied
with the world, of which he knew nothing, with a brother, he left his
father's house when yet a youth and betook himself to a great woods in
the region Radenego; there he dwelt among savage beasts and wild men,
fasting and praying and dependent like Elijah of old. His life became a
notoriety. Others drew to him. With his own hands he built a wooden
church for his disciples, giving it the name of Troitza or Thrice Holy
Trinity. Thither I wandered in thought. A call might be there for me, so
weary of the egotism, envy, detraction, greed, grind and battle of the
soulless artificiality called society.

"I left Blacherne in the night, and crossing the sea in the north--no
wonder it is so terrible to the poor mariner who has to hunt his daily
bread upon its treacherous waves--I indulged no wait until, in the stone
church of the Holy Trinity, I knelt before the remains of the revered
Russian hermit, and thanked God for deliverance and freedom.

"The Troitza was no longer the simple wooden church of its founder. I
found it a collection of monasteries. The solitude of my dreams was to
be sought northward further. Some years before, a disciple of
Sergius--Cyrill by name, since canonized--unterrified by winters which
dragged through three quarters of the year, wandered off to a secluded
place on the shore of the White Lake, where he dwelt until, in old age,
a holy house was required to accommodate his following. He called it
Bielo-Osero. There I installed myself, won by the warmth of my welcome.

"Now when I departed from Blacherne, I took with me, besides the raiment
I wore, two pieces of property; a copy of the Rule of the Studium
Monastery, and a _panagia_ given me by the Patriarch--a medallion
portrait of the Blessed Mother of our Lord the Saviour, framed in gold,
and set in brilliants. I carry it hanging from my neck. Even in sleep it
is always lying just above my heart. The day is not far now when my need
of it will be over; then I will send it to thee in notice that I am
indeed at rest, and that in dying I wished to lend thee a preservative
against ills of the soul and fear of death.

"The Rule was acceptable to the Brotherhood. They adopted it, and its
letter and spirit prevailing, the house came in time to be odorous for
sanctity. Eventually, though against my will, they raised me their
Hegumen. And so my story reaches its end. May it find thee enjoying the
delight of the soul's rest I have been enjoying without interruption
since I began life anew in this retreat, where the days are days of
prayer, and the nights illuminated by visions of Paradise and Heaven.

"In the next place, I pray thou wilt take the young brother by whom this
will be delivered into friendly care. I myself raised him to a deaconship
of our Monastery. His priestly name is Sergius. He was scarcely out of
boyhood when I came here; it was not long, however, before I discovered
in him the qualities which drew me to thee during thy prison life at the
old convent of Irene--a receptive mind, and a native proneness to love
God. I made his way easy. I became his teacher, as I had been thine; and
as the years flew by he reminded me more and more of thee, not merely
with respect to mental capacity, but purity of soul and aspiration as
well. Need I say how natural it was for me to love him? Had I not just
come from loving thee?

"The brethren are good men, though unmannerly, and for the most part the
Word reaches them from some other's tongue. Filling the lad's mind was
like filling a lamp with oil. How precious the light it would one day
shed abroad! And how much darkness there was for it to dispel! And in
the darkness--Mercy, Mercy! How many are in danger of perishing!

"Never did I think myself so clearly a servant of God as in the time
Sergius was under my instruction. Thou, alas! being a woman, wert like a
strong-winged bird doomed at best to a narrow cage. The whole world was
before him.

"Of the many notes I have been compelled to take of the wants of
religion in this our age, none so amazes me as the lack of preachers. We
have priests and monks. Their name is Legion. Who of them can be said to
have been touched with the fire that fell upon the faithful of the
original twelve? Where among them is an Athanasius? Or a Chrysostom? Or
an Augustine? Slowly, yet apace with his growth, I became ambitious for
the young man. He showed quickness and astonishing courage. No task
appalled him. He mastered the tongues of the nationalities represented
around him as if he were born to them. He took in memory the Gospels,
the Psalms, and the prophetic books of the Bible. He replies to me in
Greek undistinguishable from mine. I began to dream of him a preacher
like St. Paul. I have heard him talking in the stone chapel, when the
sleet-ridden winds without had filled it with numbing frost, and seen
the Brotherhood rise from their knees, and shout, and sing, and wrestle
like madmen. It is not merely words, and ideas, and oratorical manner,
but all of them, and more--when aroused, he has the faculty of pouring
out his spirit, so that what he says takes hold of a hearer, making him
calm if in a passion, and excited if in a calm. The willing listen to
him from delight, the unwilling and opposite minded because he enchains
them.

"The pearl seemed to me of great price. I tried to keep it free of the
dust of the world. With such skill as I possess, I have worn its stains
and roughnesses away, and added to its lustre. Now it goes from me.

"You must not think because I fled to this corner of the earth, there is
any abatement of my affection for Constantinople; on the contrary,
absence has redoubled the love for it with which I was born. Is it not
still the capital of our holy religion? Occasionally a traveller comes
this way with news of the changes it has endured. Thus one came and
reported the death of the Emperor John, and the succession of
Constantine; another told of justice finally done thy heroic father, and
of thy prosperity; more lately a wandering monk, seeking solitude for
his soul's sake, joined our community, and from him I hear that the old
controversy with the Latins has broken out anew, and more hotly than
ever; that the new Emperor is an _azymite_, and disposed to adhere
to the compact of union of the churches east and west made with the Pope
of Rome by his predecessor, leaving heart-blisters burning as those
which divided the Jews. Indeed, I much fear the likeness may prove
absolute. It certainly will when the Turk appears before our holy city
as Titus before Jerusalem.

"This latest intelligence induced me at last to yield to Sergius'
entreaties to go down to Constantinople, and finish there the courses
begun here. It is true he who would move the world must go into the
world; at the same time I confess my own great desire to be kept informed
of the progress of the discussion between the churches had much to do
with my consent to his departure. He has instructions to that effect, and
will obey them. Therefore I pray thee receive him kindly for his own
sake, for mine, and the promise of good in him to the cause of Jesus, our
beloved Master.

"In conclusion, allow me, daughter--for such thou wert to thy father, to
thy mother, and to me--allow me to recur to circumstances which, after
calm review, I pronounce the most interesting, the most delightful, the
most cherished of my life.

"The house under the Kameses hill at Prinkipo was a convent or refuge
for women rather than men; yet I was ordered thither when thy father was
consigned to it after his victory over the Turks. I was then
comparatively young, but still recollect the day he passed the gate
going in with his family. Thenceforward, until the Patriarch took me
away, I was his confessor.

"Death is always shocking. I remember its visits to the convent while I
was of its people; but when it came and took thy sisters we were doubly
grieved. As if the ungrateful Emperor could not be sufficiently cruel,
it seemed Heaven must needs help him. The cloud of those sad events
overhung the community a long time; at length there was a burst of
sunshine. One came to my cell and said, 'Come, rejoice with us--a baby
is born in the house.' Thou wert the baby; and thy appearance was the
first of the great gladnesses to which I have referred.

"And not less distinctly I live over the hour we met in the chapel to
christen thee. The Bishop was the chief celebrant; but not even the
splendor of his canonicals--the cope with the little bells sewn down the
sides and along the sleeves, the ompharium, the _panagia_, the cross,
the crozier--were enough to draw my eyes from the dimpled pink face
half-hidden in the pillow of down on which they held thee up before the
font. And now the Bishop dipped his fingers in the holy water--'By what
name is this daughter to be known?' And I answered, 'Irene.' Thy parents
had been casting about for a name. 'Why not call her after the convent?'
I asked. They accepted the suggestion; and when I gave it out that great
day--to the convent it was holiday--it seemed a door in my heart of which
I was unknowing opened of itself, and took thee into a love-lined chamber
to be sweet lady at home forever. Such was the second of my greatest
happinesses.

"And then afterwhile thy father gave thee over to me to be educated. I
made thy first alphabet, illuminating each letter with my own hand. Dost
thou remember the earliest sentence I heard thee read? Or, if ever thou
dost think of it now, be reminded it was thy first lesson in writing and
thy first in religion--'The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.' And
thence what delight I found in helping thee each day a little further on
in knowledge until at length we came to where thou couldst do
independent thinking.

"It was in Sta. Sophia--in my memory not more than an occurrence of
yesterday. Thou and I had gone from the island up to the holy house,
where we were spectators of a service at which the Emperor, as Basileus,
and the Patriarch were celebrants. The gold on cope and ompharium cast
the space about the altar into a splendor rich as sunshine. Then thou
asked me, 'Did Christ and His Disciples worship in a house like this?
And were they dressed as these are?' I was afraid of those around us,
and told thee to use eye and ear, but the time for questions and answers
would be when we were back safely in the old convent.

"When we were there, thou didst renew the questions, and I did not
withhold the truth. I told thee of the lowliness and simple ways of
Jesus--how He was clothed--how the out-doors was temple sufficient for
Him. I told thee of His preaching to the multitude on the shore of the
Galilean sea--I told of His praying in the garden of Gethsemane--I told
of the attempt to make a King of Him whether He would or not, and how He
escaped from the people--of how He set no store by money or property,
titles, or worldly honors.

"Then thou didst ask, 'Who made worship so formal?' And again I answered
truthfully, there was no Church until after the death of our Lord; that
in course of two hundred years kings, governors, nobles and the great of
the earth were converted to the faith, and took it under their
protection; that then, to conform it to their tastes and dignity, they
borrowed altars from pagans, and recast the worship so sumptuously in
purple and gold the Apostles would not have recognized it. Then, in
brief, I began telling thee of the Primitive Church of Christ, now
disowned, forgotten or lost in the humanism of religious pride.

"Oh, the satisfaction and happiness in that teaching! At each lesson it
seemed I was taking thee closer to the dear Christ from whom the world
is every year making new roads to get further away--the dear Christ in
search of whom I plunged into this solitude.

"How is it with thee now, my daughter? Dost thou still adhere to the
Primitive Church? Do not fear to speak thy mind to Sergius. He too is in
the secret of our faith, believing it best to love our Lord from what
our Lord hath Himself said.

"Now I bring this letter to a close. Let me have reply by Sergius, who,
when he has seen Constantinople, will come back to me, unless He who
holds every man's future in keeping discovers for him a special use.

"Do not forget me in thy prayers.

"Blessings on thee! HILARION."

The Princess read the letter a second time. When she came to the passage
referring to the Primitive Church, her hands dropped into her lap, and
she thought:

"The Father planted right well--better than he was aware, as he himself
would say did he know my standing now."

A glow which might have been variously taken for half-serious,
half-mocking defiance shone in her eyes as the thought ran on:

"Ay, dear man! Did he know that for asserting the Primitive Church as he
taught it to me in the old convent, the Greeks and the Latins have alike
adjudged me a heretic; that nothing saves me from the lions of the
Cynegion, except my being a woman--a woman forever offending by going
when and where I wist with my face bare, and therefore harmless except
to myself. If he knew this, would he send me his blessing? He little
imagined--he who kept his opinion to himself because he could see no
good possible from its proclamation--that I, the prison-bred girl he so
loved, and whom he helped make extreme in courage as in conviction,
would one day forget my sex and condition, and protest with the
vehemence of a man against the religious madness into which the
Christian world is being swept. Oh, that I were a man!"

Folding the letter hastily, she arose to return to her guest. There was
fixedness of purpose in her face.

"Oh, that I were a man!" she repeated, while passing the frescoed hall
on the way out.

In the portico, with the white light of the marble whitening her whole
person, and just as the monk, tall, strong, noble looking, despite the
grotesqueness of his attire, was rising from the table, she stopped, and
clasped her hands.

"I have been heard!" she thought, trembling. "That which it refused to
make me, Heaven has sent me. Here is a man! And he is certified as of my
faith, and has the voice, the learning, the zeal and courage, the
passion of truth to challenge a hearing anywhere. Welcome Sergius! In
want thou camest; in want thou didst find me. The Lord _is_ shepherd unto
us both."

She went to him confidently, and offered her hand. Her manner was
irresistible; he had no choice but to yield to it.

"Thou art not a stranger, but Sergius, my brother. Father Hilarion has
explained everything."

He kissed her hand, and replied:

"I was overbold, Princess; but I knew the Father would report me kindly;
and I was hungry."

"It is my part now to see the affliction comes not back again. So much
has the Shepherd already determined. But, speaking as thy sister,
Sergius, thy garments appear strange. Doubtless they were well enough in
the Bielo-Osero, where the Rule of the Studium is law instead of
fashion; but here we must consult customs or be laughed at, which would
be fatal to the role I have in mind for thee." Then with a smile, she
added, "Observe the dominion I have already assumed."

He answered with a contented laugh: whereupon she went on, but more
gravely:

"We have the world to talk over; but Lysander will now take you to your
room, and you will rest until about mid-afternoon, when my boat will
come to the landing to carry us to the city. The cowl you must exchange
for a hat and veil, the sandals for shoes, the coarse cassock for a
black gown; and, if we have time, I will go with you to the Patriarch."

Sergius followed Lysander submissively as a child.




CHAPTER VI

WHAT DO THE STARS SAY?


The sun which relieved the bay of Therapia from the thraldom of night
did the same service for the Golden Horn; only, with a more potential
voice, it seemed to say to the cities which were the pride of the
latter, Awake! Arise! And presently they were astir indoor and out.

Of all the souls who, obedient to the early summons, poured into the
street, and by the south window of the study of the Prince of India,
some going this direction, some that, yet each intent upon a particular
purpose, not one gave a thought to the Prince, or so much as wondered if
he were awake. And the indifference of the many was well for him; it
gave him immunity to pursue his specialty. But as we, the writer and the
reader, are not of the many, and have an interest in the man from
knowing more about him than they, what would have been intrusion in them
may be excused in us.

Exactly at midnight the Prince, aroused by Syama, had gone to the roof,
where there was a table, with a lamp upon it which he could shade at
pleasure, an hour-glass, and writing materials. An easy chair was also
set for him.

The view of the city offered for his inspection was circumscribed by the
night. The famous places conspicuous in daytime might as well have been
folded up and put away in a closet; he could not see so much as a
glimmer of light from any of them. Pleased thereby, and arguing that
even the wicked are good when asleep, he swept the heavens with a glance
so long and searching there could be no doubt of the purpose which had
brought him forth.

Next, according to the habit of astrologers, he proceeded to divide the
firmament into Angles and Houses, and taking seat by the table, arranged
the lamp to suit him, started the hour-glass running, and drew a diagram
familiar to every adept in divinatory science--a diagram of the heavens
with the Houses numbered from one to twelve inclusive.

In the Houses he then set the mystic symbols of the visible planets as
they were at the moment in position, mindful not merely of the
parallels, but of the degrees as well. Verifying the correctness of the
diagram by a second survey of the mighty overarch more careful even than
the first, he settled himself in the chair, saying complacently:

"Now, O Saturn, thou, the coldest and highest! Thy Houses are
ready--come, and at least behold them. I wait the configurations."

Thereupon, perfectly at ease, he watched the stellar hosts while, to
their own music, they marched past the Thrones of the Most High Planets
unchallenged except by him.

Occasionally he sat up to reverse the hour-glass, though more frequently
he made new diagrams, showing the changes in position of the several
influential bodies relatively to each other and to the benefic or
malific signs upon which so much of result depended; nor did his eyes
once weary or his zeal flag.

Finally when the sun, yet under the horizon behind the heights of
Scutari, began to flood the sky with a brilliance exceeding that of the
bravest of the stars, he collected the drawings, extinguished the lamp,
and descended to his study, but not to rest.

Immediately that the daylight was sufficient, he addressed himself to
mathematical calculations which appeared exhaustive of every rule and
branch of the disciplinary science. Hours flew by, and still he worked.
He received Syama's call to breakfast; returning from the meal, always
the simplest of the day with him, he resumed the problem. Either he was
prodigiously intent on a scheme in mind, or he was occupying himself
diligently in order to forget himself.

About noon he was interrupted.

"My father."

Recognizing the voice, he pushed the proofs of labor from him almost to
the other side of the table, turned in his seat, and replied, his face
suffused with pleasure:

"Thou enemy to labor! Did not some one tell thee of what I have on hand,
and how I am working to finish it in time to take the water with thee
this afternoon? Answer, O my Gul-Bahar, more beautiful growing as the
days multiply!"

The Lael of the son of Jahdai, the Gul-Bahar of the mysterious Prince,
was much grown, and otherwise greatly changed since we saw her last.
Each intervening year had in passing left her a benediction. She was now
about sixteen, slight, and Jewish in eyes, hair, and complexion. The
blood enriched her olive cheeks; the lips took a double freshness from
health; the smile resting habitually on the oval face had a tale it was
always telling of a nature confiding, happy, satisfied with its
conditions, hopeful of the future, and unaware from any sad experience
that life ever admitted of changes. Her beauty bore the marks of
intelligence; her manner was not enough self-contained to be called
courtly; yet it was easy, and carried its own certificate of culture; it
yielded too much to natural affection to deserve the term dignified. One
listening to her, and noticing the variableness of her mood, which in
almost the same instant could pass from gay to serious without ever
reaching an extreme, would pronounce her too timid for achievement
outside the purely domestic; at the same time he would think she
appeared lovable to the last degree, and might be capable of loving in
equal measure.

She was dressed in Byzantine fashion. In crossing the street from her
father's house, she had thrown a veil over her head, but it was now
lying carelessly about her neck. The wooden sandals with blocks under
them, like those yet worn by women in Levantine countries to raise them
out of the dust and mud when abroad, had been shaken lightly from her
feet at the top of the stairs. Perfectly at home, she advanced to the
table, and put one of her bare arms around the old man's neck,
regardless of the white locks it crushed close down, and replied:

"Thou flatterer! Do I not know beauty is altogether in the eye of the
beholder, and that all persons do not see alike? Tell me why, knowing
the work was to be done, you did not send for me to help you? Was it for
nothing you made me acquainted with figures until--I have your authority
for the saying--I might have stood for professor of mathematics in the
best of the Alexandrian schools? Do not shake your head at me--or"--

With the new idea all alight in her face, she ran around the table, and
caught up one of the diagrams.

"Ah, it is as I thought, father! The work I love best, and can do best!
Whose is the nativity? Not mine, I know; for I was born in the glad time
when Venus ruled the year. Anael, her angel, held his wings over me
against this very wry-faced, snow-chilled Saturn, whom I am so glad to
see in the Seventh House, which is the House of Woe. Whose the nativity,
I say?"

"Nay, child--pretty child, and wilful--you have a trick of getting my
secrets from me. I sometimes think I am in thy hands no more than tawdry
lace just washed and being wrung preparatory to hanging in the air from
thy lattice. It is well for you to know there are some things out of
your reach--for the time at least."

"That is saying you will tell me."

"Yes--some day."

"Then I will be patient."

Seeing him become thoughtful, and look abstractedly out of the window,
she laid the diagram down, went back, and again put her arm around his
neck.

"I did not come to interrupt you, father, but to learn two things, and
run away."

"You begin like a rhetorician. What subdivisions lie under those two
things? Speak!"

"Thank you," she replied, quickly. "First, Syama told me you were at
some particular task, and I wanted to know if I could help you."

"Dear heart!" he said, tenderly.

"Next--and this is all--I did not want you to forget we are to go up the
Bosphorus this afternoon--up to Therapia, and possibly to the sea."

"You wish to go?" he asked.

"I dreamt of it all night."

"Then we will; and to prove I did not forget, the boatmen have their
orders already. We go to the landing directly after noon."

"Not too soon," she answered, laughing. "I have to dress, and make
myself gorgeous as an empress. The day is soft and kind, and there will
he many people on the water, where I am already known quite as well as
here in the city as the daughter of the Prince of India."

He replied with an air of pride:

"Thou art good enough for an emperor."

"Then I may go and get ready."

She withdrew her arm, kissed him, and started to the door, but returned,
with a troubled look.

"One thing more, father."

He was recovering his work, but stopped, and gave her ear.

"What is it?"

"You have said, good father, that as my studies were too confining, it
would be well if I took the air every day in my sedan. So, sometimes
with Syama, sometimes with Nilo, I had the men carry me along the wall
in front of the Bucoleon. The view over the sea toward Mt. Ida is there
very beautiful; and if I look to the landward side, right at my feet are
the terraced gardens of the palace. Nowhere do the winds seem sweeter to
me. For their more perfect enjoyment I have at moments alighted from the
chair, and walked; always avoiding acquaintances new and old. The people
appear to understand my preference, and respect it. Of late, however,
one person--hardly a man--has followed me, and stopped near by when I
stopped; he has even persisted in attempts to speak to me. To avoid him,
I went to the Hippodrome yesterday, and taking seat in front of the
small obelisks in that quarter, was delighted with the exhibition of the
horsemen. Just when the entertainment was at its height, and most
interesting, the person of whom I am speaking came and sat on the same
bench with me. I arose at once. It is very annoying, father. What shall
I do?"

The Prince did not answer immediately, and when he did, it was to ask,
suggestively:

"You say he is young?"

"Yes."

"His dress?"

"He seems to be fond of high colors."

"You asked no question concerning him?"

"No. Whom could I ask?"

Again the Prince reflected. Outwardly he was unconcerned; yet his blood
was more than warm--the blood of pride which, as every one knows, is
easily started, and can go hissing hot. He did not wish her to think of
the affair too much; therefore his air of indifference; nevertheless it
awoke a new train of thought in him.

If one were to insult this second Lael of his love, what could he do?
The idea of appeal to a magistrate was irritating. Were he to assume
punishment of the insolence, from whom could he hope justice or
sympathy--he, a stranger living a mysterious life?

He ran hastily over the resorts at first sight open to him. Nilo was an
instrument always ready. A word would arouse the forces in that loyal
but savage nature, and they were forces subject to cunning which never
slept, never wearied, and was never in a hurry--a passionless cunning,
like that of the Fedavies of the Old Man of the Mountain.

It may be thought the Prince was magnifying a fancied trouble; but the
certainty that sorrow _must_ overtake him for every indulgence of
affection was a haunting shadow always attending the most trifling
circumstance to set his imagination conjuring calamities. That at such
times his first impulse was toward revenge is explicable; the old law,
an eye for an eye, was part of his religion; and coupling it with
personal pride which a thought could turn into consuming heat, how
natural if, while the anticipation was doing its work, his study should
be to make the revenge memorable!

Feeling he was not entirely helpless in the affair, he thought best to
be patient awhile, and learn who was the offender; a conclusion followed
by a resolution to send Uel with the girl next time she went to take the
air.

"The young men of the city are uncontrolled by respect or veneration,"
he said, quietly. "The follies they commit are sometimes ludicrous.
Better things are not to be looked for in a generation given to dress as
a chief ambition. And then it may be, O my Gul-Bahar"--he kissed her as
he uttered the endearment--"it may be he of whom you complain does not
know who you are. A word may cure him of his bad manners. Do not appear
to notice him. Have eyes for everything in the world but him; that is
the virtuous woman's defence against vulgarity and insult under every
circumstance. Go now, and make ready for the boat. Put on your gayest;
forget not the last necklace I gave you--and the bracelets--and the
girdle with the rubies. The water from the flying oars shall not
outflash my little girl. There now--Of course we will go to the landing
in our chairs."

When she disappeared down the stairs, he went back to his work.




