Part 2 (2/2)

But what have we to do with the minarets, the bazaars, the kiosks of the city? Beyond the city, where Cocytus, rippling down from the wooded mountain, forms, with the lake into which it flows, a peninsula, there, on an isthmus, stands the strong fortress of Ali Pasha, with vast, ma.s.sive bastions, a heavy, iron-plated drawbridge, and a ditch in front of the walls full of solid sharp-pointed stakes in two fathoms of water. From the summits of the ramparts the throats of a hundred cannons gape down upon the town--iron dogs, whose barking can be heard four miles off. On the walls an innumerable mult.i.tude of armed men keep watch, and in front of the gate the guns look out upon each other from the port-holes of the steep bastions on both sides of it. Woe to those who should attempt to make their way into the citadel by force! The gate, fastened with a huge chain, is defended by three heavy iron gratings, and from close beneath the lofty projecting roof circular pieces of artillery s.h.i.+ne forth, in front of which are pyramidal stacks of bombs.

The court-yard forms a huge crescent, in which nothing is visible but instruments of warfare, engines of destruction. In the lower part of the semicircular barracks stand the sentry-boxes, while in the opposite semicircle a long pavilion cuts the fortress in two, extending from the end of one semicircle to the end of the other, and here are three gates, which lead into the heart of the fortress.

In all this long building there are no windows above the court-yard, only two rows of narrow embrasures are visible therein. All the windows are on the other side overlooking the garden, and there dwell the odalisks of Ali Pasha's three sons. The three sons, Omar, Almuhan, and Zaid, inhabit the building with the three gates. The back of this building looks out upon the garden, in which the harems of the pasha's sons are wont to disport themselves.

Here again a long bastion barricades the garden, a bastion also protected by trenches full of water, across whose iron bridge you gain admission into the pasha's inmost fortress.

And what is that like? n.o.body can tell. The bra.s.s gates, covered with silver arabesques, seem to be eternally closed, and none ever comes in or goes out save Ali and his dumb eunuchs, and those captives whose heads alone are sent back again. The bastion surrounding this central fortress is so high that you cannot look into it from the top of the citadel outside; but if any one could peep down upon it from the summit of the lofty Lithanizza he would perceive inside it a fairy palace, with walls of colored marble protected by silver trellis-work, with blue-painted, brazen cupolas, with golden half-moons on their pointed spires. One tower there, the largest of all, has a roof of red cast-iron, and this one roof stands out prominently from among all the other buildings of the inner fortress. The colored kiosks are everywhere wreathed with garlands of flowers, and the spectator perched aloft would plainly discern cradles for growing vines on the top of the bastion. He might also, in the dusk of the summer evenings, distinguish seductive shapes bathing in the basins of the fountains, and lose his reason while he gazed; or it might chance (which is much more likely) that Ali Pasha's patrols might come upon him unawares and cast him down from the mountain-top.

This wondrous retreat was Ali's paradise. Here he grouped together the most beautiful flowers of the round world--flowers sprung from the earth or from a human mother. For maidens also are flowers, and may be plucked and enjoyed like other flowers. But the most beautiful among so many beautiful flowers was Eminah, Tepelenti's favorite damsel, the sixteen-years-old daughter of the Pasha of Delvino, who gave her to Ali just as so many eminent Turks are wont to give their daughters. On the day of their birth they promise to give them to some powerful magnate, and by the time the _fiancee_ is marriageable the _fiance_ has already one foot in his grave.

A pale, blue-eyed flower was she, looking as if she had grown up beneath the light of the moon instead of the light of the sun; her shape, her figure, was so delicate that it reminded one of those sylphs of the fairy world that fly without wings. Her voice was sweeter, more tender, than the voices of the other damsels; and, wiser than they, she could speak so that you felt rather than heard what she said. Ali loved to toy with her light hair, unwind the long folds of her tresses, cover his face with their silken richness, and fancy he was reposing in the shades of paradise.

And the child loved the man. Ali was a handsome old fellow. His beard was as glossy and as purely white as the wing of a swan; the roses of his cheeks had not yet faded; when he smiled he was no longer a tiger, but revealed a row of teeth even handsomer than her own. And, in addition to that, he was valiant--a hero. Even in old men love is no mere impotent desire when accompanied with all the vigorous pa.s.sion of youth.

And Eminah knew not that there were such beings as youths in the world. Excepting her father and her husband, she had never seen a man, and therefore fancied that other men also had just such white beards and silvery eyelashes as they. Brought up from the days of her childhood in the midst of a harem, among women and eunuchs, she had not the remotest idea of the romantic visions which the hearts of love-sick girls are wont to form from the contemplation of their ideals; to her her husband was the most perfect man for whom a woman's heart had ever beaten, and she clung to him as if he had been a supernatural being.