CHAPTER VII

THE PRINCE OF INDIA MEETS CONSTANTINE


It is to be remembered now, as very material to our story, that the day
the Prince of India resolved on the excursion up the Bosphorus with Lael
the exquisite stretch of water separated the territorial possessions of
the Greek Emperor and the Sultan of the Turks.

In 1355 the utmost of the once vast Roman dominions was "a corner of
Thrace between the Propontis (Marmora) and the Black Sea, about fifty
miles in length and thirty in breadth." [Footnote: Gibbon.]

When Constantine Dragases--he of whom we are writing--ascended the
throne, the realm was even more diminished.

Galata, just across the Golden Horn, had become a Genoese stronghold.

Scutari, on the Asiatic shore almost _vis-a-vis_ with Constantinople, was
held by a Turkish garrison.

With small trouble the Sultan could have converted the pitiful margin
between Galata and the Cyanean rocks on the Black Sea.

Once indeed he set siege to Constantinople, but was beaten off, it was
said, by the Mother of God, who appeared upon the walls of the city, and
in person took part in the combat. Thereafter he contented himself with
a tribute from the Emperors Manuel and John Palaeologus.

The relations of the Christian and Moslem potentates being thus
friendly, it can be seen how the Princess Irene could keep to her palace
by Therapia and the Prince of India plan jaunts along the Bosphorus.

Still there is a point to be borne in mind. Ships under Christian flags
seldom touched at a landing upon the Asiatic shore. Their captains
preferred anchoring in the bays and close under the ivy-covered heights
of Europe. This was not from detestation or religious intolerance; at
bottom there was a doubt of the common honesty of the strong-handed Turk
amounting to fear. The air was rife with stories of his treachery. The
fishermen in the markets harrowed the feelings of their timid customers
with tales of surprises, captures, and abductions. Occasionally couriers
rushed through the gates of Constantinople to report red banners in
motion, and the sound of clarions and drums, signifying armies of
Moslems gathering for mysterious purposes.

The Moslems, on their part, it is but fair to say, were possessed of the
same doubts of the Christians, and had answers to accusations always
ready. The surprises, captures, and abductions were the unlicensed
savageries of brigands, of whom they never knew one not a Greek; while
the music and flags belonged to the militia.

Six or seven miles above Scutari a small river, born in the adjacent
highlands, runs merrily down to meet and mingle with the tideless
Bosphorus. The water it yields is clear and fresh; whence the name of
the stream, The Sweet Waters of Asia. On its south side there is a
prairie-like stretch, narrow, but green and besprent with an orchard of
sycamores old and gnarled, and now much frequented on Mohammedan Sundays
by ladies of the harems, who contrive to make it very gay. No doubt the
modest river, and the grass and great trees were just as attractive ages
before the first Amurath, with an army at his heels, halted there for a
night. From that time, however, it was banned by the Greeks; and for a
reason.

On the north bank of the little river there was a fortress known as the
White Castle. An irregular, many-angled pile of undressed stone heavily
merloned on top, its remarkable feature was a tall donjon which a dingy
white complexion made visible a great distance, despite its freckling of
loopholes and apertures for machine artillery. Seeing its military
importance, the Sultan left a garrison to hold it. He was also pleased
to change its name to Acce-Chisar.

The blood-red flag on this donjon was, at the era engaging us, the
disenchanter of the Greeks; insomuch that in passing the Sweet Waters of
Asia they hugged the opposite shore of the Bosphorus, crossing
themselves and muttering prayers often of irreligious compound. A stork
has a nest on the donjon now. As an apparition it is not nearly so
suggestive as the turbaned sentinel who used to occupy its outlook.

The popular imagination located dungeons under the grim old Castle,
whence, of the many Christian men and women immured there, it was said
none ever came forth alive.

But for these things, whether true or false, the Prince of India cared
little. He was not afraid of the Turks. If the Asiatic shore had been
festooned with red flags from the City of the Blind down by the Isles of
the Princes to the last of the gray fortresses overlooking the
Symplegades, it would not have altered a plan of his jot or tittle.
Enough that Lael wanted and needed an outing on the glorious Bosphorus.

Accordingly, shortly after noon two chairs were brought and set down in
his house. That is to say, two upright boxes fixed centrally on poles,
and differing in nowise from the sedans still the mode of carriage
affected by ladies of Constantinople unless it might be in their richer
appointments. Inside, all was silk, lace and cushions; outside, the
inlaying of mother of pearl and vari-colored woods was suggestive of
modern papier-mache. The entrance was by a door in the front. A window
in the door, and lesser ones on the sides, afforded the inmate air and
opportunity for speech. Not wanting to be seen, she had only to draw the
curtains together. In this instance it must be said the decoration of
the carriages had been carried to an extreme.

Soon as the chairs were set down in the house, the Prince and Lael
descended the stairs. The latter was attired in a semi-Greek costume,
very rich and becoming; to embroidery of gold, she added bracelets, and
a necklace of large pearls strung between spheres of gold equally large.
A coronet graced her head, and it was so bejewelled that in bright light
it seemed some one was sprinkling her with an incessant shower of
sparkles.

The two took their seats. The carriers, two to each litter, stalwart
men, uniformly clad in loose white garments, raised the poles on their
shoulders. Syama threw the door of the house open, and at a signal from
the Prince the procession sallied into the street. The crowd, in
expectant waiting there, received it in silent wonder.

It is due the truth to say now that the common eye was attracted by the
appearance of Nilo as much as by the rarities wrought in the panelling
of the carriages. He strode ten or twelve feet in advance of Lael who,
in the place of honor, was completely under the Prince's observation.
The negro's costume was of a King of Kash-Cush. The hair stood on end in
stiff cues, sharply pointed, and held by a chain of silver medals; an
immense ring of silver hung from the cartilage of his nose. The neck was
defended by a gorget of leather bristling with the fangs and claws of
tigers in alternating rows. A robe of scarlet cloth large enough to
envelop the man was thrown behind the massive shoulders. The body, black
as polished ebony, was naked to the waist, whence a white skirt fell to
the knees. The arms and legs were adorned with bracelets and anklets of
ivory, while the straps of the heavy sandals were bordered with
snail-shells. On the left arm he bore a round shield of rhinoceros hide
embossed in brass; in the right hand, a pointless lance. Towering high
above the heads of the crowd which opened before him with alacrity, the
admiration received by the Prince's ally and friend was but a
well-deserved tribute.

"A tiger-hunter!" said one, to a friend at his elbow.

"I should call him king of the tiger-hunters," the friend replied.

"Only a Prince of India would carry such a pensioner with him," another
remarked.

"What a man!" said a woman, half afraid.

"An infidel, no doubt," was the answer.

"It is not a Christian wish, I know," the first added; "still I should
like to see him face a lion in the Cynegion."

"Ay, him they call Tamerlane, because he is shorn of two toes."

The Prince, casting a glance of scarce concealed contempt over the
throng, sighed, as he muttered, "If now I could meet the Emperor!"

The exclamation was from his heart.

We have seen the idea which lured him to Mecca, and brought him to
Constantinople. In the years since flown, it was held subordinate to his
love of Lael--subordinate merely. Latterly it had revived with much of
its original force, and he was now for the first time seriously scheming
for an interview with the Emperor. No doubt a formal request would have
secured the honor; but it was in his view better policy to be sought
than seek, and with all his wealth, there was nothing he could so well
afford to pay for success as time. In his study, he was continually
saying to himself:

"It cannot be that the extravagances to which I am going will fail. He
will hear of me, or we may meet--then the invitation!--And then I will
propose the Brotherhood--God help me! But it is for him to invite me.
Patience, O my soul!"

Extravagances!

The exclamation helps us to an understanding of the style he was
carrying before the public--the silvering on his own black velvet robe,
the jewels in Lael's coronet bursting with light, the gorgeous finish of
the sedans, the barbaric costuming of Nilo. They were not significant of
his taste. Except for what they might bring him, he did not care for
jewels. And as for Lael, he would have loved her for her name's sake,
and her honest, untarnished Jewish blood. Let us believe so at least
until we find otherwise.

Nilo, by this time familiar with every quarter of the city, was told the
boat was in readiness for the party at a landing near the Grand Gate of
Blacherne; to make which, it being on the Golden Horn well up in the
northwest, he must turn the hill back of the Prince's residence, and
pursue one of the streets running parallel with the wall. Thither he
accordingly bent his steps, followed by the porters of the sedans, and
an increasing but respectful assemblage of curious citizens.

Scarcely had the progress begun before the Prince, watching through his
front window, saw a man approach the side of Lael's chair, and peer into
it. His wit served him well and instantly.

"'Tis he--the insolent!--Close up!" he cried, to his porters.

The intruder at the sound of his voice looked at him once, then
disappeared in the throng. He was young, handsome, showily dressed, and
beyond question the person of whom Lael had complained. Though smarting
under the insult, and a suspicion, suddenly engendered, of a watch kept
over his house, the Prince concluded the stranger was of noble
connection, and that the warrant for his boldness was referable to
family influence. While his subtle mind was pothering with schemes of
detection, the affair presented itself in another light, and he laughed
at his own dulness.

"'Tis nothing," he reflected--"nothing! The boy is in love, and allowing
his passion to make a fool of him. I have only to see my pretty
Gul-Bahar does not return the madness."

Deciding then to make inquiry and satisfy himself who the young admirer
was, he dismissed the subject.

Presently Nilo turned into a street of some width compared with the
generality of thoroughfares in the city. On the left hand were shops and
pretentious houses; on the right, towered the harbor wall. The people
attending the procession increased instead of dispersing; but as they
continued in good nature, they gave him no concern. Their comments
amongst themselves were about equally divided between Nilo and Lael.

"Beautiful, beautiful!" one said, catching sight of the latter through
the windows of the chair.

"Who is she?"

"A daughter of a Prince of India."

"And the Prince--Who is he?"

"Ask some one who knows. There he is in the second chair."

Once a woman went close to Lael, snatched a look, and stepped back, with
clasped hands, crying:

"'Tis the Sweet Mother herself!"

Without other incident, the procession passed the gate of St. Peter, and
was nearing that of Blacherne, when a flourish of trumpets announced a
counter pageant coming down the street from the opposite direction. A
man near by shouted:

"The Emperor! The Emperor!"

Another seconded him.

"Long live the good Constantine!"

The words were hardly uttered before they were answered:

"The _azymite_! The _azymite_! Down with the betrayer of Christ!"

In less than a minute the Prince was being borne along in the midst of
two howling factions. Scarcely knowing whether to take Lael into a house
or go on, he tried to communicate with Nilo; but in unconsciousness of
the tempest so suddenly risen, that grandson of a king marched on in
unremitted stateliness, until directly a band of trumpeters in
magnificent livery confronted him.

The astonishment was mutual. Nilo halted, dropping his headless lance in
defence; the trumpeters quit blowing, and, opening order, filed hastily
by him, their faces saying with a distinctness words could not have
helped:

"A son of Satan! Beware!"

The chairs were also brought to a halt.

Thereupon the people, now a mob apparently ready to tear each other into
bloody ribbons, refused to give way to the trumpeters. Nilo finally
comprehending the situation returned to Lael just as the Prince on foot
came up to her. She was pale and trembling with fear.

The deadlock between the musicians and the mob was brought to an end by
the appearance of a detachment of the Imperial guard. A mounted officer,
javelin in hand, rode up and shouted:

"The Emperor! Make way for the Emperor!"

While he was speaking, the horsemen behind him came on steadily. There
was irresistible persuasion in the glitter of their spears; besides it
was matter of universal knowledge that the steel panoply of each rider
concealed a mercenary foreigner who was never so happy as when riding
over a Greek. One yell louder and more defiant than any yet
uttered--"The azymite, the azymite!"--and the mob broke and fled. At a
signal from the officer, the guards, as they came on, opened right and
left of the chairs, and passed them with scarce notice.

A few words from the Prince to Lael dispelled her fears.

"It is an every-day affair," he said, lightly; "an amusement of the
people, the Roman factionists against the Greek. Nobody is ever hurt,
except in howling he opens his jaws too wide."

The levity was affected, but mastering the irritation he really felt,
the Prince was about to make acknowledgment to the officer for his
timely intervention, when another personage appeared, claiming his
attention. Indeed his heart began beating unusually fast, and in spite
of himself his face flushed--he knew he had his wish--the meeting with
Constantine was come!

The last Emperor of the Byzantines sat in an open chair borne upon the
shoulders of eight carriers in striking livery--a handsome man in his
forty-sixth year, though apparently not more than thirty-eight or forty.
His costume was that of Basileus, which was a religious dignity.

A close-fitting cap of red velvet covered his head, with a knot of
purple silk triply divided on the top; while a pliable circlet of golden
scales, clearing the brows, held the cap securely in place. On each
scale a ruby of great size sparkled in solitaire setting. The circlet
was further provided with four strings of pearls, two by each ear,
dangling well down below in front of the shoulders. A loose drab robe or
gown, drawn close at the waist, clothed him, neck, arms, body and nether
limbs, answering excellently as ground for a cope the color of the cap,
divided before and behind into embroidered squares defined by rows of
pearls. Boots of purple leather, also embroidered, gave finish to the
costume. Instead of sword or truncheon, he carried a plain ivory
crucifix. The people staring at him from the doors and windows knew he
was going to Sancta Sophia intent on some religious service.

While the Emperor was thus borne down upon the Prince, his dark eyes,
kindly looking, glanced from Nilo to Lael, and finally came to rest full
upon the face of the master. The officer returned to him. A few paces
off, the imperial chair stopped, and a conversation ensued, during which
a number of high officials who were of the sovereign's suite on foot
closed up in position to separate their Lord from a mounted rear guard.

The Prince of India kept his mind perfectly. Having exchanged glances
with the Emperor, he was satisfied an impression was made strong enough
to pique curiosity, and at the same time fix him in the royal memory.
With a quick sense of the proprieties, he thereupon addressed himself to
moving his carriages to the left, that when the conference with the
officers was concluded the Emperor might have the right of way with the
least possible obstruction.

Presently the Acolyte--such the officer proved to be--approached the
Prince.

"His Imperial Majesty," he said, courteously, "would be pleased could I
inform him the name and title of the stranger whose progress he has been
so unfortunate as to interrupt."

The Prince answered with dignity:

"I thank you, noble sir, for the fair terms in which you couch the
inquiry, not less than the rescue I and my daughter owe you from the
mob."

The Acolyte bowed.

"And not to keep his Imperial Majesty waiting," the Prince continued,
"return him the compliments of a Prince of India, at present a resident
of this royal and ancient capital. Say also it will give me happiness
far beyond the power of words when I am permitted to salute him, and
render the veneration and court to which his character and place amongst
the rulers of the earth entitle him."

At the conclusion of the complex, though courtierly reply, the speaker
walked two steps forward, faced the Emperor, and touched the ground with
his palms, and rising, carried them to his forehead.

The answer duly delivered, the Emperor responded to the salaam with a
bow and another message.

"His Imperial Majesty," the Acolyte said, "is pleased at meeting the
Prince of India. He was not aware he had a guest of such distinction in
his capital. He desires to know the place of residence of his noble
friend, that he may communicate with him, and make amends for the
hindrance which has overtaken him to-day."

The Prince gave his address, and the interview ended.

It is of course the reader's privilege to pass judgment upon the
incidents of this rencounter; at least one of the parties to it was
greatly pleased, for he knew the coveted invitation would speedily
follow.

While the Emperor was borne past, Lael received his notice more
especially than her guardian; when they were out of hearing, he called
the Acolyte to his side.

"Didst thou observe the young person yonder?" he asked.

"The coronet she wears certifies the Prince of India to be vastly rich,"
the other answered.

"Yes, the Princes of India, if we may judge by common report, are all
rich; wherefore I thought not of that, but rather of the beauty of his
daughter. She reminded me of the Madonna on the Panagia in the transept
of our church at Blacherne."




CHAPTER VIII

RACING WITH A STORM


One who has seen the boats in which fishermen now work the eddies and
still waters of the Bosphorus will not require a description of the
vessel the Prince and Lael stepped into when they arrived at the Grand
Gate of Blacherne. He need only be told that instead of being
pitch-black outside and in, it was white, except the gunwale which was
freshly gilt. The untravelled reader, however, must imagine a long
narrow craft, upturned at both ends, graceful in every line, and
constructed for speed and beauty. Well aft there was a box without
cover, luxuriously cushioned, lined with chocolate velvet, and wide
enough to seat two persons comfortably; behind it, a decked space for a
servant, pilot or guard. This arrangement left all forward for the
rowers, each handling two oars.

Ten rowers, trained, stout, and clad in white headkerchiefs, shirts and
trousers of the same hue, and Greek jackets of brilliant scarlet,
profusely figured over with yellow braid, sat stolidly, blades in hand
and ready dipped, when the passengers took their places, the Prince and
Lael in the box, and Nilo behind them as guard. The vessel was too light
to permit a ceremonious reception.

In front of the party, on the northern shore of the famous harbor, were
the heights of Pera. The ravines and grass-green benches into which they
were broken, with here and there a garden hut enclosed in a patch of
filbert bushes--for Pera was not then the city it now is--were of no
interest to the Prince; dropping his eyes to the water, they took in a
medley of shipping, then involuntarily turned to the cold gray face of
the wall he was leaving. And while seeing in vivid recollection the
benignant countenance of Constantine bent upon him from the chair in the
street, he thought of the horoscope he had spent the night in taking and
the forenoon in calculating. With a darkened brow, he gave the word, and
the boat was pushed off and presently seeking the broader channel of the
Bosphorus.

The day was delightful. A breeze danced merrily over the surface of the
water. Soft white summer clouds hung so sleepily in the southwest they
scarce suggested motion. Seeing the color deepen in Lael's cheeks, and
listening to her questions, he surrendered himself to the pleasures of
the situation, not the least being the admiration she attracted.

By ships at anchor, and through lesser craft of every variety they sped,
followed by exclamations frequently outspoken:

"Who is she? Who can she be?"

Thus pursued, they flew past the gate of St. Peter, turned the point of
Galata, and left the Fish Market port behind; proceeding then in
parallelism with the north shore, they glided under the great round
tower so tall and up so far overhead it seemed a part of the sky. Off
Tophane, they were in the Bosphorus, with Scutari at their right, and
Point Serail at their backs.

Viewed from the harbor on the sea, the old historic Point leaves upon
the well informed an impression that in a day long gone, yielding to a
spasm of justice, Asia cast it off into the waves. Its beauty is
Circean. Almost from the beginning it has been the chosen place in which
men ran rounds gay and grave, virtuous and wanton, foolish and
philosophic, brave and cowardly--where love, hate, jealousy, avarice,
ambition and envy have delighted to burn their lights before
Heaven--where, possibly with one exception, Providence has more
frequently come nearer lifting its veil than in any other spot of earth.

Again and again, the Prince, loth to quit the view, turned and refilled
his eyes with Sancta Sophia, of which, from his position, the wall at
the water's edge, the lesser churches of the Virgin Hodegetria and St.
Irene, and the topmost sections far extending of the palaces of Bucoleon
seemed but foundations. The edifice, as he saw it then, depended on
itself for effect, the Turk having not yet, in sign of Mohammedan
conversion, broken the line of its marvellous dome with minarets. At
length he set about telling stories of the Point.

Off the site of the present palace of Dolma-Batchi he told of Euphrosyne,
the daughter of the Empress Irene; and seeing how the sorrowful fortune
of the beautiful child engaged Lael's sympathies, he became interested as
a narrator, and failed to notice the unusual warmth tempering the air
about Tchiragan. Neither did he observe that the northern sky, before so
clear and blue, was whitening with haze.

To avoid the current running past Arnoot-Kouy, the rowers crossed to the
Asiatic side under the promontory of Candilli.

Other boats thronged the charming expanse; but as most of them were of a
humbler class sporting one rower, the Prince's, with its liveried ten,
was a surpassing attraction. Sometimes the strangers, to gratify their
curiosity, drew quite near, but always without affronting him; knowing
the homage was to Lael, he was happy when it was effusively rendered.

His progress was most satisfactory until he rounded Candilli. Then a
flock of small boats came down upon him pell-mell, the rowers pulling
their uttermost, the passengers in panic.

The urgency impelling them was equally recognized by the ships and
larger vessels out in the channel. Anchors were going down, sails
furling, and oars drawing in. Above them, moreover, much beyond their
usual levels of flight troops of gulls were circling on rapid wings
screaming excitedly.

The Prince had reached the part of greatest interest in the story he was
telling--how the cruel and remorseless Emperor Michel, determined to wed
the innocent and helpless Euphrosyne, shamelessly cheated the Church and
cajoled the Senate--when Nilo touched his shoulder, and awoke him to the
situation. A glance over the water--another at the sky--and he
comprehended danger of some kind was impending. At the same moment Lael
commenced shivering and complaining of cold. The air had undergone a
sudden change. Presently Nilo's red cloak was sheltering her.

The boat was in position to bring everything into view, and he spoke to
the rowers:

"A storm is rising."

They ceased work, and looked over their shoulders, each for himself.

"A blow from the sea, and it comes fast. What we shall do is for my Lord
to say," one of them returned.

The Prince grew anxious for Lael. What was done must be for her--he had
no thought else.

A cloud was forming over the whole northeastern quarter of the sky,
along the horizon black, overhead a vast gray wave, in its heart
copper-hued, seething, interworking, now a distended sail, now a sail
bursted; and the wind could he heard whipping the shreds into fleece,
and whirling them a confusion of vaporous banners. Yet glassy, the water
reflected the tint of the cloud. The hush holding it was like the drawn
breath of a victim waiting the first turn of the torturous wheel.

The Asiatic shore offered the Prince a long stretch, and he persisted in
coasting it until the donjon of the White Castle--that terror to
Christians--arrested his eye. There were houses much nearer, some of
them actually overhanging the water; but the donjon seemed specially
inviting; at all events, he coolly reflected, if the Governor of the
Castle denied him refuge, the little river near by known as the Sweet
Waters of Asia would receive him, and getting under its bank, he might
hope to escape the fury of the wind and waves. He shouted resolutely:

"To the White Castle! Make it before the wind strikes, my men, and I
will double your hire."

"We may make it," the rower answered, somewhat sullenly, "but"--

"What?" asked the Prince.

"The devil has his lodgings there. Many men have gone into its accursed
gates on errands of peace, and never been heard of again."

The Prince laughed.

"We lose time--forward! If there be a fiend in the Castle, I promise you
he is not waiting for us."

The twenty oars fell as one, and the boat jumped like a steed under a
stab of the spur.

Thus boldly the race with the storm was begun. The judgment of the
challenger, assuming the Prince to be such, may be questioned. The river
was the goal.

Could he reach it before the wind descended in dangerous force?--That
was the very point of contest.

The chances, it is to be remembered next, were not of a kind to admit
weighing with any approach to certainty; it was difficult even to
marshal them for consideration. The distance was somewhat less than
three-quarters of a mile; on the other part, the competing cloud was
wrestling with the mountain height of Alem Daghy, about four miles away.
The dead calm was an advantage; unfortunately it was more than offset by
the velocity of the current which, though not so strong by the littoral
of Candilli as under the opposite bluffs of Roumeli-Hissar, was still a
serious opposing force. The boatmen were skilful, and could be relied
upon to pull loyally; for, passing the reward offered in the event of
their winning, the dangers of failure were to them alike. Treating the
contest as a race, with the storm and the boat as competitors, the
Prince was not without chances of success.

But whatever the outcome of the venture, Lael would be put to discomfort.
His care of her was so habitually marked by tender solicitude one cannot
avoid wondering at him now.

After all he may have judged the affair more closely than at first
appears. The sides of the boat were low, but danger from that cause
might be obviated by the skill of the rowers; and then Alem Daghy was
not a trifling obstacle in the path of the gale. It might be trusted to
hold the cloud awhile; after which a time would be required by the wind
to travel the miles intervening.

Certainly it had been more prudent to make the shore, and seek refuge in
one of the houses there. But the retort of the spirited Jew of that day,
as in this, was a contemptuous refusal of assistance, and the degree to
which this son of Israel was governed by the eternal resentment can be
best appreciated by recalling the number of his days on earth.

At the first response to the vigorous pull of the oarsmen, Lael drew the
red cloak over her face, and laid her head against the Prince. He put
his arm around her, and seeing nothing and saying nothing, she trusted
in him.

The rowers, pulling with strength from the start, gradually quickened
the stroke, and were presently in perfect harmony of action. A short
sough accompanied each dip of the blades; an expiration, like that of
the woodman striking a blow with his axe, announced the movement
completed. The cords of their brawny necks played fast and free; the
perspiration ran down their faces like rain upon glass. Their teeth
clinched. They turned neither right nor left; but with their straining
eyes fixed upon him, by his looks they judged both their own well-doing
and the progress of their competitor.

Seeing the boat pointed directly toward the Castle, the Prince watched
the cloud. Occasionally he commended the rowers.

"Well done, my men!--Hold to that, and we will win!"

The unusual brightness of his eyes alone betrayed excitement. Once he
looked over the yet quiet upper field of water. His was the only vessel
in motion. Even the great ships were lying to. No--there was another
small boat like his own coming down along the Asiatic shore as if to
meet him. Its position appeared about as far above the mouth of the
river as his was below it; and its three or five rowers were plainly
doing their best. With grim pleasure, he accepted the stranger as
another competitor in the race.

The friendly heights of Alem, seen from the Bosphorus, are one great
forest always beautifully green. Even as the Prince looked at them, they
lost color, as if a hand out of the cloud had suddenly dropped a curtain
of white gauze over them. He glanced back over the course, then forward.
The donjon was showing the loopholes that pitted its southern face.
Excellent as the speed had been, more was required. Half the distance
remained to be overcome--and the enemy not four miles away.

"Faster, men!" he called out. "The gust has broken from the mountain. I
hear its roaring."

They turned involuntarily, and with a look measured the space yet to be
covered, the distance of the foe, and the rate at which he was coming.
Nor less did they measure the danger. They too heard its warning, the
muffled roar as of rocks and trees snatched up and grinding to atoms in
the inner coils of the cloud.

"It is not a blow," one said, speaking quick, "but a"--

"Storm."

The word was the Prince's.

"Yes, my Lord."

Just then the water by the boat was rippled by a breath, purring,
timorous, but icy.

The effect on the oarsmen was stronger than any word from the master
could have been. They finished a pull long and united; then while the
oars swung forward taking reach for another, they all arose to their
feet, paused a moment, dipped the blades deeper, gave vent to a cry so
continuous it sounded like a wail, and at the same time sunk back into
their seats, pulling as they fell. This was their ultimate exertion. A
jet of water spurted from the foot of the sharp bow, and the bubbles and
oar eddies flew behind indistinguishably.

"Well done!" said the Prince, his eyes glowing.

Thenceforward the men continued to rise at the end of a stroke, and fall
as they commenced delivery of another. Their action was quick, steady,
machine-like; they gripped the water deep, and made no slips; with a
thought of the exhilaration an eagle must feel when swooping from his
eyrie, the Prince looked at the cloud defiantly as a challenger might.
Each moment the donjon loomed up more plainly. He saw now, not merely
the windows and loopholes, but the joinery of the stones in their
courses. Suddenly he beheld another wonder--an army of men mounted and
galloping along the river bank toward the Castle.

The array stretched back into the woods. In its van were two flags borne
side by side, one green, the other red. Both were surrounded by a troop
in bright armor. No need for him to ask to whom they belonged. They told
him of Mecca and Mahomet--on the red, he doubted not seeing the old
Ottomanic symbols, in their meaning poetic, in their simplicity
beautiful as any ever appropriated for martial purposes. The riders were
Turks. But why the green flag? Where it went somebody more than the
chief of a sanjak, more than the governor of a castle, or even a
province, led the way.

The number trailing after the flags was scarcely less mysterious. They
were too many to be of the garrison; and then the battlements of the
Castle were lined with men also under arms. Not daring to speak of this
new apparition lest his oarsmen might take alarm, the Prince smiled,
thinking of another party to the race--a fourth competitor.

He sought the opposing boat next. It had made good time. There were five
oarsmen in it; and, like his own, they were rising and falling with each
stroke. In the passengers' place, he could make out two persons whom he
took to be women.

A roll of thunder from the cloud startled the crew. Clear, angry,
majestic, it filled the mighty gorge of the Bosphorus. Under the sound
the water seemed to shrink away. Lael looked out from her hiding, but as
quickly drew back, crowding closer to the Prince. To calm her he said,
lightly,

"Fear nothing, O my Gul Bahar! A pretty race we are having with the
cloud yonder; we are winning, and it is not pleased. There is no
danger."

She answered by doubling the folds of the gown about her head.

Steadily, lithely, and with never an error the rowers drove through the
waves--steadily, and in exact time, their cry arose cadencing each
stroke. They did their part truly. Well might the master cry them,
"Good, good." But all the while the wind was tugging mightily at its
cloudy car; every instant the rattle of its wheels sounded nearer. The
trees on the hills behind the Castle were bending and bowing; and not
merely around the boat, but far as could be seen the surface of the
ancient channel was a-shirr and a-shatter under beating of advance
gusts.

And now the mouth of the Sweet Waters, shallowed by a wide extended
osier bank, came into view; and the Castle was visible from base to
upper merlon, the donjon, in relief against the blackened sky, rising
more ghostly than ever. And right at hand were the flags, and the riders
galloping with them. And there, coming bravely in, was the competing
boat.

Over toward Roumeli-Hissar the sea birds congregated in noisy flocks,
alarmed at the long line of foam the wind was whisking down the current.
Behind the foam, the world seemed dissolving into spray.

Then the boats were seen from the Castle, and a company of soldiers ran
out and down the bank. A noise like the rushing of a river sounded
directly overhead. The wind struck the Castle, and in the thick of the
mists and flying leaves hurled at it, the donjon disappeared.

"We win, we win, my men!" the Prince shouted. "Courage--good
spirit--brave work--treble wages! Wine and wassail to-morrow!"

The boat, with the last word, shot into the little river, and up to the
landing of the Castle just as the baffled wind burst over the refuge.
And simultaneously the van of the army galloped under the walls and the
competing boat arrived.




CHAPTER IX

IN THE WHITE CASTLE


The landing was in possession of dark-faced, heavily bearded men, with
white turbans, baggy trousers, gray and gathered at the ankles, and arms
of every kind, bows, javelins, and cimeters.

The Prince, stepping from his boat, recognized them as Turkish soldiers.
He had hardly time to make the inspection, brief as it was, before an
officer, distinguished by a turban, kettle-shaped and elaborately
infolded, approached him.

"You will go with me to the Castle," he said.

The official's tone and manner were imperative. Suppressing his
displeasure, the Prince replied, with dignity:

"The Governor is courteous. Return to him with my thanks, and say that
when I decided to come on in the face of the storm, I made no doubt of
his giving me shelter until it would be safe to resume my journey. I
fear, however, his accommodations will be overtaxed; and since the river
is protected from the wind, it would be more agreeable if he would
permit me to remain here."

The response betrayed no improvement in manner:

"My order is to bring you to the Castle."

Some of the boatmen at this raised their eyes and hands toward heaven;
others crossed themselves, and, like men taking leave of hope, cried
out, "O Holy Mother of God!"

Yet the Prince restrained himself. He saw contention would be useless,
and said, to quiet the rowers: "I will go with you. The Governor will be
reasonable. We are unfortunates blown to his hands by a tempest, and to
make us prisoners under such circumstances would be an abuse of one of
the first and most sacred laws of the Prophet. The order did not
comprehend my men; they may remain here."

Lael heard all this, her face white with fear.

The conversation was in the Greek tongue. At mention of the law, the
Turk cast a contemptuous look at the Prince, much as to say, Dog of an
unbeliever, what dost thou with a saying of the Prophet? Then dropping
his eyes to Lael and the boatmen, he answered in disdain of argument or
explanation:

"You--they--all must go."

With that, he turned to the occupants of the other boat, and raising his
voice the better to be heard, for the howling of the wind was very
great, he called to them:

"Come out."

They were a woman in rich attire, but closely veiled, and a companion at
whom he gazed with astonishment. The costume of the latter perplexed
him; indeed, not until that person, in obedience to the order, erected
himself to his full stature upon the landing, was he assured of his sex.

They were the Princess Irene and Sergius the monk.

The conversation between them in the Homeric palace has only to be
recalled to account for their presence. Departing from Therapia at noon,
according to the custom of boatmen wishing to pass from the upper
Bosphorus, they had been carried obliquely across toward the Asiatic
shore where the current, because of its greater regularity, is supposed
to facilitate descent. When the storm began to fill the space above Alem
Daghy, they were in the usual course; and then the question that had
been put to the Prince of India was presented to the Princess Irene.
Would she land in Asia or recross to Europe?

The general Greek distrust of the Turks belonged to her. From infancy
she had been horrified with stories of women prisoners in their hands.
She preferred making Roumeli-Hissar; but the boatmen protested it was
too late; they said the little river by the White Castle was open, and
they could reach it before the storm; and trusting in their better
judgment, she submitted to them.

Sergius, on the landing, pushed the cowl back, and was about to speak,
but the wind caught his hair, tossing the long locks into tangle. Seeing
him thus in a manner blinded, the Princess took up the speech. Drawing
the veil aside, she addressed the officer:

"Art thou the Governor of the Castle?"

"No."

"Are we to be held guests or prisoners?"

"That is not for me to say."

"Carry thou then a message to him who may be the Governor. Tell him I am
the Princess Irene, by birth near akin to Constantine, Emperor of the
Greeks and Romans; that, admitting this soil is lawfully the property of
his master the Sultan, I have not invaded it, but am here in search of
temporary refuge. Tell him if I go to his Castle a prisoner, he must
answer for the trespass to my royal kinsman, who will not fail to demand
reparation; on the other hand, if I become his guest, it must be upon
condition that I shall be free to depart as I came, with my friend and
my people, the instant the wind and waves subside. Yes, and the further
condition, that he wait upon me as becomes my station, and personally
offer such hospitality as his Castle affords. I shall receive his reply
here."

The officer, uncouth though he was, listened with astonishment not in
the least disguised; and it was not merely the speech which impressed
him, nor yet the spirit with which it was given; the spell was in the
unveiled face. Never in his best dream of the perfected Moslem Paradise
had he seen loveliness to compare with it. He stood staring at her.

"Go," she repeated. "There will be rain presently."

"Who am I to say thou art?" he asked.

"The Princess Irene, kinswoman of the Emperor Constantine."

The officer made a low salaam to her, and walked hurriedly off to the
Castle.

His soldiers stood in respectful remove from the prisoners--such the
refugees must for the present be considered--leaving them grouped in
close vicinity, the Prince and the monk ashore, the Princess and Lael
seated in their boats.

Calamity is a rough master of ceremonies; it does not take its victims
by the hand, and name them in words, but bids them look to each other
for help. And that was precisely what the two parties now did.

Unsophisticated, and backward through inexperience, Sergius was
nevertheless conscious of the embarrassing plight of the Princess. He
had also a man's quick sense of the uselessness of resistance, except in
the way of protest. To measure the stranger's probable influence with
the Turks, he looked first at the Prince, and was not, it must be said,
rewarded with a return on which to found hope or encouragement. The
small, stoop-shouldered old man, with a great white beard, appeared
respectable and well-to-do in his black velvet cap and pelisse; his eyes
were very bright, and his cheeks hectic with resentment at the annoyance
he was undergoing; but that he could help out of the difficulty appeared
absurd.

Having by this time rescued his hair from the wind, and secured it under
his cowl, he looked next at Lael. His first thought was of the unfitness
of her costume for an outing in a boat under the quietest of skies. A
glance at the Princess, however, allayed the criticism; while the display
of jewelry was less conspicuous, her habit was quite as rich and
unsubstantial. It dawned upon him then that custom had something to do
with the attire of Greek women thus upon the water. That moment Lael
glanced up at him, and he saw how childlike her face was, and lovely
despite the anxiety and fear with which it was overcast. He became
interested in her at once.

The monk's judgment of the little old man was unjust. That master of
subtlety had in mind run forward of the situation, and was already
providing for its consequences.

He shared the surprise of the Turk when the Princess raised her veil.
Overhearing then her message to the Governor, delivered in a manner
calm, self-possessed, courageous, dignified, and withal adroit, he
resolved to place Lael under her protection.

"Princess," he said, doffing his cap unmindful of the wind, and advancing
to the side of her boat, "I crave audience of you, and in excuse for my
unceremoniousness, plead community in misfortune, and a desire to make my
daughter here safe as can be."

She surveyed him from head to foot; then turned her eyes toward Lael,
sight of whom speedily exorcised the suspicion which for the instant
held her hesitant.

"I acknowledge the obligation imposed by the situation." she replied;
"and being a Christian as well as a woman, I cannot without reason
justifiable in sight of Heaven deny the help you ask. But, good sir,
first tell me your name and country."

"I am a Prince of India exercising a traveller's privilege of sojourning
in the imperial city."

"The answer is well given; and if hereafter you return to this interview,
O Prince, I beg you will not lay my inquiry to common curiosity."

"Fear not," the Prince answered; "for I learned long ago that in the
laws prescribed for right doing prudence is a primary virtue; and making
present application of the principle, I suggest, if it please you to
continue a discourse which must be necessarily brief, that we do so in
some other tongue than Greek."

"Be it in Latin then," she said, with a quick glance at the soldiers,
and observing his bow of acquiescence, continued, "Thy reverend beard, O
Prince, and respectable appearance, are warranties of a wisdom greater
than I can ever attain; wherefore pray tell me how I, a feeble woman,
who may not be able to release herself from these robbers, remorseless
from religious prejudice, can be of assistance to thy daughter, now my
younger sister in affliction."

She accompanied the speech with a look at Lael so kind and tender it
could not be misinterpreted.

"Most fair and gentle Princess, I will straight to the matter. Out on
the water, midway this and the point yonder, when too late for me to
change direction or stay my rowers, I saw a body of horsemen, whom I
judged to be soldiers, moving hurriedly down the river bank toward the
Castle. A band richly caparisoned, carrying two flags, one green, the
other red, moved at their head. The former, you may know, has a
religious signification, and is seldom seen in the field except a person
of high rank be present. It is my opinion, therefore, that our arrest
has some reference to the arrival of such a personage. In confirmation
you may yet hear the musical flourish in his honor."

"I hear drums and trumpets," she replied, "and admit the surmise an
ingenious accounting for an act otherwise unaccountable."

"Nay, Princess, with respect to thyself at least, call it a deed
intolerable, and loud with provocation."

"From your speech, O Prince, I infer familiarity with these faithless
barbarians. Perhaps you can make your knowledge of them so far
serviceable as to tell me the great man's name."

"Yes, I have had somewhat to do with Turks; yet I cannot venture the
name, rank or purpose of the newcomer. Pursuing the argument, however,
if my conjecture be true, then the message borne the Governor, though
spirited, and most happily accordant with your high degree, will not
accomplish your release, simply because the reason of the capture in the
first place must remain a reason for detaining you in the next. In
brief, you may anticipate rejection of the protest."

"What, think you they will hold me prisoner?"

"They are crafty."

"They dare not!" and the Princess' cheek reddened with indignation. "My
kinsman is not powerless--and even the great Amurath"--

"Forgive me, I pray; but there was never mantle to cover so many crimes
as the conveniences kings call 'reasons of state.'"

She looked vaguely up the river which the tempest was covering with
promiscuous air-blown drifting; but recovering, she said: "It is for me
to pray pardon, Prince. I detain you."

"Not at all," he answered. "I have to remark next, if my conjecture
prove correct, a lady of imperial rank might find herself ill at ease
and solitary in a hold like this Castle, which, speaking by report, is
now kept to serve some design of war to come more particularly than
domestic or social life."

The imagination of the Princess caught the idea eagerly, and, becoming
active, presented a picture of a Moslem lair without women or apartments
for women. Her mind filled with alarm.

"Oh, that I could recall the message!" she exclaimed. "I should not have
tempted the Governor by offering to become his guest upon any
condition."

"Nay, do not accuse yourself. The decision was brave and excellent in
every view," he said, perceiving his purpose in such fair way. "For
see--the storm increases in strength; yonder"--he pointed toward Alem
Daghy--"the rain comes. Not by thy choice, O Princess, but the will of
God, thou art here!"

He spoke impressively, and she bent her head, and crossed herself twice.

"A sad plight truly," he continued. "Fortunately it may be in a measure
relieved. Here is my daughter, Lael by name. The years have scarcely
outrun her childhood. More at mercy than thyself, because without rank
to make the oppressor careful, or an imperial kinsman to revenge a wrong
done her, she is subject to whatever threatens you--a cell in this
infidel stronghold, ruffians for attendants, discomforts to cast her
into fever, separation from me to keep her afraid. Why not suffer her to
go with you? She can serve as tirewoman or companion. In villany the
boldest often hesitate when two are to be overcome."

The speech was effective.

"O Prince, I have not words to express my gratitude. I am thy debtor.
Heaven may have brought this crisis, but it has not altogether deserted
me--And in good time! See--my messenger, with a following! Let thy
daughter come, and sit with me now--and do thou stand by to lend me of
thy wisdom in case appeal to it become necessary. Quick! Nay, Prince,
Sergius is young and strong. Permit him to bring the child to me."

The monk made haste. Drawing the boat close to the shore, he gave Lael
his strong hand. Directly she was delivered to the Princess, and seated
beside her.

"Now they may come!"

Thus the Princess acknowledged the strength derivable from companionship.
The result was perceptible in her voice once more clear, and her face
actually sparkling with confidence and courage.

Then, drawn together in one group, the refugees awaited the officer.

"The Governor is coming," that worthy said, saluting the Princess.

Looking toward the Castle, the expectants beheld a score or more men
issuing from the gate on foot. They were all in armor, and each
complemented the buckler on his arm with a lance from which a colored
pennon blew out straight and stiff as a panel. One walked in front
singly, and immediately the Prince and Princess fixed upon him as the
Governor, and kept him in eye curiously and anxiously.

That instant rain in large drops began to fall. The Governor appeared to
notice the premonition, for looking at the angry sky he halted, and
beckoned to his followers, several of whom ran to him, received an
order, and then hastily returned to the Castle. He came on in quickened
gait.

Here the Prince, with his greater experience, noticed a point which
escaped his associates; and that was the extraordinary homage paid the
stranger.

At the landing the officer and soldiers would have prostrated themselves,
but with an imperious gesture, he declined the salutation.

The observers, it may be well believed, viewed the man afar with
interest; when near, they scanned him as persons under arraignment study
the judge, that from his appearance they may glean something of his
disposition. He was above the average height of men, slender, and in
armor--the armor of the East, adapted in every point to climate and
light service. A cope or hood, intricately woven of delicate steel wire,
and close enough to refuse an arrow or the point of a dagger, defended
head, throat, neck, and shoulders, while open at the face; a coat, of
the same artistic mail, beginning under the hood, followed closely the
contour of the body, terminating just above the knees as a skirt. Amongst
Teutonic and English knights, on account of its comparative lightness, it
would have been distinguished from an old-fashioned hauberk, and called
_haubergeon_. A sleeveless _surcoat_ of velvet, plain green in color,
overlaid the mail without a crease or wrinkle, except at the edge of the
skirt. _Chausses_, or leggins, also of steel, clothed the nether limbs,
ending in shoes of thin lateral scales sharply pointed at the toes. A
slight convexity on top, and the bright gold-gilt band by which, with
regular interlacement, the cope was attached, gave the cap surmounting
the head a likeness to a crown.

In style this armor was common. The preference Eastern cavaliers showed
it may have been due in part at least to the fact that when turned out
by a master armorer, after years of painstaking, it left the wearer his
natural graces of person. Such certainly was the case here.

The further equipment of the man admits easy imagining. There were the
gauntlets of steel, articulated for the fingers and thumbs; a broad
flexible belt of burnished gold scales, intended for the cimeter, fell
from the waist diagonally to the left hip; light spurs graced the heels;
a dagger, sparkling with jewels, was his sole weapon, and it served
principally to denote the peacefulness of his errand. As there was
nothing about him to rattle or clank his steps were noiseless, and his
movements agile and easy.

These martial points were naturally of chief attraction to the Prince of
India, whose vast acquaintanceship with heroes and famous warriors made
comparison a habit. On her side, the Princess, to whom accoutrement and
manner were mere accessories, pleasing or otherwise, and subordinate,
sought the stranger's face. She saw brown eyes, not very large, but
exceedingly bright, quick, sharp, flying from object to object with
flashes of bold inquiry, and quitting them as instantly; a round forehead
on brows high-arched; a nose with the curvature of a Roman's; mouth
deep-cornered, full-lipped, and somewhat imperfectly mustached and
bearded; clear, though sunburned complexion--in brief, a countenance
haughty, handsome, refined, imperious, telling in every line of
exceptional birth, royal usages, ambition, courage, passion, and
confidence. Most amazing, however, the stranger appeared yet a youth.
Surprised, hardly knowing whether to be pleased or alarmed, yet
attracted, she kept the face in steady gaze.

Halting when a few steps from the group, the stranger looked at them as
if seeking one in especial.

"Have a care, O Princess! This is not the Governor, but he of whom I
spoke--the great man."

The warning was from the Prince of India and in Latin. As if to thank
him for a service done--possibly for identifying the person he sought--
the subject of the warning slightly bowed to him, then dropped his eyes
to the Princess. A light blown out does not vanish more instantly than
his expression changed. Wonder--incredulity--astonishment--admiration
chased each other over his face in succession. Calling them emotions,
each declared itself with absolute distinctness, and the one last to come
was most decided and enduring. Thus he met her gaze, and so ardent,
intense and continuous was his, that she reddened cheek and forehead, and
drew down the veil; but not, it should be understood, resentfully.

The disappearance of the countenance, in effect like the sudden
extinguishment of a splendor, aroused him. Advancing a step, he said to
her, with lowered head and perceptible embarrassment:

"I come to offer hospitality to the kinswoman of the Emperor Constantine.
The storm shows no sign of abatement, and until it does, my Castle yonder
is at her order. While not sumptuous in appointment as her own palace,
fortunately there are comfortable apartments in it where she can rest
securely and with reserve. The invitation I presume to make in the name
of my most exalted master Sultan Amurath, who takes delight in the amity
existing between him and the Lord of Byzantium. To lay all fear, to
dispel hesitation, in his name again, together with such earnest of good
faith as lies in an appeal to the most holy Prophet of God, I swear the
Princess Irene shall be safe from interruption while in the Castle, and
free to depart from it at her pleasure. If she chooses, this tender of
courtesy may, by agreement, here in the presence of these witnesses, be
taken as an affair of state. I await her answer."