In her heart Eminah pictured Ali as one of those beneficent genii who in the marvellous tales of the Arabs rise up from the bowels of the earth and the depths of the sea, a hundred times greater than ordinary men, ten times younger, and a thousand times more powerful, who are wont to give talismanic rings to their earthly favorites, appearing before them when they turn this ring in order to instantly gratify their desires, their wishes; to transport them from place to place with their huge muscular hands, to make them ride a c.o.c.k-horse on their middle fingers, play hide-and-seek with them in the thousand corners of their vast palaces, watch over them when they sleep, overwhelm them with heaps and heaps of gifts and treasures, and yet are gentle and complacent in spite of their immense power. They need but take one step to crush the towers and bastions of the mightiest fortress in the dust, and yet they walk so warily as not even to graze the tiny ant they meet upon their path. Why, once Ali had waded into the lake up to his waist to rescue two amorously fluttering b.u.t.terflies that had fallen into it! Oh! Ali has such a sensitive soul that he weeps over the bird that has accidentally beaten itself to death against the bars of its cage; whenever he plucks a flower from its stalk he always raises it to his lips to beg its pardon; and when they told him how at the siege of Kilsura all the poor doves were burned, the tears sparkled in his eyes!

Eminah does not fully know the meaning of a siege; she only grieves for the poor doves. How they would hover above the burning town in white cl.u.s.ters amid the black smoke, and fall down into the fire below!

In reality the matter stood thus: Ali was besieging Kilsura, but could not take it; the besiegers fought valiantly, and the natural advantages of the place prevented him from drawing near enough to it.

So he signified to the inhabitants that he would make peace with them and depart from their town, and desired them, in earnest of their pacific intentions, to send him a number of white doves. The besieged fell in with his proposal, and collecting together all the white doves in the town they could lay they hands upon, sent them to Ali. He immediately withdrew his siege artillery, with which he had already wrought no small mischief, but at night, when every one was asleep, he fastened fiery matches by long wires to the feet of the doves, and then set them free. The natural instincts of the doves made them fly back to their old homes, the familiar roofs where their nests were, and in a moment the whole town was in flames, the doves themselves carrying the combustible material from roof to roof and peris.h.i.+ng themselves among the falling houses.

Ali wept sore as he told to Eminah the story of the doves of Kilsura; yes, Ali was certainly a sensitive soul!

The beautiful woman had everything that eye could covet or heart desire. In her apartments were mirrors as high as the ceiling, masterpieces of Venetian crystal, and the floor was covered with Persian carpets embroidered with flowers. Blossoming flowers and singing birds were in all her windows, and a hundred waiting-women were at her beck and call. From morn to eve Joy and Pleasure were her attendants, and each day presented her with a fresh delight, a fresh surprise.

Thirty rooms, opening one into another, each more magnificent than the last, were hers, and hers alone. The eye that feasted on one splendid object quickly forgot it in the contemplation of a still more splendid marvel, and by the time it had taken them all in was eager to begin again at the beginning.

But there was one thing which did not please Eminah. When one had got to the end of all the thirty rooms, it was plain that they did not end there, for then came a round bra.s.s door; and this door was always closed against her--never was she able to go through it. Now this door led into that huge tower with the red cast-iron roof, which could be seen such a distance off.

The inquisitive woman very much wanted to know what was inside this door through which she was never suffered to go, though Ali himself used it frequently, always closing it most carefully behind him, and wearing the key of it fastened to his bosom by a little cord.

Now and then she had asked Ali what was in this tower that she was not allowed to see, and what he did when he remained there all night alone? At such times Ali would reply that he went there to consort with spirits who were teaching him how to find the stone of the wise, how to become perpetually young, how to foresee the future, and make gold and other marvels--all of which it was easy to make a woman believe who did not even know that all men do not wear white beards.

After all such occasions Eminah, when she was alone again, would conjure up before her all sorts of marvellous blue and green denizens of fairyland appearing before Ali in the elements of air, fire, and water, to teach him how to make gold. And Ali always proved to Eminah that what he told her was no idle tale, for whenever he returned the next day he was followed by a whole procession of dumb eunuchs carrying baskets filled with gold and precious stones. Thus Ali not only knew how to make gold, but also those things that are made of gold--that is to say, coined money and filigreed ornaments, which he piled up before her; and to Eminah it seemed a very nice thing, and quite natural that if these peculiar spirits could manufacture gold from nothing, they should also be able to make necklaces and bracelets out of smoke, as Ali told her they did without any difficulty at all.

Now any one would have been curious to get to the bottom of such mysteries, especially if they were close at hand; how much more, then, a spoiled and pampered young woman, who frequently was not able to sleep for the joy which the presents heaped upon her by Ali excited in her breast. How much she would have loved to see these benevolent spirits who had given her so much pleasure!

Frequently she implored Ali to take her with him when he went into the red tower; but the pasha always tried to frighten her by saying that these spirits were most cruel to strangers in general, and women in particular, whom they would be ready to tear limb from limb, so that Eminah always had to abandon her desire.

But when once a woman has made up her mind to do a thing, do it she will, though a seven-headed dragon were to stand in the way; and if fear is a great power in this world, curiosity is a still greater.

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