The Prince of India heard the speech more astonished by the
unexceptional Latin in which it was couched than the propriety of the
matter or the grace of its delivery, though, he was constrained to
admit, both were very great. He also understood the meaning of the look
the stranger had given him at the conclusion of his warning to the
Princess, and to conceal his vexation, he turned to her.

That moment two covered chairs, brought from the Castle, were set down
near by, and the rain began to fall in earnest.

"See," said the Governor, "the evidence of my care for the comfort of
the kinswoman of the most noble Emperor Constantine. I feared it would
rain before I could present myself to her; nor that alone, fair
Princess--the chair must convict me of a wholesome dread of accusation
in Constantinople; for what worse could be said than that I, a faithful
Moslem, to whom hospitality is an ordination of religion, refused to
open my gates to women in distress because they were Christians. Most
noble and fair lady, behold how much I should esteem acceptance of my
invitation!"

Irene looked at the Prince of India, and seeing assent in his face,
answered:

"I will ask leave to report this courtesy as an affair of state that my
royal kinsman may acknowledge it becomingly."

The Governor bowed very low while saying:

"I myself should have suggested the course."

"Also that my friends"--she pointed to the Prince of India, and the
monk--"and all the boatmen, be included in the safeguard."

This was also agreed to; whereupon she arose, and for assistance offered
her hand to Sergius. Lael was next helped from the boat. Then, taking to
the chairs, the two were carried into the Castle, followed by the Prince
and the monk afoot.




CHAPTER X

THE ARABIAN STORY-TELLER


The reader will doubtless refer the circumstance to the jealousy which
is supposed to prompt the Faithful where women are required to pass
before men; yet the best evidence of the Governor's thoughtfulness for
his female guests met them at their approach to the Castle. There was
not a man visible except a sentinel on the battlement above the gate,
and he stood faced inwardly, making it impossible for him to see them
when they drew near.

"Where are the horsemen of whom you spoke? And the garrison, where are
they?" Sergius asked the Prince.

The latter shrugged his shoulders, as he answered:

"They will return presently."

Further proof of the same thoughtfulness was presented when the two
chairs were set down in the broad stone-paved passage receiving from the
front door. The sole occupant there was a man, tall as the monk, but
unnaturally slender; indeed, his legs resembled those of a lay figure,
so thin were they, while the residue of his person, although clad in a
burnoose gorgeously embroidered, would have reminded a modern of the
skeletons surgeons keep for office furniture. Besides blackness deep as
the unlighted corner of a cellar, he had no beard. The Prince of India
recognized him as one of the indispensables of an Eastern harem, and
made ready to obey him without dissent--only the extravagance of the
broidery on the burnoose confirmed him in the opinion that the chief
just arrived outranked the Governor. "This is the Kislar Aga of a
Prince," he said to himself.

The eunuch, like one accustomed to the duty, superintended the placement
of the chairs; then, resting the point of a very bright crescent-shaped
sword on the floor, he said, in a voice more incisive than the ordinary
feminine tenor:

"I will now conduct the ladies, and guard them. No one will presume to
follow."

The Prince replied: "It is well; but they will be comforted if permitted
to abide together."

He spoke with deference, and the black responded:

"This is a fort, not a palace. There is but one chamber for the two."

"And if I wish to communicate with them or they with me?"

"_Bismillah!_" the eunuch replied. "They are not prisoners. I will
deliver what thou hast for them or they for thee."

Thereupon the Princess and Lael stepped from the chairs, and went with
their guide. When they were gone, word sped through the Castle, and with
clamor and clangor, doors opened, and men poured forth in companies. And
again the Prince reflected: "Such discipline pertains to princes only."

Now the office of eunuch was by no means an exclusive pagan institution;
time out of mind it had been a feature of Byzantine courts; and
Constantine Dragases, the last, and probably the most Christian of Greek
emperors, not only tolerated, but recognized it as honorable. With this
explanation the reader ought not to be surprised if the Princess Irene
accepted the guidance offered her without fear or even hesitation.
Doubtless she had been in similar keeping many times.

Climbing a number of stairways, the eunuch brought his fair charges into
a part of the Castle where there were signs of refinement. The floors
were swept; the doors garnished with rugs; a delicate incense lingered
in the air; and to rescue the tenants, whoever they might be, from
darkness, lighted lamps swung from the ceiling, and were affixed to the
walls. Stopping finally before a portiere, he held it aside while
saying:

"Enter here, and be at home. Upon the table yonder there is a little
bell; ring, and I will answer."

And seeing Lael clinging closely to the Princess, he added: "Be not
afraid. Know ye rather that my master, when a child, heard the story of
Hatim, a warrior and poet of the Arabs, and ever since he has lived
believing hospitality a virtue without which there can be no godliness.
Do not forget the bell."

They entered and were alone.

To their amazement the room was more than comfortably furnished. What
may be termed a chandelier swung from the ceiling with many lamps ready
for lighting; under it there was a circular divan; then along the four
sides a divan extended continuously, with pillows at the corners in
heaps. Matting covered the floor, and here and there rugs of gay dyes
offered noticeable degrees of warmth and coloring. Large trays filled
the deep recesses of the windows, and though the smell of musk
overpowered the sweet outgivings of the roses blooming in them, they
sufficed to rouge the daylight somewhat scantily admitted. The roughness
and chill of the walls were provided against by woollen drapery
answering for arras.

They went first to one of the windows, and peered out. Below them the
world was being deluged with fiercely driven rain. There was the
Bosphorus lashed into waves already whitened with foam. The European
shore was utterly curtained from sight. Gust after gust raved around the
Castle, whistling and moaning; and as she beheld the danger escaped, the
Princess thought of the saying of the Prince of India and repeated it in
a spirit of thanksgiving: "By the will of God thou art here."

The reflection reconciled her to the situation, and led on till presently
the face and martial figure of the Governor reproduced themselves to her
fancy. How handsome he appeared--how courteous--how young!--scarcely
older than herself! How readily she had yielded to his invitation! She
blushed at the thought.

Lael interrupted the revery, which was not without charm, and for that
reason would likely return, by bringing her a child's slipper found near
the central divan; and while examining the embroidery of many-colored
beads adorning it, she divined the truth.

Isolated as the Castle was on a frontier of the Islamic world, and
crowded with men and material of war, yet the Governor was permitted his
harem, and this was its room in common. Here his wives, many or few, for
the time banished to some other quarters, were in the habit of meeting
for the enjoyment of the scant pleasantries afforded by life like
theirs.

Again she was interrupted. The arras over one of the walls was pushed
aside, and two women came in with refreshments. A third followed with a
small table of Turkish pattern which she placed on the floor. The
viands, very light and simple, were set upon the table; then a fourth
one came bringing an armful of shawls and wraps. The last was a Greek,
and she explained that the Lord of the Castle, her master, was pleased
to make his guests comfortable. In the evening later a more substantial
repast would be served. Meantime she was appointed to wait on them.

The guests, assured by the presence of other women in the Castle,
partook of the refection; after which the table was removed, and the
attendants for the present dismissed. Wrapping themselves then in
shawls, for they had not altogether escaped the rain, and were beginning
to feel the mists stealing into the chamber through the unglazed
windows, they took to the divan, piling the cushions about them
defensively.

In this condition, comfortable, cosey, perfectly at rest, and with the
full enjoyment of the sensations common to every one in the midst of a
novel adventure, the Princess proceeded to draw from Lael an account of
herself; and the ingenuousness of the girl proved very charming, coupled
as it was with a most unexpected intelligence. The case was the not
unusual one of education wholly unsupported by experience. The real
marvel to the inquisitor was that she should have made discovery of two
such instances the same day, and been thrown into curious relation with
them. And as women always run parallels between persons who interest
them, the Princess was struck with the similarities between Sergius and
Lael. They were both young, both handsome, both unusually well informed
and at the same time singularly unsophisticated. In the old pagan style,
what did Fate mean by thus bringing them together? She determined to
keep watch of the event.

And when, in course of her account, Lael spoke of the Prince of India,
Irene awoke at once to a mystery connected with him. Lacking the full
story, the narrator could give just enough of it to stimulate wonder.
Who was he? Where was Cipango? He was rich--learned--knew all the
sciences, all the languages--he had visited countries everywhere, even
the inhabited islands. To be sure, he had not appeared remarkable;
indeed, she gave him small attention when he was before her; she
recalled him chiefly by his eyes and velvet pelisse. While she was
mentally resolving to make better study of him, the eunuch appeared
under the portiere, and, coming forward, said, with a half salaam to the
Princess:

"My master does not wish his guests to think themselves forgotten. The
kinswoman of the most august Emperor Constantine, he remembers, is
without employment to lighten the passage of a time which must be irksome
to her. He humbly prays her to accept his sympathy, and sends me to say
that a famous story-teller, going to the court of the Sultan at
Adrianople, arrived at the Castle to-day. Would the Princess be pleased
to hear him?"

"In what tongue does he recite?" she asked.

"Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Latin, Hebrew," was the reply.

"Oh, a most wise man!"

Irene consulted Lael, and thinking to offer her amusement, assented to
the suggestion, with thanks to the Governor.

"Have the veils ready," the eunuch said, as he retreated backward to the
door. "The story-teller is a man, and he will come directly."

The story-teller was ushered in. He walked to the divan where his
auditors sat, slowly, as if he knew himself under close observation, and
courted it.

Now caravans were daily shows in Constantinople. The little bell of the
donkey leading its string of laden camels through the narrow streets
might be heard any hour, and the Shaykh in charge was almost invariably
an Arab. So the Princess had seen many of the desert-born, and was
familiar with their peculiarities; never, however, had chance brought a
nobler specimen of the race before her. As he approached, stepping as
modern stage heroes are wont, she saw the red slippers, the white shirt
falling to the ankles and girdled at the waist, its bosom a capacious
pocket, the white and red striped cloak over the shoulders. She marked
the material of which they were made, the shirt of selected Angora wool,
the cloak of camel's hair, in its fineness iridescent and soft as
velvet. She saw in the girdle an empty scabbard for a yatagan
elaborately covered with brilliants. She saw on the head a kerchief of
mixed silk and cotton, tasselled, heavily striated red and yellow, and
secured by the usual cord; but she scarcely more than noticed them--the
air of the man, high, stately, king-like, was a superior attraction, and
she gazed at his face unconscious that her own was uncovered.

The features were regular, the complexion sunburned to the hue of
reddish copper, the beard thin, the nose sharp, the cheeks hollow, the
eyes, through the double shade of brows and kerchief, glittered like
balls of polished black amber. His hands were crossed above the girdle
after the manner of Eastern servants before acknowledged superiors; his
salutation was expressive of most abject homage; yet when he raised
himself, and met the glance of the Princess, his eyes lingered, and
brightened, and directly he cast off or forgot his humility, and looked
lordlier than an Emir boasting of his thousand tents, with ten spears to
each, and a score of camels to the spear. She endured the gaze awhile;
for it seemed she had seen the face before--where, she could not tell;
and when, as presently happened, she began to feel the brightness of the
eyes intenser growing, the sensation reminded her of the Governor at the
landing. Could this be he? No, the countenance here was of a man already
advanced in life. And why should the Governor resort to disguise? The
end, nevertheless, was the same as on the landing--she drew down the
veil. Then he became humble again, and spoke, his eyes downcast, his
hands crossed:

"This faithful servant"--he pointed to the eunuch "my friend"--the
eunuch crossed his hands, and assumed an attitude of pleased
attention--"brought me from his master--may the most Merciful and
Compassionate continue a pillow to the good man here and to his soul
hereafter!--how a kinswoman of the Emperor whose capital is to the earth
a star, and he as the brightness thereof, had taken refuge with him from
the storm, and was now his guest, and languishing for want of amusement.
Would I tell her a story? I have a horde of parables, tales, and
traditions, and many nations have contributed to it; but, alas, O
Princess! they are simple, and such as beguile tentmen and tentwomen
shut in by the desert, their fancies tender as children's. I fear your
laughter. But here I am; and as the night bird sings when the moon is
risen, because the moon is beautiful and must be saluted, even so I am
obedient. Command me."

The speech was in Greek, with the slightest imperfection of accent; at
the conclusion the Princess was silent.

"Knowest thou"--she at length said--"knowest thou of one Hatim, renowned
as a warrior and poet of the Arabs?"

The eunuch saw the reference, and smiled. Asking of Hatim now was only
another form of inquiry after his master; not merely had the latter been
in her mind; she wished to know more about him. On his part, the
story-teller arose from his servile posture, and asked with the animation
of one to whom a favorite theme is presented:

"Noble lady, know you aught of the desert?"

"I have never been there," the Princess answered.

"Though not beautiful, it is the home of mysteries," he said, with
growing enthusiasm. "When he whom in the same breath you worship as God
and the Son of God--an opposition beyond the depth of our simple
faith--made ready to proclaim himself, he went for a time into the
Wilderness, and dwelt there. So likewise our Prophet, seeing the dawn of
his day, betook himself to Hiva, a rock, bleak, barren, waterless. Why,
O Princess, if not for purification, and because God of preference has
founded his dwelling there, wasting it indeed the better to nurse his
goodness in a perfected solitude? Granting this, why may I not assert
without shocking you that the sons of the desert are the noblest of
men?--

"Such was Hatim!

"In the Hijaz and the Nejd, they tell of him thus:

"In the day the Compassionate set about world-making, which is but a
pastime with him, nor nearly so much as nest-building to a mother-dove,
he rested. The mountains and rivers and seas were in their beds, and the
land was variegated to please him, here a forest, there a grassy plain;
nothing remained unfinished except the sand oceans, and they only wanted
water. He rested.

"Now, if, with their sky, a sun-field in the day, a gallery of stars at
night, and their winds, flying from sea to sea, but gathering no taint,
the deserts are treeless, and unknowing the sweetness of gardens and the
glory of grass, it was not by accident or forgetfulness; for with him,
the Compassionate, the Merciful, there are no accidents or lapses of any
kind. He is all attention and ever present. Thus the Throne
verse--'Drowsiness overcomes him not nor sleep.... His firmament spans
the Heaven and the Earth, and the care of them does not distress him.'

"Why then the yellowness and the burning, the sameness and solitude, and
the earth intolerant of rain and running stream, and of roads and
paths--why, if there was neither accident nor forgetfulness?

"He is the High and the Great! Accuse him not!

"In that moment of rest, not from weariness or overburden, but to
approve the work done, and record the approval as a judgment, he said,
speaking to his Almightiness as to a familiar: 'As it is it shall stay.
A time will come when with men I, and the very name of me, shall go out
utterly like the green of last year's leaf. He who walks in a garden
thinks of it only; but he who abides in a desert, wanting to see the
beautiful, must look into the sky, and looking there he shall be
reminded of me, and say aloud and as a lover, 'There is no God but him,
the Compassionate, the Merciful.... The eyes see him not, but he seeth
the eyes; and He is the Gracious, the Knowing'.... So also comes a time
when religion shall be without heart, dead, and the quickening of
worship lost in idolatry; when men shall cry, God, my God, to stones and
graven images, and sing to hear their singing, and the loud music it
goes with. And that time shall be first in lands of growth and
freshness, in cities where comforts and luxuries are as honey in hives
after the flowering of palms. Wherefore--Lo, the need of deserts. There
I shall never be forgotten. And out of them, out of their hardness and
heat, out of their yellow distances and drouth, religion shall arise
again, and go forth purified unto universality; for I shall be always
present there, a life-giver. And against those days of evil, I shall
keep men there, the best of their kind, and their good qualities shall
not rust; they shall be brave, for I may want swords; they shall keep
the given word, for as I am the Truth, so shall my chosen be; there
shall be no end to charity among them, for in such lands charity is
life, and must take every form, friendship, love of one another, love of
giving, and hospitality, unto which are riches and plenty. And in their
worship, I shall be first, and honor next. And as Truth is the Soul of
the World, it being but another of my names, for its salvation they
shall speak with tongues of fire, this one an orator, that one a poet;
and living in the midst of death, they shall fear me not at all, but
dishonor more. Mine are the Sons of the Desert--the Word-Keepers!--the
Unconquered and Conquerless! For my name's sake, I nominate them Mine,
and I alone am the High and the Great.... And there shall be amongst
them exemplars of this virtue and that one singly; and at intervals
through the centuries standards for emulation among the many, a few, in
whom all the excellences shall be blent in indivisible comeliness.'

"So came Hatim, of the Bene-Tayyi, lustrous as the moon of Ramazan to
eager watchers on high hilltops, and better than other men, even as all
the virtues together are better than any one of them, excepting charity
and love of God.

"Now Hatim's mother was a widow, poor, and without relations, but
beloved by the Compassionate, and always in his care, because she was
wise beyond the men of her time, and kept his laws, as they were known,
and taught them to her son. One day a great cry arose in the village.
Everybody rushed to see the cause, and then joined in the clamor.

"Up in the north there was an appearance the like of which had never
been beheld, nor were there any to tell what it was from hearsay. Some
pooh-poohed, saying, contemptuously:

"'Tis only a cloud.'

"Others, observing how rapidly it came, in movement like a bird sailing
on outspread motionless wings, said:

"'A roc! A roc!'

"When the object was nearer, a few of the villagers, in alarm, ran to
their houses, shrieking:

"'Israfil, Israfil! He is bringing the end of time!'

"Soon the sight was nearly overhead; then it was going by, its edge
overhead, the rest of it extending eastwardly; and it was long and broad
as a pasture for ten thousand camels, and horses ten thousand. It had no
likeness earthly except a carpet of green silk; nor could those standing
under describe what bore it along. They thought they heard the sound of
a strong wind, but as the air above far and near was full of birds great
and small, birds of the water as well as the land, all flying evenly
with the carpet, and making a canopy of their wings, and shade deeper
than a cloud's, the beholders were uncertain whether the birds or the
wind served it. In passing, it dipped gently, giving them a view of what
it carried--a throne of pearl and rainbow, and a crowned King sitting in
majesty; at his left hand, an army of spirits, at his right, an army of
men in martial sheen.

"While the prodigy was before them, the spectators stirred not; nor was
there one brave enough to speak; most of them with their eyes devoured
it all, King and throne, birds, men and spirits; though afterwards there
was asking:

"'Did you see the birds?'

"'No.'

"'The spirits?'

"'No.'

"'The men?'

"'I saw only the King upon His throne.'

"In the passing, also, a man, in splendor of apparel, stood on the
carpet's edge and shouted:

"'God is great! I bear witness there is no God but God.'

"The same instant something fell from his hand. When the marvel was out
of sight in the south, some bethought them, and went to see what it was
which fell. They came back laughing, 'It was only a gourd, and as we
have much better on our camel-saddles, we threw it away.'

"But the mother of Hatim, listening to the report, was not content. In
her childhood she heard what was tradition then; how Solomon, at the
completion of his temple in Jerusalem, journeyed to Mecca upon a carpet
of silk wafted by the wind, with men, spirits, and birds. Wherefore,
saying to herself, 'It was Solomon going to Mecca. Not for nothing threw
he the gourd,' she went alone, and brought it in, and opened it, finding
three seeds--one red, like a ruby; a second blue, like a sapphire; the
third green, like an emerald.

"Now she might have sold the seeds, for they were beautiful as gems cut
for a crown, and enriched herself; but Hatim was all the world to her.
They were for him, she said, and getting a brown nut such as washes up
from vines in the sea, she cut it, put the treasures into it, sealed
them there, and tied them around the boy's neck.

"'Thanks, O Solomon,' she said. 'There is no God but God; and I shall
teach the lesson to my Hatim in the morning, when _al hudhud_ flies
for water; at noon, when it whistles to itself in the shade; and at
night, when it draws a wing over its head to darken the darkness, and
sleep.'

"And from that day through all his days Hatim wore the brown nut with
the three seeds in it; nor was there ever such an amulet before or
since; for, besides being defended by the genii who are Solomon's
servants, he grew one of the exemplars promised by God, having in
himself every virtue. No one braver than he; none so charitable; none so
generous and merciful; none so eloquent; none on whose lips poetry was
such sweet speech for the exalting of souls; above all, never had there
been such a keeper of his word of promise.

"And of this judge you by some of the many things they tell of him.

"A famine fell upon the land. It was when Hatim had become Sheik of his
tribe. The women and children were perishing. The men could no more than
witness their suffering. They knew not whom to accuse; they knew no one
to receive a prayer. The time predicted was come--the name of God had
gone out utterly, like the green of last year's leaf. In the Sheik's
tent even, as with the poorest, hunger could not be allayed--there was
nothing to eat. The last camel had been devoured--one horse remained.
More than once the good man went out to kill him, but the animal was so
beautiful--so affectionate--so fleet! And the desert was not wide enough
to hold his fame! How much easier to say, 'Another day--to-morrow it may
rain.'

"He sat in his tent telling his wife and children stories, for he was
not merely the best warrior of his day; he was the most renowned poet
and storyteller. Riding into battle, his men would say, 'Sing to us, O
Hatim--sing, and we will fight.' And they he loved best, listening to
him, had nigh forgot their misery, when the curtain of the tent was
raised.

"'Who is there?' he asked.

"'Thy neighbor,' and the voice was a woman's. 'My children are anhungred
and crying, and I have nothing for them. Help, O Sheik, help or they
die.'

"'Bring them here,' he said, rising.

"'She is not worse off than we,' said his wife, 'nor are her children
more hungry than ours. What will you do?'

"'The appeal was to me,' he answered.

"And passing out, he slew the horse, and kindled a fire; then, while the
stranger and her children were sharing piece by piece with his own,
'Shame, shame!' he said, 'that ye alone should eat;' and going through
the dowar, he brought the neighbors together, and he only went hungry.
There was no more of the meat left. Was ever one merciful like Hatim?
In combat, he gave lives, but took none. Once an antagonist under his
foot, called to him: 'Give me thy spear, Hatim,' and he gave it.

"'Foolish man!' his brethren exclaimed.

"'What else was there?' he answered. 'Did not the poor man ask a gift of
me?'

"Never a captive besought his help vainly. On a journey once, a prisoner
begged him to buy his liberty; but he was without the money required,
and on that account he was sorely distressed. To his entreaties, the
strangers listened hard-heartedly; at last he said to them:

"Am not I--Hatim--good as he? Let him go, and take me.'

"And knocking the chains from the unfortunate, he had them put on
himself, and wore them until the ransom came.

"In his eyes a poet was greater than a king, and than singing a song
well the only thing better was being the subject of a song. Perpetuation
by tombs he thought vulgar; so the glory unremembered in verse deserved
oblivion. Was it wonderful he gave and kept giving to story-tellers,
careless often if what he thus disposed of was another's?

"Once in his youth--and at hearing this, O Princess, the brown-faced
sons of the desert, old and young, laugh, and clap their hands--he gave
of his grandfather's store until the prudent old man, intending to cure
him of his extravagance, sent him to tend his herds in the country.
Alas!

"Across the plain Hatim one day beheld a caravan, and finding it
escorting three poets to the court of the King of El-Herah, he invited
them to stop with him, and while he killed a camel for each of them,
they recited songs in his praise, and that of his kin. When they wished
to resume the journey, he detained them.

"'There is no gift like the gift of song,' he said. 'I will do better by
you than will he, the King to whom you are going. Stay with me, and for
every verse you write I will give you a camel. Behold the herd!'

"And at departing, they had each a hundred camels, and he three hundred
verses.

"'Where is the herd?' the grandfather asked, when next he came to the
pasture.

"'See thou. Here are songs in honor of our house,' Hatim answered,
proudly--'songs by great poets; and they will be repeated until all
Arabia is filled with our glory.'

"'Alas! Thou hast ruined me!' the elder cried, beating his breast.

"'What!' said Hatim, indignantly. 'Carest thou more for the dirty brutes
than for the crown of honor I bought with them?'"

Here the Arab paused. The recitation, it is to be remarked, had been
without action, or facial assistance--a wholly unornate delivery; and
now he kept stately silence. His eyes, intensely bright in the shadow of
the _kufiyeh,_ may have produced the spell which held the Princess
throughout; or it may have been the eyes and voice; or, quite as likely,
the character of Hatim touched a responsive chord in her breast.

"I thank you," she said, adding presently: "In saying I regret the story
ended so soon, I pray you receive my opinion of its telling. I doubt if
Hatim himself could have rendered it better."

The Arab recognized the compliment with the faintest of bows, but made
no reply in words. Irene then raised her veil, and spoke again.

"Thy Hatim, O eloquent Arab, was warrior and poet, and, as thou hast
shown him to me, he was also a philosopher. In what age did he live?"

"He was a shining light in the darkness preceding the appearance of the
Prophet. That period is dateless with us."

"It is of little consequence," she continued. "Had he lived in our day,
he would have been more than poet, warrior and philosopher--he would be
a Christian. His charity and love of others, his denial of self, sound
like the Christ. Doubtless he could have died for his fellow-men. Hast
thou not more of him? Surely he lived long and happily."

"Yes," said the Arab, with a flash of the eyes to denote his appreciation
of the circumstance. "He is reported to have been the most wretched of
men. His wife--I pray you will observe I am speaking by the tradition--
his wife had the power, so dreadful to husbands, of raising Iblis at
pleasure. It delighted her to beat him and chase him from his tent; at
last she abandoned him."

"Ah!" the Princess exclaimed. "His charities were not admirable in her
eyes."

"The better explanation, Princess, may be found in a saying we have in
the desert--'A tall man may wed a small woman, but a great soul shall
not enter into bonds with a common one.'"

There was silence then, and as the gaze of the story-teller was again
finding a fascination in her face, Irene took refuge behind her veil,
but said, presently:

"With permission, I will take the story of Hatim for mine; but here is
my friend--what hast thou for her?"

The story-teller turned to Lael.

"Her pleasure shall be mine," he said.

"I should like something Indian," the girl answered, timidly, for the
eyes oppressed her also.

"Alas! India has no tales of love. Her poetry is about gods and abstract
religions. Wherefore, if I may choose, I will a tale from Persia next.
In that country there was a verse-maker called Firdousi, and he wrote a
great poem, _The Shah Nameh_, with a warrior for hero. This is how
Rustem, in single combat, killed Sohrab, not knowing the youth was his
son until after the awful deed was done."

The tale was full of melancholy interest, and told with singular grace;
but it continued until after nightfall; of which the party was
admonished by the attendants coming to light the lamps. At the
conclusion, the Arab courteously apologized for the time he had wrested
from them.

"In dealing with us, O Princess," he said, "patience is full as lovely
as charity."

Lifting the veil again, she extended her hand to him, saying, "The
obligation is with us. I thank you for making light and pleasant an
afternoon which else had been tedious."

He kissed her hand, and followed the eunuch to the door. Then the supper
was announced.




CHAPTER XI

THE TURQUOISE RING


The Prince of India, left in the passage of the Castle with Sergius, was
not displeased with the course the adventure appeared to be taking. In
the first place, he felt no alarm for Lael; she might be uncomfortable
in the quarter to which she had been conducted, but that was all, and it
would not last long. The guardianship of the eunuch was in his view a
guaranty of her personal safety. In the next place, acquaintance with
the Princess might prove serviceable in the future. He believed Lael
fitted for the highest rank; she was already educated beyond the
requirements of the age for women; her beauty was indisputable; as a
consequence, he had thought of her a light in the court; and not
unpleasantly it occurred to him now that the fair Princess might carry
keys for both the inner and outer doors of the royal residence.

Generally the affair which was of concern to Lael was an affair of
absorbing interest to the Prince; in this instance, however, another
theme offered itself for the moment a superior attraction.

The impression left by the young master of ceremonies in the reception
at the landing was of a kind to arouse curiosity. His appearance,
manner, speech and the homage paid him denoted exalted rank; while the
confidence with which he spoke for Sultan Amurath was most remarkable.
His acceptance of the terms presented by the Princess Irene was little
short of downright treaty-making; and what common official dared carry
assumption to such a height? Finally the Prince fell to thinking if
there was any person the actual governor of the Castle would quietly
permit to go masquerading in his authority and title.

Then everything pointed him to Prince Mahommed. The correspondence in
age was perfect; the martial array seen galloping down the bank was a
fitting escort for the heir-apparent of the gray Sultan; and he alone
might with propriety speak for his father in a matter of state.

"A mistake cannot be serious," said the Prince to himself, at the end of
the review. "I will proceed upon the theory that the young man is Prince
Mahommed."

This was no sooner determined than the restless mind flew forward to an
audience. The time and place--midnight in the lonesome old Castle--were
propitious, and he was prepared for it.

Indeed it was the very purpose he had in view the night of the repast in
his tent at El Zaribah where he so mysteriously intrusted the Emir Mirza
with revelations concerning the doom of Constantinople.

Once more he ran over the scheme which had brought him from Cipango. If
Islam could not be brought to lead in the project, Christendom might be
more amenable to reason. The Moslem world was to be reached through the
Kaliph whom he expected to find in Egypt; wherefore his contemplated
trip down the Nile from Kash-Cush. If driven to the Christian,
Constantine was to be his operator. Such in broadest generality was the
plan of execution he had resolved upon.

But to these possibilities he had appended another of which it is now
necessary to speak.

Enough has been given to apprise the reader of the things to which the
Prince preferably devoted himself. These were international affairs, and
transcendently war. If indeed the latter were not the object he had
always specially in mind, it was the end to which his management usually
conducted. For mere enjoyment in the sight of men facing the death which
strangely passed him by, he delighted in hovering on the edge of battle
until there was a crisis, and then plunging into its heated heart.

He had also a peculiar method of bringing war about. This consisted in
providing for punishments in case his enterprises miscarried. Invariably
somebody suffered for such failures. In that way he soothed the pangs of
wounded vanity.

When he was inventing the means for executing his plots, and forming the
relations essential to them, it was his habit to select instruments of
punishment in advance.

Probably no better illustration of this feature of his dealings can be
given than is furnished by the affair now engaging him. If he failed to
move the Kaliph to lead the reform, he would resort to Constantine; if
the Emperor also declined, he would make him pay the penalty; then came
the reservation. So soon after his arrival from Cipango as he could
inform himself of the political conditions of the world to which he was
returning, he fixed upon Mahommed to avenge him upon the offending
Greek.

The meeting with Mirza at El Zaribah was a favorable opportunity to
begin operating upon the young Turk. The tale the Emir received that
night under solemn injunctions of secrecy was really intended for his
master. How well it was devised for the end in view the reader will be
able to judge from what is now to follow.

The audience with Mahommed determined upon by the Prince of India, our
first point of interest is in observing how he set about accomplishing
it. His promptness was characteristic.

Directly the ladies had disappeared with the eunuch, the soldiers poured
from their hiding places in the Castle, and seeing one whom he judged an
officer, the Prince called to him in Turkish:

"Ho, my friend!"

The man was obliging.

"Present my salutations to the Governor of the Castle, and say the
Prince of India desires speech with him."

The soldier hesitated.

"Understand," said the Prince, quickly, "my message is not to the great
Lord who received me at the landing. But the Governor in fact. Bring him
here."

The confident manner prevailed.

Presently the messenger returned with a burly, middle-aged person in
guidance. A green turban above a round face, large black eyes in
muffling of fleshy lids, pallid cheeks lost in dense beard, a drab gown
lined with yellow fur, a naked cimeter in a silk-embroidered sash,
bespoke the Turk; but how unlike the handsome, fateful-looking
masquerader at the river side!

"The Prince of India has the honor of speech with the Governor of the
Castle?"

"God be praised," the Governor replied. "I was seeking your Highness.
Besides wishing to join in your thanks for happy deliverance from the
storm, I thought to discharge my duty as a Moslem host by conducting you
to refreshments and repose. Follow me, I pray."

A few steps on the way, the Governor stopped:

"Was there not a companion--a younger man--a Dervish?"

"A monk," said the Prince; "and the question reminds me of my attendant,
a negro. Send for him--or better, bring them both to me. I wish them to
share my apartment."

In a short time the three were in quarters, if one small room may be so
dignified. The walls were cold gray stone; one oblong narrow port-hole
admitted scanty light; a rough bench, an immense kettle-drum shaped like
the half of an egg-shell, and propped broadside up, some piles of loose
straw, each with folded sheepskins on it, constituted the furnishment.

Sergius made no sign of surprise or disappointment. Possibly the chamber
and its contents were reproductions of his cell up in Bielo-Osero. Nilo
gave himself to study of the drum, reminded, doubtless, of similar
warlike devices in Kash-Cush. The Prince alone expostulated. Taking a
stand between the Governor and the door, he said:

"A question before thou goest hence."

The Turk gazed at him silently.

"To what accommodations have the Princess Irene and her attendant been
taken? Are they vile as these?"

"The reception room of my harem is the most comfortable the Castle
affords," the Governor answered.

"And they?"

"They are occupying it."

"Not by courtesy of thine. He who could put the hospitality of the
Prince Mahommed to shame by maltreating one of his guests."

He paused, and grimly surveyed the room.

"Such a servant would be as evil-minded to another guest; and that the
other is a woman, would not affect his imbruited soul."

"The Prince Mahommed!" the Governor exclaimed.

"Yes. What brings him here, matters not; his wish to keep the Romans in
ignorance of his near presence, I know as well as thou; none the less,
it was his royal word we accepted. As for thee--thou mightest have
promised faith and hospitality with thy hand on the Prophet's beard, yet
would I have bidden the Princess trust herself to the tempest sooner."

Sergius was now standing by, but the conversation being in Turkish, he
listened without understanding.

"Thou ass!" the Prince continued. "Not to know that the kinswoman of the
Roman Emperor, under this roof by treaty with the mighty Amurath, his
son the negotiator, is our guardian! When the storm shall have spent
itself, and the waters quieted down, she will resume her journey.
Then--it may be in the morning--she will first ask for us, and then thy
master will require to know how we have passed the night. Ah, thou
beginnest to see!"

The Governor's head was drooping; his hands crossed themselves upon his
stomach; and when he raised his eyes, they were full of deprecation and
entreaty.

"Your Highness--most noble Lord--condescend to hear me."

"Speak. I am awake to hear the falsehood thou hast invented in excuse of
thy perfidy to us, and thy treason to him, the most generous of masters,
the most chivalrous of knights."

"Your Highness has greatly misconceived me. In the first place you have
forgotten the crowded state of the Castle. Every room and passage is
filled with the suite and escort of"--

He hesitated, and turned pale, like a man dropped suddenly into a great
danger. The shrewd guest caught at the broken sentence and finished it:

"Of Prince Mahommed!"

"With the suite and escort," the Governor repeated.... "In the next
place, it was not my intention to leave you unprovided. From my own
apartments, light, beds and seats were ordered to be brought here, with
meats for refreshment, and water for cleansing and draught. The order is
in course of execution now. Indeed, your Highness, I swear by the first
chapter of the Koran"--

"Take something less holy to swear by," cried the Prince.

"Then, by the bones of the Faithful, I swear I meant to make you
comfortable, even to my own deprivation."

"By thy young master's bidding?"

The Governor bent forward very low.

"Well," said the Prince, softening his manner--"the misconception was
natural."

"Yes--yes."

"And now thou hast only to prove thy intention by making it good."

"Trust me, your Highness."

"Trust thee? Ay, on proof. I have a commission"--

The Prince then drew a ring from his finger.

"Take this," he said, "and deliver it to the Emir Mirza."

The assurance of the speech was irresistible; so the Turk held out his
hand to receive the token.

"And say to the Emir, that I desire him to thank the Most Compassionate
and Merciful for the salvation of which we were witnesses at the
southwest corner of the Kaaba."

"What!" exclaimed the Governor. "Art thou a Moslem?"

"I am not a Christian."

The Governor, accepting the ring, kissed the hand offering it, and took
his departure, moving backward, and with downcast eyes, his manner
declarative of the most abject humility.

Hardly was the door closed behind the outgoing official, when the Prince
began to laugh quietly and rub his hands together--quietly, we say, for
the feeling was not merriment so much as self-gratulation.

There was cleverness in having doubted the personality of the individual
who received the refugees at the landing; there was greater cleverness
in the belief which converted the Governor into the Prince Mahommed; but
the play by which the fact was uncovered--if not a stroke of genius, how
may it be better described? The Prince of India thought as he laughed:

"Not long now until Amurath joins his fathers, and then--Mahommed."

Presently he stopped, a step half taken, his gaze upon the floor, his
hands clasped behind him. He stood so still it would not have been amiss
to believe a thought was all the life there was in him. He certainly did
believe in astrology. Had not men been always ruled by what they
imagined heavenly signs? How distinctly he remembered the age of the
oracle and the augur! Upon their going out he became a believer in the
stars as prophets, and then an adept; afterwhile he reached a stage when
he habitually mistook the commonest natural results, even coincidences,
for confirmations of planetary forecasts. And now this halting and
breathlessness was from sudden recollection that the horoscope lying on
his table in Constantinople had relation to Mahommed in his capacity of
Conqueror. How marvellous also that from the meeting with Constantine in
the street of the city, he should have been blown by a tempest to a
meeting with Mahommed in the White Castle!

These circumstances, trifling to the reader, were of deep influence to
the Prince of India. While he stands there rigid as a figure marbleized
in mid action, he is saying to himself:

"The audience will take place--Heaven has ordered it. Would I knew what
manner of man this Mahommed is!"

He had seen a handsome youth, graceful in bearing, quick and subtle in
speech, cultivated and evidently used to governing. Very good, but what
an advantage there would be in knowing the bents and inclinations of the
royal lad beforehand.

Presently the schemer's head arose. The boyish Prince was going about in
armor when soft raiment would be excusable--and that meant ambition,
dreams of conquest, dedication to martial glory. Very good indeed! And
then his manner under the eyes of the girlish Princess--how quickly her
high-born grace had captivated him! Something impossible were he not of
a romantic turn, a poet, sentimentalist, knight errant.

The Prince clapped his hands. He knew the appeals effective with such
natures. Let the audience come.... Ah, but--

Again he sunk into thought. Youths like Mahommed were apt to be wilful.
How was he to be controlled? One expedient after another was swiftly
considered and as swiftly rejected. At last the right one! Like his
ancestors from Ertoghrul down, the young Turk was a believer in the
stars. Not unlikely he was then in the Castle by permission of his
astrologer. Indeed, if Mirza had repeated the conversation and
predictions at El Zaribah, the Prince of India was being waited for with
an impatience due a master of the astral craft. Again the Wanderer
cried, "Let the audience come!" and peace and confidence were possessing
him when a loud report and continuous rumble in the room set the solid
floor to quaking. He looked around in time to see the big drum quivering
under a blow from Nilo.

From the negro his gaze wandered to Sergius standing before the one
loophole by which light and air were let into the dismal chamber; and
recalling the monk as the sole attendant of the Princess Irene, he
thought it best to speak to him.

Drawing near, he observed the cowl thrown back, and that the face was
raised, the eyes closed, the hands palm to palm upon the breast.
Involuntarily he stopped, not because he was one of those who always
presume the most Holy Presence when prayer is being offered--he stopped,
wondering where he had seen that countenance. The delicate features, the
pallid complexion, the immature beard, the fair hair parted in the
middle, and falling in wavy locks over the shoulders, the aspect manly
yet womanly in its refinement, were strangely familiar to him. It was
his first view of the monk's face. Where had he seen it? His memory went
back, far back of the recent. A chill struck his heart. The features,
look, air, portrait, the expression indefinable except as a light of
outcoming spirit, were those of the man he had helped crucify before the
Damascus gate in the Holy City, and whom he could no more cast out of
mind than he could the bones from his body. His feet seemed rooting into
the flinty flags beneath them. He heard the centurion call to him: "Ho,
there! If thou knowest the Golgotha, come show it." He felt the
sorrowful eyes of the condemned upon him. He struck the bloody cheek,
and cried as to a beast: "Go faster, Jesus!" And then the words, wrung
from infinite patience at last broken:

"I am going, but do thou TARRY TILL I COME."

For relief, he spoke:

"What dost thou, my friend?"

Sergius opened his eyes and answered simply, "I am praying."

"To whom?"

"To God."

"Art thou a Christian?"

"Yes."

"God is for the Jew and the Moslem."

"Nay," said Sergius, looking at the Prince without taking down his
hands, "all who believe in God find happiness and salvation in Him--the
Christian as well as the Jew and the Moslem."

The questions had been put with abrupt intensity; now the inquisitor
drew back astonished. He heard the very postulate of the scheme to which
he was devoting himself--and from a boy so like the dead Christ he was
working to blot out of worship he seemed the Christ arisen!

The amazement passed slowly, and with its going the habitual shrewdness
and capacity to make servants of circumstances apparently the most
untoward returned. The youth had intellect, impressiveness, aptitude in
words, and a sublime idea. But what of his spirit--his courage--his
endurance in the Faith?

"How came this doctrine to thee?"

The Prince spoke deferentially.

"From the good father Hilarion."

"Who is he?"

"The Archimandrite of Bielo-Osero."

"A monastery?"

"Yes."

"How did he receive it?"

"From the Spirit of God, whence Christ had his wisdom--whence all good
men have their goodness--by virtue of which they, like Him, become sons
of God."

"What is thy name?"

"Sergius."

"Sergius"--the Prince, now fully recovered, exerted his power of will--
"Sergius, thou art a heretic."

At this accusation, so terrible in those days, the monk raised the
rosary of large beads dangling from his girdle, kissed the cross, and
stood surveying the accuser with pity.

"That is," the Prince continued with greater severity, "speak thou thus
to the Patriarch yonder"--he waved a hand toward Constantinople--"dare
repeat the saying to a commission appointed to try thee for heresy, and
thou wilt thyself taste the pangs of crucifixion or be cast to the
beasts."

The monk arose to his great height, and replied, fervently:

"Knowest thou when death hath the sweetness of sleep? I will tell thee"--
A light certainly not from the narrow aperture in the wall collected upon
his countenance, and shone visibly--"It is when a martyr dies knowing
both of God's hands are a pillow under his head."

The Prince dropped his eyes, for he was asking himself, was such
sweetness of sleep appointed for him? Resuming his natural manner, he
said: "I understand thee, Sergius. Probably no man in the world, go thou
East or West, will ever understand thee better. God's hands under my
head, welcome death!--Let us be friends."

Sergius took his offered hand.

Just then there was a noise at the door, and a troop of servants entered
with lighted lamps, rugs, a table, stools, and beds and bedding, and it
was not long until the apartment was made habitable. The Prince,
otherwise well satisfied, wanted nothing then but a reply from Mirza;
and in the midst of his wonder at the latter's delay, a page in
brilliant costume appeared, and called out:

"The Emir Mirza!"




CHAPTER XII

THE RING RETURNS


The Prince, at the announcement of Mirza, took position near the centre
of the room where the light was ample. His black velvet pelisse
contrasting strongly with his white hair and beard, he looked a
mysterious Indian potentate to whom occult Nature was a familiar, and
the stars oracular friends.

Mirza's cheeks were scarcely so sun and sand stained as when we first
beheld him in conduct of the caravan to Mecca; in other respects he was
unchanged. His attire, like the lord Mahommed's at the reception on the
landing, was of chain mail very light and flexible. He carried a dagger
in his belt, and to further signify confidence in the Prince, the flat
steel cap forming his headgear was swinging loosely from his left arm;
or he might have intended to help his friend to a more ready recognition
by presenting himself bareheaded. He met his survey with unaffected
pleasure, took the hand extended in greeting, and kissed it
reverentially.

"Forgive me, O Prince, if my first greeting have the appearance of a
reproach," Mirza said, as he gave up the hand. "Why have you kept us
waiting so long?"

The Prince's countenance assumed a severe expression.

"Emir, I gave you confidence under seal."

The Emir flushed deeply.

"Was it knightly to betray me? To whom have you told the secret? How
many have been waiting for my coming?"

"Be merciful, I pray."

"But the stars. You have made me culprit with them. I may pardon you;
can you assure me of their pardon?"

The Emir raised his head, and with an expostulatory gesture, was about
to reply, when the Prince continued, "Put thy words in the tongue
coinage of Italy, for to be overheard now were to make me an offender
like unto thyself."

Mirza glanced hastily at Sergius, still praying before the loophole, and
at Nilo; then he surveyed the cell critically, and said, in Italian,
"This is the prison of the Castle--and thou--can it be I see thee a
prisoner?"

The Prince smiled. "The Governor led me here with my friends; and what
you behold of accommodations he sent in afterwards, saying the better
rooms were filled with soldiery."

"He will rue the deed. My Lord is swift at righting a wrong, and trust
me, O Prince, to make report. But to return"--Mirza paused, and looked
into the Prince's eyes earnestly--"Is your accusation just? Hear me;
then by the motive judge. When I stood before my master, Prince Mahommed,
a returned pilgrim, if not taller in fact, his bearing was more majestic.
I kissed his hand wondering if some servant of the Compassionate, some
angel or travelling Jinn, had not arrived before me, and whispered him of
what you told me, speaking for the stars. And when we were alone, he
would have account of the countries journeyed through, of the people met,
of Medina and Mecca, and the other holy places; nor would he rest until
he had from me the sayings I had heard on the way, everything from calls
to prayer to the Khatib's sermon. When I told him I had not heard the
sermon, nor seen the preacher or his camel, he demanded why, and--what
else was there to do, O Prince?--I related how we had been pursued by the
terrible Yellow Air; how it had overtaken me; how I fell down dying at
the corner of the Kaaba, and by whom I was saved even as the life was
departing. This last directed him to you. My efforts to put him off but
whetted his desire. He would not be diverted or denied. He insisted--
urged--threatened. At last I told him all--of your joining us with the
Hajj from El Khatif--your rank and train--your marches in the rear--the
hundreds of miserables you saved from the plague--of our meeting at
Zaribah, your hospitality, your learning in all that pertains to the
greatest of the prophets, your wisdom above the wisdom of other men. And
you grew upon him as I proceeded. 'Oh, a good man truly!' 'What courage!'
'What charity!' 'The Prophet himself!' 'Oh, that I had been you!' 'O
foolish Mirza, to suffer such a man to escape!' With such exclamations he
kept breaking up my story. It was not long until he fastened upon our
meeting in the tent. He plied me to know of what we talked--what you
said, and all you said. O Prince, if you did but know him; if you knew
the soul possessing him, the intellectual things he has mastered, his
sagacity, his art, his will, his day-dreams pursuing him in sleep, the
deeds he is prepared to do, the depth and strength of his passions, his
admiration for heroes, his resolve to ring the world with the greatness
of his name--Oh, knew you the man as I do, were you his lover as I am,
his confidant--had you, for teaching him to ride and strike with sword
and spear, his promise of a share in the glory beckoning him on, making
his mighty expectations a part of you even as they are of him, would you
--ah, Prince, could you have withheld the secret? Think of the
revelation! The old East to awake, and march against the West!
Constantinople doomed! And he the leader for whom the opportunity is
waiting! And to call my weakness betrayal! Unsay it, unsay it, Prince!"

The face of the auditor as Mirza proceeded with his defence would have
been a profitable study. He saw himself succeeding in the purpose of his
affected severity; he was drawing from Mahommed's intimate the
information he most desired; and thus advised in advance, his role in
the interview coming would be of easy foresight and performance. Not to
appear too lightly satisfied, however, he said gravely, "I see the
strain you underwent, my gallant friend. I see also the earnestness of
your affection for your most noble pupil. He is to be congratulated upon
the possession of a servant capable of such discernment and devotion.
But I recall my question--How many are there waiting for me?"

"Your revelations, O Prince, were imparted to my master alone; and with
such certainty as you know yourself, you may believe them at rest in his
bosom. No one better than he appreciates the importance of keeping them
there under triple lock. More than one defeat--I think he would permit
the confession--has taught him that secrecy is the life of every
enterprise."

"Say you so, Emir? I feel warmth returning to my hope. Nay, listening to
you, and not believing in improvised heroes, I see how your course may
have been for the best. The years gone since you yielded to his
importunities, wisely used, have doubtless served him providentially."

The Prince extended his hand again, and it was ardently taken; then, on
his part, more than pleased, Mirza said, "I bring you a message from my
Lord Mahommed. I was with him when the Governor came and delivered your
ring to me--and, lest I forget a duty, Prince, here it is--take it at
some future time it may be serviceable as today."

"Yes, well thought!" the Jew exclaimed, replacing the signet on his
finger, and immediately, while looking at the turquoise eye, he dropped
his tone into the solemn, "Ay, the obligations of the Pentagram
endure--they are like a decree of God."

The words and manner greatly impressed Mirza.

"My Lord Mahommed," he said, "observed the delivery of the ring to me by
the Governor; and when we were alone, and I had recounted the story of
the jewels, 'What!' my Lord cried, quite as transported as myself. 'That
wonderful man--he here--here in this Castle! He shall not escape me.
Send for him at once. I brook no delay.' He stamped his foot. 'Lest he
vanish in the storm--go!' When I was at the door, he bade me come back.
'The elder man with the white beard and black eyes, said you? It were
well for me to begin by consulting his comfort. He may be tired, and in
want of repose; his accommodations may be insufficient; wherefore go see
him first, and ascertain his state and wishes.' And as I was going, he
summoned me to return again. 'A moment--stay!' he said.'The circumstance
enlarges with thought. Thou knowest, Mirza, I did not come here with a
special object; I was drawn involuntarily; now I see it was to meet him.
It is a doing of the stars. I shall hear from them!' O Prince"--Mirza's
eyes sparkled, arid he threw up both his hands--"if ever man believed
what he said, my master did."

"A wise master truly," said the Jew, struggling with his exultation.
"What said he next?"

"'While I am honoring their messenger'--thus my Lord continued--'why not
honor the stars? Their hour is midnight, for then they are all out, from
this horizon and that calling unto each other, and merging their
influences into the harmony the preachers call the Will of the Most
Merciful. A good hour for the meeting. Hear, Mirza--at midnight--in this
room. Go now.' And so it is appointed."

"And well appointed, Emir."

"Shall I so report?"

"With my most dutiful protestations."

"Look for me then at midnight."

"I shall be awake, and ready."

"Meantime, Prince, I will seek an apartment more in correspondence with
the degree of my Lord's most honored guest."

"Nay, good Mirza, suffer me to advise in that matter. The bringing me
into this place was a mistake of the Governor's. He could not divine the
merit I have in your master's eyes. He took me for a Christian. I
forgive him, and pray he may not be disturbed. He may be useful to me.
Upon the springing of a mischance--there is one such this instant in my
mind's eye--I may be driven to come back to this Castle. In such an
event, I prefer him my servant rather than my enemy."

"O Prince!"

"Nay, Emir, the idea is only a suggestion of one of the Prophets whom
Allah stations at the turns in every man's career."

"But every man cannot see the Prophets."

The Jew finished gravely: "Rather than disturb the Governor further,
soothe him for me; and when the Lord Mahommed goes hence, do thou see an
instruction is left putting the Castle and its chief at my order. Also,
as thou art a grateful friend, Mirza, serve me by looking into the
kettles out of which we are to have our refreshment, and order concerning
them as for thyself. I feel a stir of appetite."

The Emir backed from the apartment, leaving a low salaam just outside
the door.

If the reader thinks the Prince content now, he is not mistaken. True he
paced the floor long and rapidly; but, feeling himself close upon a turn
in his course, he was making ready for it perfectly as possible by
consulting the Prophet whom he saw waiting there.

And as the Lord Mahommed failed not to remember them what time he betook
himself to supper, the three guests up in the prison fared well, nor
cared for the howling of the wind, and the bursting and beating of the
rain still rioting without the walls.




CHAPTER XIII

MAHOMMED HEARS FROM THE STARS


The second recall of the Emir Mirza departing with the appointment for
the Prince of India was remarkable, considering Mahommed's usual
quickness of conclusion and steadiness of purpose; and the accounting
for it is noteworthy.

So completely had the young Turk been taken up by study and military
service that leisure for love had been denied him; else he either
despised the passion or had never met a woman to catch his fancy and
hold it seriously.

We have seen him make the White Castle by hard galloping before the
bursting of the storm. While at the gate, and in the midst of his
reception there, the boats were reported making all speed to the river
landing; and not wishing his presence at the Castle to be known in
Constantinople, he despatched an under officer to seize the voyagers,
and detain them until he had crossed the Bosphorus _en route_ to
Adrianople. However, directly the officer brought back the spirited
message of the Princess Irene to the Governor of the Castle, his mind
underwent a change.

"What," he asked, "sayst thou the woman is akin to the Emperor
Constantine?"

"Such is her claim, my Lord, and she looks it."

"Is she old?"

"Young, my Lord--not more than twenty."

Mahommed addressed the Governor:

"Stay thou here. I will take thy office, and wait upon this Princess."

Dismounting, then, in the capacity of Governor of the Castle, he
hastened to the landing, curious as well as desirous of offering refuge
to the noble lady.

He saw her first a short way off, and was struck with her composed
demeanor. During the discussion of his tender of hospitality, her face
was in fair view, and it astonished him. When finally she stepped from
the boat, her form, delicately observable under the rich and graceful
drapery, and so exquisitely in correspondence with her face, still
further charmed him.

Before the chairs were raised, he sent a messenger to the Castle with
orders to place everybody in hiding, and for his Kislar-Aga, or chief
eunuch, to be in the passage of entrance to receive and take charge of
the kinswoman of the Emperor and her attendant. By a further order the
Governor proper was directed to vacate his harem apartments for her
accommodation.

In the Castle, after the Princess had been thus disposed of, the
impression she made upon him increased.

"She is so high-born!--so beautiful!--She has such spirit and mind!--She
is so calm under trial--so courageous--so decorous--so used to courtly
life!"

Such exclamations attested the unwonted ferment going on in his mind.
Gradually, as tints under the brush of a skilful painter lose themselves
in one effect, his undefined ideas took form.

"O Allah! What a Sultana for a hero!"

And by repetition this ran on into what may be termed the chorus of a
love song--the very first of the kind his soul had ever sung.

Such was Mahommed's state when Mirza received the turquoise ring, and,
announcing the Prince of India, asked for orders. Was it strange he
changed his mind? Indeed he was at the moment determining to see again
the woman who had risen upon him like a moon above a lake; so, directly
he had despatched the Emir to the Prince of India with the appointment
for midnight, he sent for an Arab Sheik of his suite, arrayed himself in
the latter's best habit, and stained his hands, neck, and face-turned
himself, in brief, into the story-teller whom we have seen admitted to
amuse the Princess Irene.

At midnight, sharply as the hour could be determined by the uncertain
appliances resorted to by the inmates of the Castle, Mirza appeared at
his master's door with the mystical Indian, and, passing the sentinel
there, knocked like one knowing himself impatiently awaited. A voice
bade them enter.

The young Turk, upon their entrance, arose from a couch of many cushions
prepared for him under a canopy in the centre of the room.

"This, my Lord, is the Prince of India" said Mirza; then, almost without
pause, he turned to the supposed Indian, and added more ceremoniously:
"Be thou happy, O Prince! The East hath not borne a son so worthy to
take the flower from the tomb of Saladin, and wear it, as my master here
--the Lord Mahommed."

Then, his duty done, the Emir retired.

Mahommed was in the garb used indoors immemorially by his race--sharply
pointed slippers, immense trousers gathered at the ankles, a yellow
quilted gown dropping below the knees, and a turban of balloon shape,
its interfolding stayed by an aigrette of gold and diamonds. His head
was shaven up to the edge of the turban, so that, the light falling from
a cluster of lamps in suspension from the ceiling, every feature was in
plain exposure. Looking into the black eyes scarcely shaded by the
upraised arching brows, the Prince of India saw them sparkle with
invitation and pleasure, and was himself satisfied.

He advanced, and saluted by falling upon his knees, and kissing the back
of his hands laid palm downward on the floor. Mahommed raised him to his
feet.

"Rise, O Prince!" he said--"rise, and come sit with me."

From behind the couch, the Turk dragged a chair of ample seat, railed
around except at the front, and provided with a cushion of camel's
hair--a chair such as teachers in the Mosques use when expounding to
their classes. This he placed so while he sat on the couch the visitor
would be directly before him, and but little removed. Soon the two were
sitting cross-legged face to face.

"A man devout as the Prince of India is reported to me," Mahommed began,
in a voice admirably seconding the respectful look he fixed upon the
other, "must be of the rightly guided, who believe in God and the Last
Day, and observe prayer, and pay the alms, and dread none but God--who
therefore of right frequent the temples."

"Your words, my Lord, are those of the veritable messenger of the most
high Heaven," the Wanderer responded, bending forward as if about to
perform a prostration. "I recognize them, and they give me the sensation
of being in a garden of perpetual abode, with a river running beneath
it." Mahommed, perceiving the quotation from the Koran, bent low in
turn, saying: "It is good to hear you, for as I listen I say to myself,
This one is of the servants of the Merciful who are to walk upon the
earth softly. I accost you in advance, Welcome and Peace."

After a short silence, he continued: "A frequenter of mosques, you will
see, O Prince, I have put you in the teacher's place. I am the student.
Yours to open the book and read; mine to catch the pearls of your saying,
lest they fall in the dust, and be lost."

"I fear my Lord does me honor overmuch; yet there is a beauty in
willingness even where one cannot meet expectation. Of what am I to
speak?"

Mahommed knit his brows, and asked imperiously, "Who art thou? Of that
tell me first."

Happily for the Prince, he had anticipated this demand, and, being
intensely watchful, was ready for it, and able to reply without
blenching: "The Emir introduced me rightly. I am a Prince of India."

"Now of thy life something."

"My Lord's request is general--perhaps he framed it with design. Left
thus to my own judgment, I will be brief, and choose from the mass of my
life."

There was not the slightest sign of discomposure discernible in the look
or tone of the speaker; his air was more than obliging--he seemed to be
responding to a compliment.

"I began walk as a priest--a disciple of Siddhartha, whom my Lord, of
his great intelligence, will remember as born in Central India. Very
early, on account of my skill in translation, I was called to China, and
there put to rendering the Thirty-five Discourses of the father of the
Budhisattwa into Chinese and Thibettan. I also published a version of
the Lotus of the Good Law, and another of the Nirvana. These brought me
a great honor. To an ancestor of mine, Maha Kashiapa, Buddha happened to
have intrusted his innermost mysteries--that is, he made him Keeper of
the Pure Secret of the Eye of Right Doctrine. Behold the symbol of that
doctrine."

The Prince drew a leaf of ivory, worn and yellow, from a pocket under
his pelisse, and passed it to Mahommed, saying, "Will my lord look?"

Mahommed took the leaf, and in the silver sunk into it saw this sign:

[Illustration]

"I see," he said, gravely. "Give me its meaning."

"Nay, my Lord, did I that, the doctrine of which, as successor of
Kashiapa, though far removed, they made me Keeper--the very highest of
Buddhistic honors--would then be no longer a secret. The symbol is of
vast sanctity. There is never a genuine image of Buddha without it over
his heart. It is the monogram of Vishnu and Siva; but as to its meaning,
I can only say every Brahman of learning views it worshipfully, knowing
it the compression of the whole mind of Buddha."

Mahommed respected the narrator's compunction, and returned the symbol,
saying simply, "I have heard of such things."

"To pursue," the Prince then said, confident of the impression he was
producing: "At length I returned to my own country enriched beyond every
hope. A disposition to travel seized me. One day, passing the desert to
Baalbec, some Bedouin made me prisoner, and carrying me to Mecca, sold
me to the Scherif there; a good man who respected my misfortune and
learning--may the youths ever going in Paradise forget not his cup of
flowing wine!--and wrought with me over the Book of the One God until I
became a believer like himself. Then, as I had exchanged the hope of
Nirvana for the better and surer hope of Islam, he set me free.... Again
in my native land, I betook myself to astrologic studies, being the more
inclined thereto by reason of the years I had spent in contemplating the
abstrusities of Siddhartha. I became an adept--something, as my Lord may
already know, impossible to such as go about unknowing the whole earth
and heavens, and the powers superior, those of the sky, and those
lesser, meaning Kings, Emperors, and Sultans."

"How!" exclaimed Mahommed. "Is not every astrologer an adept?"

The Prince answered softly, seeing the drift was toward the professor in
the young Turk's service. "There is always a better until we reach the
best. Even the stars differ from each other in degree."

"But how may a man know the superior powers?"

"The sum of the observations kept by the wise through the ages, and
recorded by them, is a legacy for the benefit of the chosen few. Had my
Lord the taste, and were he not already devoted by destiny, I could take
him to a college where what is now so curious to him is simple reading."

The hard and doubting expression on Mahommed's face began to soften, yet
he persisted: "Knowing the superior, why is it needful to know the
inferior powers?"

"My Lord trenches now upon the forbidden, yet I will answer as his
shrewdness deserves. Never man heard from the stars in direct speech--
that were almost like words with God. But as they are servants, they also
have servants. Moreover what we have from them is always in answer. They
love to be sought after by the diligent. Some ages ago an adept seeking
this and that of them conjecturally, had reply, 'Lo! A tribe of poor
wanderers in the East. Heed them, for they shall house their dominion in
palaces now the glory of the West, and they shall dig the pit to compass
the fall of the proud.' Is it this tribe? Is it that? But the seeker
never knew. The children of Ertoghrul were yet following their herds up
and down the pastures they had from Ala-ed-din, the Iconian. Not knowing
their name, he could not ask of them from the decree-makers?"

The Mystic beheld the blood redden Mahommed's open countenance, and the
brightening of his eyes; and as he was speaking to his pride, he knew he
was not amiss.

"The saying of the stars," he went on, "descended to succeeding adepts.
Time came to their aid. When at length your fathers seated themselves in
Broussa, the mystery was in part revealed. Anybody, even the low-browed
herdsman shivering in the currents blowing from the Trojan heights,
could then have named the fortunate tribe. Still the exposure was not
complete; a part remained for finding out. We knew the diggers of the
pit; but for whom was it? To this I devoted myself. Hear me closely
now--my Lord, I have traversed the earth, not once, but many times--so
often, you cannot name a people unknown to me, nor a land whither I have
not been--no, nor an island. As the grandson of Abd-el-Muttalib was a
Messenger of God, I am a Messenger of the Predicting Stars--not their
prophet, only their Interpreter and Messenger. The business of the stars
is my business." Mahommed's lips moved, and it was with an effort he
kept silent.

The Prince proceeded, apparently unconscious of the interest he was
exciting: "Here and there while I travelled, I kept communication with
the planets; and though I had many of their predictions to solve, I
asked them oftenest after the unnamed proud one for whom thy Ottomanites
were charged to dig a pit. I presented names without number--names of
persons, names of peoples, and lest one should he overlooked, I kept a
record of royal and notable families. Was a man-child horn to any of
them, I wrote down the minute of the hour of his birth, and how he was
called. By visitations, I kept informed of the various countries, their
conditions, and their relations with each other; for as the state of the
earth points favorably or unfavorably to its vegetation, so do the
conditions of nations indicate the approach of changes, and give
encouragement to those predestined to bring the changes about. Again I
say, my Lord, as the stars are the servants of God, they have their
servants, whom you shall never know except as you are able to read the
signs their times offer you for reading. Moreover the servants are
sometimes priests, sometimes soldiers, sometimes kings; among them have
been women, and men of common origin; for the seed of genius falls
directly from God's hand, and He chooses the time and field for the
sowing; but whether high or low, white or black, good or bad, how shall
a Messenger interpret truly for the stars except by going before their
elect, and introducing them, and making their paths smooth? Must he not
know them first?"

A mighty impulsion here struck Mahommed. Recurring rather to what he had
heard from Mirza of the revelation dropped by the strange person met by
him during the pilgrimage, he felt himself about to be declared of the
elect, and unable to control his eagerness, he asked abruptly:

"Knowest thou me, O Prince?"

The manner of the Mystic underwent a change. He had been deferential,
even submissive; seldom a teacher so amiable and unmasterful; now he
concentrated his power of spirit, and shot it a continuing flash from
his large eyes.

"Know thee, Lord Mahommed?" he answered, in a low voice, but clear and
searching, and best suited to the conflict he was ushering in--the
conflict of spirit and spirit. "Thou knowest not thyself as well."

Mahommed shrank perceptibly--he was astonished.

"I mean not reference to thy father--nor to the Christian Princess, thy
mother,--nor to thy history, which is of an obedient son and brave
soldier,--nor to thy education, unusual in those born inheritors of
royal power--I mean none of these, for they are in mouths everywhere,
even of the beggars nursing their sores by the waysides.... In thy
father's palace there was a commotion one night--thou wert about to be
born. A gold-faced clock stood in the birth chamber, the gift of a
German King, and from the door of the chamber eunuchs were stationed.
Exactly as the clock proclaimed midnight, mouth and mouth carried the
cry to a man on the roof--'A Prince is born! A Prince is born! Praised
be Allah!' He on the roof was seated at a table studying a paper with
the signs of the Zodiac in the usual formulary of a nativity. At the
coming of the cry, he arose, and observed the heavens intently; then he
shouted, 'There is no God but God! Lo, Mars, Lord of the Ascendant--Mars,
with his friends, Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter in happy configuration, and
the moon nowhere visible. Hail the Prince!' And while his answer was
passing below, the man on the roof marked the planets in their Houses
exactly as they were that midnight between Monday and Tuesday in the year
1430. Have I in aught erred, my lord?"

"In nothing, O Prince."

"Then I proceed.... The nativity came to me, and I cast and recast it
for the aspects, familiarities, parallels and triplicities of the hour,
and always with the same result. I found the sun, the angles and the
quality of the ambient signs favorable to a career which, when run, is
to leave the East radiant with the glory of an unsetting sun."

Here the Jew paused, and bowed--"Now doth my Lord doubt if I know him
best?"




CHAPTER XIV

DREAMS AND VISIONS


Mahommed sat awhile in deep abstraction, his face flushed, his hands
working nervously in their own clasp. The subject possessing him was
very pleasurable. How could it be else?

On his side the Prince waited deferentially, but very observant. He was
confident of the impression made; he even thought he could follow the
young Turk's reflections point by point; still it was wisest to let him
alone, for the cooling time of the sober second thought would come, and
then how much better if there were room for him to believe the decision
his own.

"It is very well, Prince," Mahommed said, finally, struggling to keep
down every sign of excitement. "I had accounts of you from Mirza the
Emir, and it is the truth, which neither of us will be the worse of
knowing, that I see nothing of disagreement in what he told me, and in
what you now tell me of yourself. The conceptions I formed of you are
justified: you are learned and of great experience; you are a good man
given to charity as the Prophet has ordered, and a believer in God. At
various times in the world's history, if we may trust the writers, great
men have had their greatness foretold them; now if I think myself in the
way of addition to the list of those so fortunate, it is because I put
faith in you as in a friendly Prophet."

At this the Prince threw up both hands.

"Friendly am I, my lord, more than friendly, but not a Prophet. I am
only a Messenger, an Interpreter of the Superior Powers."

Much he feared the demands upon him if he permitted the impression that
he was a Prophet to go uncontradicted; as an astrologer, he could in
need thrust the stars between him and the unreasonable. And his judgment
was quickly affirmed.

"As you will, O Prince," said Mahommed. "Messenger, interpreter,
prophet, whichever pleases you, the burden of what you bring me is
nevertheless of chiefest account. Comes a herald, we survey him, and ask
voucher for his pretensions; are we satisfied with them, why then he
gives place in our interest, and becomes secondary to the matter he
bears. Is it not so?"

"It is righteously said, my Lord."

"And when I take up this which you have brought me"--Mahommed laid a
hand upon his throat as if in aid of the effort he was making to keep
calm and talk with dignity--"I cannot deny its power; for when was there
an imaginative young man who first permitted ambition and love of glory
to build golden palaces for their abiding in his heart, with self-control
to stop his ears to promises apparently from Heaven? O Prince, if you are
indeed my friend, you will not laugh at me when you are alone!...
Moreover I would not you should believe your tidings received carelessly
or as a morsel sweet on my tongue; but as wine warms to the blood
coursing to the brain, it has started inquiries and anxieties you alone
can allay. And first, the great glory whose running is to fill the East,
like an unsetting sun, tell me of it; for, as we all know, glory is of
various kinds; there is one kind reserved for poets, orators, and
professors cunning in the arts, and another for cheer of such as find
delight in swords and bossy shields, and armor well bedight, and in
horses, and who exult in battle, and in setting armies afield, in
changing boundary lines, and in taking rest and giving respite in the
citadels of towns happily assaulted. And as of these the regard is
various, tell me the kind mine is to be."

"The stars speak not doubtfully, my Lord. When Mars rises ascendant in
either of his Houses, they that moment born are devoted to war, and,
have they their bent, they shall be soldiers; nor soldiers merely, but
as the conjunctions are good, conquerors, and fortunate, and Samael, his
angel, becomes their angel. Has my Lord ever seen his nativity?"

"Yes."

"Then he knows whereof I speak."

Mahommed nodded affirmatively, and said, "The fame is to my taste, doubt
not; but, Prince, were thy words duly weighed, then my glory is to be
surpassing. Now, I am of a line of heroes. Othman, the founder; Orchan,
father of the Janissaries; Solyman, who accepted the crescent moon seen
in a dream by the sea at Cyzicus as Allah's bidding to pass the
Hellespont to Tzympe in Europe; Amurath, conqueror of Adrianople;
Bajazet, who put an end to Christian crusading in the field of Nicopolis
--these filled the East with their separate renowns; and my father
Amurath, did he not subdue Hunyades? Yet, Prince, you tell me my glory is
to transcend theirs. Now--because I am ready to believe you--say if it is
to burst upon me suddenly or to signalize a long career. The enjoyment of
immortality won in youth must be a pleasant thing."

"I cannot answer, my Lord"

"Cannot?"

And Mahommed's eagerness came near getting the better of his will.

"I have nothing from the stars by which to speak, and I dare not assume
to reply for myself."

Then Mahommed's eyes became severely bright, and the bones of his hands
shone white through the skin, so hard did he compress them.

"How long am I to wait before the glory you promise me ripens ready for
gathering? If it requires long campaigns, shall I summon the armies now?"

A tone, a stress of voice in the question sent a shiver through the
Prince despite his self-command. His gaze upon Mahommed's countenance,
already settled, intensified, and almost before the last word passed he
saw the idea he was expected to satisfy, and that it was the point to
which his interrogator had been really tending from the commencement of
the interview. To gain a moment, he affected not to clearly understand;
after a repetition, he in turn asked, with a meaning look:

"Is not thy father, O Prince, now in his eighty-fifth year?"

Mahommed leaned further forward.

"And is it not eight and twenty years since he began reigning wisely and
well?"

Mahommed nodded assent.

"Suffer me to answer now. Besides his age which pleads for him, your
father has not allowed greatness and power to shade the love he gave you
heartily the hour he first took you in his arms. Nature protests against
his cutting off, and in this instance, O Prince, the voice of Nature is
the voice of Allah. So say I speaking for myself."

Mahommed's face relaxed its hardness, and he moved and breathed freely
while replying: "I do not know what the influences require of me."

"Speak you of the stars, my Lord," the other returned, "hear me, and
with distinctness. As yet they have intrusted me with the one
prediction, and that you have. In other words, they are committed to a
horoscope based upon your nativity, and from it your glory has been
rightly delivered. So much is permitted us by the astrologic law we
practise. But this now asked me, a circumstance in especial, appertains
to you as chief of forces not yet yours. Wherefore--heed well, my
Lord--I advise you to make note of the minute of the hour of the day you
gird yourself with the sword of sovereignty which, at this speaking, is
your great father's by sanction of Heaven; then will I cast a horoscope
for Mahommed the Sultan, not Mahommed, son of Amurath merely--then, by
virtue of my office of Interpreter of the Stars, having the proper
writing in my hand, I will tell you this you now seek, together with all
else pertaining to your sovereignty intrusted me for communication. I
will tell you when the glory is open to you, and the time for setting
forward to make it yours--even the dawning of the term of preparation
necessarily precedent to the movement itself. Now am I understood? Will
my Lord tell me I am understood?"

An observation here may not be amiss. The reader will of course notice
the clever obtrusion of the stars in the speech; yet its real craft was
in the reservations covered. Presuming it possible for the Prince to
have fixed a time to Mahommed's satisfaction, telling it would have been
like giving away the meat of an apple, and retaining the rind. The wise
man who sets out to make himself a need to another will carefully
husband his capital. Moreover it is of importance to keep in mind
through this period of our story that with the Prince of India
everything was subsidiary to his scheme of unity in God. To which end it
was not enough to be a need to Mahommed; he must also bring the young
potentate to wait upon him for the signal to begin the movement against
Constantinople; for such in simplicity was the design scarcely concealed
under the glozing of "the East against the West." That is to say, until
he knew Constantine's disposition with respect to the superlative
project, his policy was delay. What, in illustration, if the Emperor
proved a friend? In falconry the hawk is carried into the field hooded,
and cast off only when the game is flushed. So the Prince of India
thought as he concluded his speech, and looked at the handsome face of
the Lord Mahommed.

The latter was disappointed, and showed it. He averted his eyes, knit
his brows, and took a little time before answering; then a flash of
passion seized him.

"With all thy wisdom, Prince, thou knowest not how hard waiting will be.
There is nothing in Nature sweeter than glory, and on the other hand
nothing so intolerably bitter as hungering for it when it is in open
prospect. What irony in the providence which permits us to harvest
greatness in the days of our decline! I dream of it for my youth, for
then most can be made of it. There was a Greek--not of the Byzantine
breed in the imperial kennel yonder"--he emphasized the negative with a
contemptuous glance in the direction of Constantinople--"a Greek of the
old time of real heroes, he who has the first place in history as a
conqueror. Think you he was happy because he owned the world? Delight in
property merely, a horse, a palace, a ship, a kingdom, is vulgar: any
man can be owner of something; the beggar polishes his crutch for the
same reason the king gilds his throne--it belongs to him. Possession
means satiety. But achieve thou immortality in thy first manhood, and it
shall remain to thee as the ring to a bride or as his bride to the
bridegroom.--Let it be as you say. I bow to the stars. Between me and
the sovereignty my father stands, a good man to whom I give love for
love; and he shall not be disturbed by me or any of mine. In so far I
will honor your advice; and in the other matter also, there shall be one
ready to note the minute of the hour the succession falls to me. But
what if then you are absent?"

"A word from my Lord will bring me to him; and His Majesty is liable to
go after his fathers at any moment"--

"Ay, and alas!" Mahommed interposed, with unaffected sorrow, "a king may
keep his boundaries clean, and even extend them thitherward from the
centre, and be a fear unto men; yet shall death oblige him at last. All
is from God."

The Prince was courtier enough to respect the feeling evinced.

"But I interrupted you," Mahommed presently added. "I pray pardon."

"I was about to say, my Lord, if I am not with you when His Majesty,
your father, bows to the final call--for the entertainment of such was
Paradise set upon its high hill!--let a messenger seek me in
Constantinople; and it may even serve well if the Governor of this
Castle be instructed to keep his gates always open to me, and himself
obedient to my requests."

"A good suggestion! I will attend to it. But"--

Again he lapsed into abstraction, and the Prince held his peace
watchfully.

"Prince," Mahommed said at length, "it is not often I put myself at
another's bidding, for freedom to go where one pleases is not more to a
common man than is freedom to do what pleases him to a sovereign; yet so
will I with you in this matter; and as is the custom of Moslems setting
out on a voyage I say of our venture, 'In the name of God be its courses
and its moorings.' That settled, hearken further. What you have given me
is not all comprehensible. As I understand you, I am to find the
surpassing glory in a field of war. Tell me, lies the field far or near?
Where is it? And who is he I am to challenge? There will be room and
occasion for combat around me everywhere, or, if the occasion exist not,
my Spahis in a day's ride can make one. There is nothing stranger than
how small a cause suffices us to set man against man, life or death.
But--and now I come to the very difficulty--looking here and there I
cannot see a war new in any respect, either of parties, or objects, or
pretence, out of which such a prodigious fame is to be plucked. You
discern the darkness in which I am groping. Light, O Prince--give me
light!"

For an instant the mind of the Jew, sown with subtlety as a mine with
fine ore, was stirred with admiration of the quality so strikingly
manifested in this demand; but collecting himself, he said, calmly, for
the question had been foreseen:

"My Lord was pleased to say a short while ago that the Emir Mirza, on
his return from the Hajj, told him of me. Did Mirza tell also of my
forbidding him to say anything of the predictions I then intrusted him?"

"Yes," Mahommed answered, smiling, "and I have loved him for the
disobedience. He satisfied me to whom he thought his duty was first
owing."

"Well, if evil ensue from the disclosure, it may be justly charged to my
indiscretion. Let it pass--only, in reporting me, did not Mirza say,
Lord Mahommed, that the prohibition I laid upon him proceeded from a
prudent regard for your interests?"

"Yes."

"And in speaking of the change in the status of the world I then
announced, and of the refluent wave the East was to pour upon the West"--

"And of the doom of Constantinople!" Mahommed cried, in a sudden
transport of excitement.

"Ay, and of the hero thou wert to be, my Lord! Said he nothing of the
other caution I gave him, how absolute verity could only be had by a
recast of the horoscope at the city itself? And how I was even then on
my way thither?"

"Truly, O Prince. Mirza is a marvel!"

"Thanks, my Lord. The assurance prepares me to answer your last demand."

Then, lowering his voice, the Prince returned to his ordinary manner.

"The glory you are to look for will not depend upon conditions such as
parties to the war, or its immediate cause, or the place of its
wagement."

Mahommed listened with open mouth.

"My Lord knows of the dispute long in progress between the Pope of Rome
and the Patriarch of Constantinople; one claiming to be the head of the
Church of Christ, the other insisting on his equality. The dispute, my
Lord also knows, has been carried from East to West, and back and back
again, prelate replying to prelate, until the whole Church is falling to
pieces, and on every Christian tongue the 'Church East' and the 'Church
West' are common as morning salutations."

Mahommed nodded.

"Now, my Lord," the Prince continued, the magnetic eyes intensely bright,
"you and I know the capital of Christianity is yonder "--he pointed
toward Constantinople--"and that conquering it is taking from Christ and
giving to Mahomet. What more of definition of thy glory wilt thou
require? Thus early I salute thee a Sword of God."

Mahommed sprang from his couch, and strode the floor, frequently clapping
his hands. Upon the passing of the ecstasy, he stopped in front of the
Prince.

"I see it now--the feat of arms impossible to my father reserved for me."

Again he walked, clapping his hands.

"I pray your pardon," he said, when the fit was over. "In my great joy I
interrupted you."

"I regret to try my Lord's patience further," the Prince answered, with
admirable diplomacy. "It were better, however, to take another step in
the explanation now. A few months after separating from Mirza in Mecca,
I arrived in Constantinople, and every night since, the heavens being
clear, I have questioned the stars early and late. I cannot repeat to my
Lord all the inquiries I made of them, so many were they, and so varied
in form, nor the bases I laid hold of for horoscopes, each having, as I
hoped, to do with the date of the founding of the city. What calculations
I have made--tables of figures to cover the sky with a tapestry of
algebraic and geometrical symbols: The walks of astrology are well known
--I mean those legitimate--nevertheless in my great anxiety, I have even
ventured into the arcana of magic forbidden to the Faithful. The seven
good angels, and the seven bad, beginning with Jubanladace, first of the
good, a celestial messenger, helmeted, sworded with flame, and otherwise
beautiful to behold, and ending with Barman, the lowest of the bad, the
consort and ally of witches--I besought them all for what they could tell
me. Is the time of the running of the city now, to-morrow, next week--
when? Such the burden of my inquiry. As yet, my Lord, no answer has been
given. I am merely bid keep watch on the schism of the Church. In some
way the end we hope has connection with that rancor, if, indeed, it be
not the grand result. With clear discernment of the tendencies, the Roman
Pontiff is striving to lay the quarrel; but he speaks to a rising tide.
We cannot hasten the event; neither can he delay it. Our role is
patience--patience. At last Europe will fall away, and leave the Greek to
care of himself; then, my Lord, you have but to be ready. The end is in
the throes of its beginning now."

"Still you leave me in the dark," Mahommed cried, with a frown.

"Nay, my Lord, there is a chance for us to make the stars speak."

The beguiler appeared to hesitate.

"A chance?" Mahommed asked.

"It is dependent, my Lord."

"Upon what?"

"The life of the Sultan, thy father."

"Speak not in riddles, O Prince."

"Upon his death, thou wilt enter on the sovereignty."

"Still I see not clearly."

"With the horoscope of Mahommed the Sultan in my hand, then certainly as
the stars perform their circuits, being set thereunto from the first
morning, they must respond to me; and then, find I Mars in the Ascendant,
well dignified essentially and accidentally, I can lead my Lord out of
the darkness."

"Then, Prince?"

"He may see the Christian capital at his mercy."

"But if Mars be not in the Ascendant?"

"My Lord must wait."

Mahommed sprang to his feet, gnashing his teeth.

"My Lord," said the Prince, calmly, "a man's destiny is never
unalterable; it is like a pitcher filled with wine which he is carrying
to his lips--it may be broken on the way, and its contents spilled. Such
has often happened through impatience and pride. What is waiting but the
wise man's hour of preparation?"

The quiet manner helped the sound philosophy. Mahommed took seat,
remarking, "You remind me, Prince, of the saying of the Koran,
'Whatsoever good betideth thee, O man, it is from God, and whatsoever
evil betideth, from thyself is it.' I am satisfied. Only"--

The Prince summoned all his faculties again.

"Only I see two periods of waiting before me; one from this until I take
up the sovereignty; the other thence till thou bringest me the mandate
of the stars. I fear not the second period, for, as thou sayest, I can
then lose myself in making ready; but the first, the meantime--ah,
Prince, speak of it. Tell me how I can find surcease of the chafing of
my spirit."

The comprehension of the wily Hebrew did not fail him. His heart beat
violently. He was master! Once more he was in position to change the
world. A word though not more than "now," and he could marshal the East,
which he so loved, against the West, which he so hated. If Constantinople
failed him, Christianity must yield its seat to Islam. He saw it all
flash-like; yet at no time in the interview did his face betoken such
placidity of feeling. The _meantime_ was his, not Mahommed's--his to
lengthen or shorten--his for preparation. He could afford to be placid.

"There is much for my Lord to do," he said.

"When, O Prince--now?"

"It is for him to think and act as if Constantinople were his capital
temporarily in possession of another."

The words caught attention, and it is hard saying what Mahommed's
countenance betokened. The reader must think of him as of a listener
just awakened to a new idea of infinite personal concern.

"It is for him now to learn the city within and without," the Jew
proceeded; "its streets and edifices; its halls and walls; its strong
and weak places; its inhabitants, commerce, foreign relations; the
character of its ruler, his resources and policies; its daily events;
its cliques and clubs, and religious factions; especially is it for him
to foment the differences Latin and Greek."

It is questionable if any of the things imparted had been so effective
upon Mahommed as this one. Not only did his last doubt of the man
talking disappear; it excited a boundless admiration for him, and the
freshest novitiate in human nature knows how almost impossible it is to
refuse trust when once we have been brought to admire. "Oh!" Mahommed
cried. "A pastime, a pastime, if I could be there!"

"Nay, my Lord," said the insidious counsellor, with a smile, "how do
kings manage to be everywhere at the same time?"

"They have their Ambassadors. But I am not a king."

"Not yet a king"--the speaker laid stress upon the adverb--"nevertheless
public representation is one thing; secret agency another."

Mahommed's voice sank almost to a whisper.

"Wilt thou accept this agency?"

"It is for me to observe the heavens at night, while calculations will
take my days. I trust my Lord in his wisdom will excuse me."

"Where is one for the service? Name him, Prince--one as good."

"There is one better. Bethink you, my Lord, the business is of a long
time; it may run through years."

Mahommed's brow knit darkly at the reminder.

"And he who undertakes it should enter Constantinople and live there
above suspicion. He must be crafty, intelligent, courtly in manner,
accomplished in arms, of high rank, and with means to carry his state
bravely, for not only ought he to be conspicuous in the Hippodrome; he
should be welcome in the palace. Along with other facilities, he must be
provided to buy service in the Emperor's bedroom and council chamber--
nay, at his elbow. It is of prime importance that he possesses my Lord's
confidence unalterably. Am I understood?"

"The man, Prince, the man!"

"My Lord has already named him."

"I?"

"Only to-night my Lord spoke of him as a marvel."

"Mirza!" exclaimed Mahommed, clapping his hands.

"Mirza," the Prince returned, and proceeded without pause: "Despatch him
to Italy; then let him appear in Constantinople, embarked from a galley,
habited like a Roman, and with a suitable Italian title. He speaks
Italian already, is fixed in his religion, and in knightly honor. Not
all the gifts at the despot's disposal, nor the blandishments of society
can shake his allegiance--he worships my Lord."

"My servant has found much favor with you, O Prince?"

Accepting the remark as a question, the other answered:

"Did I not spend the night with him at El Zaribah? Was I not witness of
his trial of faith at the Holy Kaaba? Have I not heard from my Lord
himself how, when put to choice, he ignored my prohibition respecting
the stars?"

Mahommed arose, and again walked to and fro.

"There is a trouble in this proposal, Prince," he said, halting abruptly.
"So has Mirza become a part of me, I am scarcely myself without him."

Another turn across the floor, and he seemed to become reconciled. "Let
us have done for to-night," he next said. "The game is imperative, but it
will not be harmed by a full discussion. Stay with me to-morrow, Prince."

The Prince remembered the Emperor. Not unlikely a message from that high
personage was at his house, received in course of the day.

"True, very true, and the invitation is a great honor to me," he replied,
bowing; "but I am reminded that the gossips in Byzantium will feast each
other when to-morrow it passes from court to bazaar how the Princess
Irene and the Prince of India were driven by the storm to accept
hospitality in the White Castle. And if it get abroad, that Mahommed, son
of the great Amurath, came also to the Castle, who may foretell the
suspicions to hatch in the city? No, my Lord, I submit it is better for
me to depart with the Princess at the subsidence of the waters."

"Be it so," Mahommed returned, cordially. "We understand each other. I
am to wait and you to communicate with me; and now, morning comes apace,
good night."

He held his hand to the Jew; whereat the latter knelt and kissed the
hand, but retained it to say:

"My Lord, if I know him rightly, will not sleep to-night; thought is an
enemy to sleep; and besides the inspiration there is in the destiny
promised, its achievement lies all before him. Yet I wish to leave
behind me one further topic, promising it is as much greater than any
other as the Heavens are higher than the earth."

"Rise, Prince," said Mahommed, helping him to his feet. "Such
ceremonious salutation whether in reception or at departure may be
dispensed with hereafter; thou art not a stranger, but more than a
guest. I count thee my friend whom everything shall wait upon--even
myself. Speak now of what thou callest the greater scheme. I am most
curious."

There was a silence while one might count ten slowly. The Jew in that
space concentrated the mysterious force of which he was master in great
store, so it shone in his eyes, gave tone to his voice, and was an
outgoing of WILL in overwhelming current. "Lord Mahommed," he said, "I
know you are a believer in God."

The young Turk was conscious of a strange thrill passing through him
from brain to body.

"In nature and every quality the God of the Jew, the Christian, and the
Moslem is the same. Take we their own sayings. Christ and Mahomet were
witnesses sent to testify of Him first, highest and alone--Him the
universal Father. Yet behold the perversity of man. God has been
deposed, and for ages believers in Him have been divided amongst
themselves; wherefore hate, jealousies, wars, battle and the smoke of
slaughter perpetually. But now is He at last minded to be restored.
Hear, Lord Mahommed, hear with soul and mortal ear!"

The words and manner caught and exalted Mahommed's spirit. As Michael,
with a sweep of his wings, is supposed to pass the nether depths, an
impulsion bore the son of Amurath up to a higher and clearer plane. He
could not but hear.

"Be it true now that God permits His presence to be known in human
affairs only when He has a purpose to justify His interposition; then,
as we dare not presume the capital of Christendom goes to its fall
without His permission, why your designation for the mighty work? That
you may be personally glorified, my Lord? Look higher. See yourself His
chosen instrument--and this the deed! From the seat of the Caesars, its
conquest an argument, He means you to bring men together in His name.
Titles may remain--Jew, Moslem, Christian, Buddhist--but there shall be
an end of wars for religion--all mankind are to be brethren in Him. This
the deed, my Lord--Unity in God, and from it, a miracle of the ages slow
to come but certain, the evolution of peace and goodwill amongst men. I
leave the idea with you. Good night!"

Mahommed remained so impressed and confounded that the seer was
permitted to walk out as from an empty room. Mirza received him outside
the door.




CHAPTER XV

DEPARTURE FROM THE WHITE CASTLE


The storm continued till near daybreak. At sunrise the wind abated, and
was rapidly succeeded by a dead calm; about the same time the last cloud
disappeared, leaving the sky an azure wonder, and the shores of the
Bosphorus far and near refreshed and purified.

After breakfast, Mirza conducted the Prince of India to another private
audience with Mahommed. As the conference had relation to the subjects
gone over in the night, the colloquy may be dispensed with, and only the
conclusions given.

Mahommed admitted he had not been able to sleep; in good spirits,
however, he agreed, if the Prince were accountable for the wakefulness,
he was to be forgiven, since he had fairly foretold it, and, like other
prophets, was entitled to immunity. The invitation to remain at the
Castle was renewed, and again declined.

Mahommed next conceded the expediency of his waiting to hear what
further the stars might say with respect to the great business before
him, and voluntarily bound himself to passive conduct and silence; in
assuagement of the impatience he knew would torment him, he insisted,
however, upon establishing a line of couriers between his place of
residence, wherever it might be, and the White Castle. Intelligence
could thus be safely transmitted him from Constantinople. In furtherance
of this object the Governor of the Castle would be instructed to honor
the requests of the Prince of India.

Mahommed condescended next to approve the suggestion of a secret agency
in Constantinople. Respecting a person for the service, the delicacy of
which was conceded, he had reached the conclusion that there was no one
subject to his control so fitted in every respect as Mirza. The
selection of the Emir might prove troublesome since he was a favorite
with the Sultan; if investigations consequent on his continued absence
were instituted, there was danger of their resulting in disagreeable
exposure; nevertheless the venture was worth the while, and as time was
important, the Emir should be sent off forthwith under instructions in
harmony with the Prince's advice. Or more clearly, he was to betake
himself to Italy immediately, and thence to the Greek capital, a
nobleman amply provided with funds for his maintenance there in
essential state and condition. His first duty when in the city should be
to devise communication with the White Castle, where connection with the
proposed line of couriers should be made for safe transmission of his
own reports, and such intelligence as the Prince should from time to
time consider it advisable to forward.

This of course contemplated recognition and concert between the Emir and
the Prince. In token of his confidence in the latter, Mahommed would
constitute him the superior in cases of difference of opinion; though
from his knowledge of Mirza's romantic affection acquired in Mecca and
on the road thither, he had little apprehension of such a difference.

Mahommed and the Prince were alike well satisfied with the conclusions
between them, and their leave-taking at the end of the audience was
marked with a degree of affection approaching that of father and son.

About mid-afternoon the Prince and Sergius sallied from the Castle to
observe the water, and finding it quiet, they determined to embark.

The formalities of reception in the Castle were not less rigidly
observed at the departure. In care of the eunuch the Princess and Lael
descended to the hall of entrance where they were received by the
supposed Governor, who was in armor thoroughly cleansed of dust and
skilfully furbished. His manner was even more gallant and dignified. He
offered his hand to assist the Princess to seat in the chair, and upon
taking it she glanced furtively at his face, but the light was too scant
for a distinct view.

In the Castle and out there were no spectators.

Passing the gate, the Princess bethought her of the story-teller, and
looked for him well as she could through the narrow windows. At the
landing, when the Governor had in silence, though with ease and grace,
helped her from the carriage, the porters being withdrawn, she proceeded
to acknowledgments.

"I am sorry," she said, through her veil, "that I must depart without
knowing the name or rank of my host."

"Had I greater rank. O Princess," he returned, gravely. "I should have
pleasure in introducing myself; for then there would be a hope that my
name supported by a title of dignity, would not be erased from your
memory by the gayeties of the city to which you are going. The White
Castle is a command suitable to one of humble grade, and to be saluted
Governor, because I am charged with its keeping, satisfies my pride for
the present. It is a convenient title, moreover, should you ever again
honor me with a thought or a word."

"I submit perforce," she said. "Yet, Sir Governor, your name would have
saved me from the wonder of my kinsman, if not his open question, when,
as I am bound to, I tell him of the fair treatment and high courtesy you
have shown me and my friends here while in refuge in your Castle walls.
He knows it natural for the recipient of bounty to learn who the giver
is, with name and history; but how amazed and displeased he will be when
I barely describe your entertainment. Indeed, I fear he will think me
guilty of over description or condemn me for ingratitude."

She saw the blood color his face, and noticed the air of sincerity with
which he replied. "Princess, if payment for what you have received at my
hands were worthy a thought, I should say now, and all my days through,
down to the very latest, that to have heard you speak so graciously is
an overprice out of computation."

The veil hid her responsive blush; for there was something in his voice
and manner, possibly the earnestness marking them, which lifted the
words out of the commonplace and formal. She could not but see how much
more he left implied than actually expressed. For relief, she turned to
another subject.

"If I may allude to a part of your generous attention, Sir Governor,
distinguishing it from the whole, I should like to admit the pleasure
had from the recitation of the Arabian story-teller. I will not ask his
name; still it must be a great happiness to traverse the world with
welcome everywhere, and everywhere and all the time accompanied and
inspired by a mind stored with themes and examples beautiful as the
history of El Hatim."

A light singularly bright shone in the Governor's eyes, significant of a
happy idea, and with more haste than he had yet evinced, he replied:

"O Princess, the name of the Arab is Aboo-Obeidah; in the desert they
call him the Singing Sheik, and among Moslems, city bred and tent born
alike, he is great and beloved. Such is his sanctity that all doors he
knocks at open to him, even those of harems zealously guarded. When he
arrives at Adrianople, in his first day there he will be conducted to
the Hanoum of the Sultan, and at her signal the ladies of the household
will flock to hear him. Now, would it please you, I will prevail on him
to delay his journey that he may visit you at your palace."

"The adventure might distress him," she replied.

"Say not so. In such a matter I dare represent and pledge him. Only give
me where you would have him come, and the time, O Princess, and he will
be there, not a star in the sky more constant."

"With my promise of good welcome to him then," she said, well pleased,
"be my messenger, Sir Governor, and say in the morning day after
to-morrow at my palace by Therapia. And now thanks again, and farewell."

So saying she held her hand to him, and he kissed it, and assisted her
into the boat.

The adieux of the others, the Prince of India, Sergius and Lael, were
briefer. The Governor was polite to each of them; at the same time, his
eyes, refusing restraint, wandered to where the Princess sat looking at
him with unveiled face.

In the mouth of the river the boats were brought together, and, while
drifting, she expressed the pleasure she had from the fortunate meeting
with the Prince; his presence, she doubted not, contributed greatly to
the good conclusion of what in its beginning seemed so unpromising.

"Nor can I convey an idea of the confidence and comfortable feeling I
derived from the society of thy daughter," she added, speaking to the
Prince, but looking at Lael. "She was courageous and sensible, and I
cannot content myself until she is my guest at Therapia."

"I would be greatly pleased," Lael said, modestly.

"Will the Princess appoint a time?" the Wanderer asked.

"To-morrow--or next week--at your convenience. These warm months are
delightful in the country by the water side. At Therapia, Prince--thou
and thine. The blessing of the Saints go with you--farewell."

Then though the boats kept on down toward Constantinople, they
separated, and in good time the Prince of India and Lael were at home;
while the Princess carried Sergius to her palace in the city. Next day,
having provided him with the habit approved by metropolitan Greek
priests, she accompanied him to the patriarchal residence, introduced
him with expressions of interest, and left him in the holy keeping.

Sergius was accepted and rated a neophyte, the vanity of the Byzantine
clergy scorning thought of excellence in a Russian provincial. He
entered upon the life, however, with humility and zeal, governed by a
friendly caution from the Princess.

"Remember," she said to him, as they paused on the patriarchal doorsteps
for permission to enter, "remember Father Hilarion is regarded here as a
heretic. The stake, imprisonment in darkness for life, the lions in the
Cynegion, punishment in some form of approved cruelty awaits a follower
of his by open avowal. Patience then; and when endurance is tried most,
and you feel it must break, come to me at Therapia. Only hold yourself
in readiness, by reading and thought, to speak for our Christian faith
unsullied by human inventions, and bide my signal."

And so did he observe everything and venture nothing that presently he
was on the road to high favor.




CHAPTER XVI

AN EMBASSY TO THE PRINCESS IRENE


When the Princess Irene returned to Therapia next day, she found
awaiting her the Dean of the Court, an official of great importance to
whom the settlement of questions pertinent to rank was confided. The
state barge of fifteen oars in which he arrived was moored to the
marbles of the quay in front of her palace, a handsomely ornamented
vessel scarcely needing its richly liveried rowers to draw about it the
curious and idle of the town in staring groups. At sight of it, the
Princess knew there was a message for her from the Emperor. She lost no
time in notifying the Dean of her readiness to receive him. The
interview took place in the reception room.

The Dean was a venerable man who, having served acceptably through the
preceding reign, was immensely discreet, and thoroughly indurate with
formalism and ceremony; wherefore, passing his speech and manner, it is
better worth the while to give, briefly as may be, the substance of the
communication he brought to the Princess.

He was sure she remembered all the circumstances of the coronation of His
Majesty, the Emperor, and of His Majesty's entry into Constantinople; he
was not so certain, however, of her information touching some matters
distinguishable as domestic rather than administrative. Or she might know
of them, but not reliably. Thus she might not have heard authentically
that, immediately upon his becoming settled in the imperial seat, His
Majesty decided it of first importance to proceed to the selection of a
spouse.

The Dean then expatiated on the difficulty of finding in all the world a
woman suitable for the incomparable honor. So many points entered into
the consideration--age, appearance, rank, education, religion, dowry,
politics--upon each of which he dwelt with the gravity of a philosopher,
the assurance of a favorite, and the garrulity of age. Having at length
presented the problem, and, he thought, sufficiently impressed the
Princess with its unexampled intricacies and perils, he next unfolded
the several things resolved upon and attempted in the way of solution.

Every royal house in the West had been searched for its marriageable
females. At one time a daughter of the Doge of Venice was nearly chosen.
Unfortunately there were influential Greeks of greater pride than
judgment to object to the Doge. He was merely an elective chief. He
might die the very day after celebrating the espousals, and then--not
even the ducal robes were inheritable. No, the flower to deck the
Byzantine throne was not in the West.

Thereupon the East was explored. For a time the election trembled between
a Princess of Trebizond and a Princess of Georgia. As usual the court
divided on the question, when, to quiet the factions, His Majesty ordered
Phranza, the Grand Chamberlain, a courtier of learning and diplomatic
experience, who held the Emperor's confidence in greater degree than any
other court official, unless it might be the Dean himself, to go see the
rivals personally, and report with recommendation. The ambassador had
been gone two years. From Georgia he had travelled to Trebizond; still
nothing definite. The embassy, having been outfitted in a style to
adequately impress the semi-barbarians, was proving vastly expensive. His
Majesty, with characteristic wisdom, had determined to take the business
in his own keeping. There were many noble families in Constantinople. Why
not seek a consort among them?

The scheme had advantages; not least, if a Byzantine could be found, the
Emperor would have the happiness of making the discovery and conducting
the negotiations himself--in common parlance, of doing his own courting.
There might be persons, the Dean facetiously remarked, who preferred
trusting the great affair of wife-choosing to ambassadors, but he had
never seen one of them.

The ground covered by the ancient in his statement is poorly represented
by these paragraphs, ample as they may seem to the reader. Indeed, the
sun was falling swiftly into the lap of night when he thought of
concluding. Meantime the Princess listened silently, her patience
sustained by wonder at what it all meant. The enlightenment at last
came.

"Now, my dear Princess," he said, lowering his voice, "you must know
"--he arose, and, as became one so endued with palace habits, peered
cautiously around.

"Be seated, my Lord," she said; "there are no eyes in my doors nor ears
in my walls."

"Oh, the matter is of importance--a state secret!" He drew the stool
nearer her.

"You must know, dear Princess, that the Grand Chamberlain, Phranza, has
been negligent and remiss in the time he has consumed, saying nothing of
his lavishment of treasure so badly needed at home. Notaras, the Admiral,
and the Grand Domestic, are both pursuing His Majesty vigorously for
funds and supplies; worse still, the Patriarch lets slip no opportunity
to bid him look at the furniture of the churches going to ruin. The
imperial conscience being tender in whatever pertains to God and
religion, he has little peace left for prayers. Wherefore, there are
of us who think it would be loyalty to help secure a bride for His
Majesty at home, and thus make an end to the wasteful and inconclusive
touring of Phranza."

The Dean drew yet nearer the Princess, and reduced his voice to a tone
slightly above a whisper.

"Now you must know further--I am the author and suggestor of the idea of
His Majesty's choosing an Empress from the many noble and beautiful
dames and maidens of this our ancient city of Byzantium, in every
respect the equals, and in many points mentionable the superiors of the
best foreigner possible of finding."

The Dean pursed his white-bearded mouth, and posed himself proudly; but
his auditor still holding her peace, he leaned forward further, and
whispered, "My dear Princess, I did more. I mentioned you to His
Majesty"--

The Princess started to her feet, whiter than whitest marble in the
Pentelic panelling of the room; yet in total misapprehension of her
feeling, the venerable intriguant went on without pause: "Yes, I
mentioned you to His Majesty, and to-morrow, Princess--to-morrow--he
will come here in person to see you, and urge his suit."

He dropped on his knees, and catching her hand, kissed it.

"O Princess, fairest and most worthy, suffer me first of all the court
to congratulate you on the superlative honor to which you will he
invited. And when you are in the exalted position, may I hope to he
remembered"--

He was not permitted to finish the petition. Withdrawing her hand with
decisive action, she bade him be silent or speak to her questions. And
he was silent through surprise.

In such manner she gained an interval for thought. The predicament, as
she saw it, was troublesome and unfortunate. Honor was intended her, the
highest in the imperial gift, and the offer was coming with never a
doubt of its instantaneous and grateful acceptance. Remembering her
obligations to the Emperor, her eyes filled with tears. She respected
and venerated him, yet could not be his Empress. The great title was not
a sufficient inducement. But how manage the rejection? She called on the
Virgin for help. Directly there was a way exposed. First, she must save
her benefactor from rejection; second, the Dean and the court must never
know of the course of the affair or its conclusion.

"Rise, my Lord," she said, kindly though with firmness. "The receiver of
great news, I thank you, and promise, if ever I attain the throne to
hold you in recollection. But now, so am I overwhelmed by the prospect,
I am not myself. Indeed, my Lord, would you increase my indebtedness to
its utmost limit, take every acknowledgment as said, and leave me--leave
me for preparation for the morrow's event. God, his Son and angels only
know the awfulness of my need of right direction and good judgment."

He had the wit to see her agitation, and that it was wisest for him to
depart.

"I will go, Princess," he said, "and may the Holy Mother give you of her
wisdom also." She detained him at the door to ask: "Only tell me, my
Lord, did His Majesty send you with this notice?"

"His Majesty honored me with the message."

"At what hour will he come?"

"In the forenoon."

"Report, I pray you then, that my house will be at his service."




CHAPTER XVII

THE EMPEROR'S WOOING


About ten o'clock the day following the extraordinary announcement
given, a galley of three banks of oars, classed a _trireme_, rounded
the seaward jut of the promontory overhanging the property of the
Princess Irene at Therapia.

The hull of the vessel was highly ornate with gilding and carving. At
the how, for figure-head, there was an image of the Madonna of the
_Panagia_, or Holy Banner of Constantinople. The broad square sail
was of cherry-red color, and in excellent correspondence, the oars,
sixty to a side, were painted a flaming scarlet. When filled, the sail
displayed a Greek cross in golden filament. The deck aft was covered
with a purple awning, in the shade of which, around a throne, sat a
grave and decorous company in gorgeous garments; and among them moved a
number of boys, white-shirted and bare of head, dispensing perfume from
swinging censers. Forward, a body guard, chosen from the household
troops and full armed, were standing at ease, and they, with a corps of
trumpeters and heralds in such splendor of golden horns and tabards of
gold as to pour enrichment over the whole ship, filled the space from
bulwark to bulwark. The Emperor occupied the throne.

This galley, to which the harmonious movement of the oars gave a
semblance of life, in the distance reminding one of a great bird
fantastically feathered and in slow majestic motion, was no sooner hove
in sight than the townspeople were thrown into ferment. A flotilla of
small boats, hastily launched, put out in racing order to meet and
escort it into the bay, and before anchorage was found, the whole shore
was astir and in excited babblement.

A detachment of the guard was first landed on the quay in front of the
Princess' gate. Accepting the indication, thither rushed the populace;
for in truth, since the occupation of the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus
by the Turks, the Emperor seldom extended his voyages far as Therapia.
Then, descending the sides by carpeted stairs, the suite disembarked,
and after them, amidst a tremendous flourish from the trumpet corps,
Constantine followed.

The Emperor, in his light boat, remained standing during the passage to
the shore that he might be seen by the people; and as he then appeared,
helmed and in close-fitting cuirass, his arms in puffed sleeves of red
silk, his legs, below a heavily embroidered narrow skirt, clothed in
pliant chain mail intricately linked, his feet steel-shod, a purple
cloak hanging lightly at the back from neck to heel, and spurred and
magnificently sworded, and all agleam with jewels and gold, it must be
conceded he justified his entitlement.

At sight of his noble countenance, visible under the raised visor, the
spectators lifted their voices in hearty acclamations--"God and
Constantine! Live the Emperor!"

It really seemed as if the deadly factiousness of the capital had not
reached Therapia. In the lifted head, the brightened eyes, the gracious
though stately bows cast right and left, Constantine published the
pleasure the reception was giving him.

A long flourish timed his march through the kiosk of the gate, and along
the shell-strewn, winding road, to the broad steps leading to the
portico of the palace; there, ascending first, he was received by the
Princess.

Amid a group of maids in attendance, all young, fair, high-born, she
stood, never more tastefully attired, never more graceful and
self-possessed, never more lovely, not even in childhood before the
flitting of its virginal bloom; and though the portico was garden-like
in decoration, vines, roses and flowering shrubs everywhere, the
sovereign had eyes for her alone.

Just within the line of fluted pillars he halted, and drew himself up,
smiling as became a suitor, yet majestic as became a king. Then she
stepped forward, and knelt, and kissed his hand, and when he helped her
to her feet, and before the flush on her forehead was gone, she said:

"Thou art my sovereign and benefactor; nor less for the goodnesses thou
hast done to thy people, and art constantly doing, welcome, O my Lord,
to the house thou didst give me."

"Speak not so," he replied. "Or if it please thee to give me credit, be
it for the things which in some way tried me, not those I did for
reward."

"Reward!"

"Ay, for such are pleasure and peace of mind."

Then one by one, she naming them as they advanced, her attendants knelt,
and kissed the floor in front of him, and had each a pleasant word, for
he permitted none to excel him in decorous gallantry to good women.

In return, he called the officers of his company according to their rank;
his brother, who had afterward the grace to die with him; the Grand
Domestic, general of the army; the Grand Duke Notaras, admiral of the
navy; the Grand Equerry (_Protostrator_); the Grand Chancellor of the
Empire (_Logothete_); the Superintendent of Finance; the Governor of the
Palace (_Curopalate_); the Keeper of the Purple Ink; the Keeper of the
Secret Seal; the First Valet; the Chief of the Night Guard (_Grand
Drumgaire_); the Chief of the Huntsmen (_Protocynege_); the Commander of
the Body Guard of Foreigners (_Acolyte_); the Professor of Philosophy;
the Professor of Elocution and Rhetoric; the Attorney General
(_Nornophylex_); the Chief Falconer (_Protojeracaire_) and others--these
he called one by one, and formally presented to the Princess, not minding
that with many of them she was already acquainted.

They were for the most part men advanced in years, and right well
skilled in the arts of courtiership. The _empressement_ of manner
with which they saluted her was not lost upon her woman's instinct;
infinitely quick and receptive, she knew without a word spoken, that
each left his salute on her hand believing it the hand of his future
Empress. Last of those presented was the Dean of the Court. He was
noticeably formal and distant; besides being under the eye of his
master, the wily diplomat was more doubtful of the outcome of the day's
visit than most of his colleagues.

"Now," the Princess said, when the presentation was finished, "will my
most noble sovereign suffer me to conduct him to the reception room?"

The Emperor stepped to her side, and offered his hand. "Pardon, Sire,"
she added, taking the hand. "It is necessary that I speak to the Dean."

And when the worthy came to her, she said to him: "Beyond this, under
the portico, are refreshments for His Majesty's suite. Serve me, I pray,
by leading thy colleagues thither, and representing me at the tables.
Command the servants whom thou wilt find there."

Now the reader must not suppose he is having in the foregoing
descriptions examples of the style of ceremonials most in fashion at the
Greek court. Had formality been intended, the affair would have been the
subject of painstaking consideration at a meeting of officials in the
imperial residence, and every point within foresight arranged; after
which the revolution of the earth might have quickened, and darkness
been unnaturally precipitated, without inducing the slightest deviation
from the programme.

When resolving upon the visit, Constantine considerately thought of the
Princess' abhorrence of formality, and not to surprise her, despatched
the Dean with notice of the honor intended. Whereupon she arranged the
reception to suit herself; that is, so as to remain directress of the
occasion. Hence the tables under the portico for the entertainment of
the great lords, with the garden open to them afterward. This management,
it will be perceived, left Constantine in her separate charge.

So, while the other guests went with the Dean, she conducted the Emperor
to the reception room, where there were no flowers, and but one armless
chair. When he was seated, the two alone, she knelt before him, and
without giving him time to speak, said, her hands crossed upon her
bosom: "I thank my Lord for sending me notice of his coming, and of his
purpose to invite me to share his throne. All night I have kept the
honor he intended me in mind, believing the Blessed Mother would listen
to my prayers for wisdom and right direction; and the peace and
confidence I feel, now that I am at my Lord's feet, must be from her....
Oh, my Lord, the trial has not been what I should do with the honor,
but how to defend you from humiliation in the eyes of your court. I wish
to be at the same time womanly and allegiant. How gentle and merciful
you have been to me! How like a benignant God to my poor father! If I am
in error, may Heaven forgive me; but I have led you here to say, without
waiting for the formal proposal, that while you have my love as a
kinswoman and subject, I cannot give you the love you should have from a
wife."

Constantine was astonished.

"What!" he said.

Before he could get further, she continued, sinking lower at his feet:

"Ah me, my Lord, if now thou art thinking me bold and forward, and
outcast from natural pride, what can I but plead the greater love I bear
you as my benefactor and sovereign? ... It may be immodest to thus
forestall my Lord's honorable intent, and decline being his wife before
he has himself proposed it; yet I pray him to consider that with this
avowal from me, he may go hence and affirm, God approving the truth,
that he thought better of his design, and did not make me any overture
of marriage, and there will be no one to suffer but me.... The
evil-minded will talk, and judge me punished for my presumption. Against
them I shall always have a pure conscience, and the knowledge of having
rescued my Lord from an associate on his throne who does not love him
with wifely devotion."

Pausing there, the Princess looked into his face, her own suffused. His
head drooped; insomuch that the tall helmet with its glitter, and the
cuirass, and fine mail reenforced by the golden spurs and jewelled
sword and sword-harness, but deepened the impression of pain bewrayed on
his countenance.

"Then it is as I have heard," he said, dejectedly. "The rustic hind may
have the mate of his choice, and there is preference allowed the bird
and wild wolf. The eye of faith beholds marriages of love in meeting
waters and in clouds brought together from diverse parts. Only Kings are
forbidden to select mates as their hearts declare. I, a master of life
and death, cannot woo, like other men."

The Princess moved nearer him.

"My Lord," she said, earnestly, "is it not better to be denied choice
than to be denied after choosing?"

"Speakest thou from experience?" he asked.

"No," she answered, "I have never known love except of all God's
creatures alike."

"Whence thy wisdom then?"

"Perhaps it is only a whisper of pride."

"Perhaps, perhaps! I only know the pain it was intended to relieve goes
on." Then, regarding her moodily, not angrily, nor even impatiently, he
continued: "Did I not know thee true as thou art fair, O Princess, and
good and sincere as thou art brave, I might suspect thee."

"Of what, my Lord?"

"Of an intent to compass my misery. Thou dost stop my mouth. I may not
declare the purpose with which I came--I to whom it was of most interest
--or if I do, I am forestopped saying, 'I thought better of it, and told
her nothing.' Yet it was an honorable purpose nursed by sweet dreams, and
by hopes such as souls feed upon, strengthening themselves for trials of
life; I must carry it back with me, not for burial in my own breast, but
for gossips to rend and tear, and make laughter of--the wonder and
amusement of an unfeeling city. How many modes of punishment God keeps in
store for the chastening of those who love Him!"

"It is beggarly saying I sympathize"--

"No, no--wait!" he cried, passionately. "Now it breaks upon me. I may
not offer thee a seat on my throne, or give a hand to help thee up to
it; for the present I will not declare I love thee; yet harm cannot come
of telling thee what has been. Thou hadst my love at our first meeting.
I loved thee then. As a man I loved thee, nor less as an Emperor because
a man. Thou wast lovely with the loveliness of the angels. I saw thee in
a light not of earth, and thou wert transparent as the light. I descended
from the throne to thee thinking thou hadst collected all the radiance of
the sun wasting in the void between stars, and clothed thyself in it."

"Oh, my Lord"--

"Not yet, not yet"--

"Blasphemy and madness!"

"Be it so!" he answered, with greater intensity. "This once I speak as a
lover who was--a lover making last memories of the holy passion, to be
henceforth accounted dead. Dead? Ah, yes!--to me--dead to me!"

She timidly took the hand he dropped upon his knee at the close of a
long sigh.

"It may rest my Lord to hear me," she said, tearfully. "I never doubted
his fitness to be Emperor, or if ever I had such a doubt, it is no more.
He has conquered himself! Indeed, indeed, it is sweet to hear him tell
his love, for I am woman; and if I cannot give it back measure for
measure, this much may be accepted by him--I have never loved a man, and
if the future holds such a condition in store for me, I will think of my
Lord, and his strength and triumph, and in my humbler lot do as he has
so nobly done. He has his Empire to engage him, and fill his hours with
duties; I have God to serve and obey with singleness. Out of the prison
where my mother died, and in which my father grew old counting his years
as they slowly wore away, a shadow issued, and is always at hand to ask
me, 'Who art thou? What right hast thou to happiness?' And if ever I
fall into the thought so pleasant to woman, of loving and being loved,
and of marriage, the shadow intervenes, and abides with me until I
behold myself again bounden to religion, a servant vowed to my fellow
creatures sick, suffering, or in sorrow."

Then the gentle Emperor fell to pitying her, and asked, forgetful of
himself, and thinking of things to lighten her lot, "Wilt thou never
marry?"

"I will not say no, my Lord," she answered. "Who can foresee the turns
of life? Take thou this in reply--never will I surrender myself to
wedlock under urgency of love alone. But comes there some great
emergency, when, by such sacrifice, I may save my country, or my
countrymen in multitude, or restore our holy religion overthrown or in
danger, then, for the direct God-service there may be in it, I could
give myself in contract, and would."

"Without love?" he asked.

"Yes, without loving or