"Bravo, Monsieur! Hadgi-Stavros is God, and you are his Prophet! He would be touched to hear with what admiration you speak of him! I have already divined that you are one of his friends, seeing how he put his hand on your shoulder, as if he was speaking to you in confidence. Is it not he who has suggested the plan of escape which you have come to propose?"
"Yes, Madame, it is he; or rather, his correspondence. I found, this morning, while he was dictating to his secretaries, the infallible means of freeing us gratis. Will you write to Monsieur, your brother, to send a sum of 115,000 francs, 100,000 for you and 15,000 for me, by some safe person, say, Dimitri?"
"By your friend, Dimitri, to your friend, the King of the Mountains? Many thanks, my dear Monsieur. It is for this price that we are to be freed for nothing?"
"Yes, Madame. Dimitri is not my friend and Hadgi-Stavros would not scruple to cut off my head. But I will continue; in exchange for the money, you shall insist that the King sign a receipt."
"And a fine receipt it would be."
"With this paper, you would get back your 115,000 francs, without losing a centime, and you will see how."
"Good evening, Monsieur. Do not waste time to say any more. Since we landed in this miserable country we have been robbed by everybody. The Customs-officers robbed us; the man who drove us to Athens robbed us; our inn-keeper has robbed us; our servant, hired by the day, who is not your friend, has thrown us into the hands of these thieves; we met a respectable monk, who shared the spoils with the brigands; all the men who were drinking up there are knaves; those who sleep before our tent, to protect us, are of the same class; you are the only honest man whom we have met in Greece, and your counsels are the best in the world! but good-evening, Monsieur! good-evening!"
"In the name of heaven, Madame!—I will not attempt to justify myself, think what you will of me. Only permit me to tell you how you can get back your money."
"And how do you think I can get it back, if all the soldiers of the kingdom cannot free us? Hadgi-Stavros is, then, no longer King of the Mountains? He knows no more hidden paths? The ravines, the bushes, the rocks, are no longer his accomplices? Good-evening, Monsieur; I can testify to your zeal; I will tell the brigands that you have executed their commission; but once for all, Monsieur, good-evening!"
The good woman gave me a push by the shoulders, crying "good-evening" in so shrill a tone, that I trembled lest she should awaken our guardians, and I sorrowfully went to my tent. What a day! I went over, one by one, all the incidents which had occurred since the hour I left in pursuit of the boryana variabilis. The meeting with the Englishwomen, Mary-Ann's beautiful eyes, the attack of the brigands, the dogs, the fleas, Hadgi-Stavros, fifteen thousand francs to pay, my life at that price, the orgies of the Ascension, the balls whizzing about my ears, the drunken face of Vasile, and to crown all, Mrs. Simons' injustice. And then to be taken for a thief! Sleep, which consoled the others, did not come to my aid. All the events which had happened had over-excited me and I could not sleep. Day broke upon my miserable meditations. I followed the course of the sun as it rose in the heavens. Some confused noises followed, little by little, the silence of the night. I had not courage to look at my watch, or to turn my head to see what was passing around me. I was overcome with fatigue and discouragement. I believe if anyone had attempted to roll me down the hill, that I would not have put out my hands to stop myself. In this prostration of my faculties, I had a vision, which partook, at the same time, of a dream and an hallucination, because I was neither awake nor asleep, and my eyes were neither closed nor open. It seemed that I had been buried alive, that my felt tent was a catafalque, adorned with flowers, and that some one chanted prayers for the dead. Fears seized me; I tried to cry out; the words stuck in my throat, or the sound of them was drowned in the chants. I heard, distinctly, verses and responses, and I recognized that funeral services were being celebrated over me, in Greek. I made a violent effort to move my right arm; it was like lead. I extended my left; it yielded easily, striking against the tent and causing something like a bouquet to fall. I rubbed my eyes, I rose on my elbow, I examined the flowers, fallen from above, and I recognized in the superb specimen, the boryana variabilis. It was certainly the flower! I touched the lobated leaves, its gamosepalous calyx, its corolla composed of five oblique petals, united at the base by a staminal filament, its ten stamens, its ovary with its five loculaments; I held in my hand the queen of malvaceae! But by what chance had I found it at the bottom of my tomb? and how send it so far to the Jardin des Plantes at Hamburg? At this moment, a lively pain drew my attention to my right arm. One would have said that it was the prey of a swarm of invisible little animals. I rubbed it with my left hand, and little by little, it became normal. I had lain with it under my head for many hours, and it had become numb. I lived then, since pain is one of the privileges of life. But, then, what did that funeral chant, which rang obstinately in my ears, mean? I raised myself. Our apartment was in the same state as on the evening before. Mrs. Simons and her daughter were sleeping profoundly. A huge bunch of flowers like mine hung from the upper part of their tent. It occurred to me that I had heard that the Greeks had a custom of decorating their dwellings on the night before the first of May. These bouquets and the boryana variabilis came, then, from the munificence of the King. The funeral chant haunted me, I could still hear it. I climbed the staircase which led to the King's cabinet, and saw a more curious spectacle than any that had astonished me the evening before. An altar was set up and dressed, under the pine. The monk, clothed in magnificent pontificals, was celebrating, with imposing dignity, the divine office. Our drinkers of the night before, some standing, others kneeling in the dust, all religiously uncovered, were metamorphosed into little saints. One fervently kissed an image painted on wood, another made the sign of the cross, the most fervent bowed themselves to the ground and wiped the dust with their hair. The King's young pipe-bearer circulated through the crowd, with a plate, saying: "Give alms! He who giveth to the Church lendeth to the Lord!" And the centimes showered upon the plate, and the ring of the coins as they fell upon the copper dish made an accompaniment to the voice of the priest and the prayers of the suppliants. When I entered the assembly of the faithful, each one saluted me with a discreet cordiality, which recalled the primitive Church. Hadgi-Stavros, near the altar, made place for me at his side. He held a large book in his hand, and judge of my surprise, when I heard him recite the lessons in a loud voice. A brigand, officiating! He had received, in his youth, two of the lower orders; he was reader. One degree more, he would have been exorcist, and invested with the power of chasing out devils! Assuredly, I am not one of those travelers who are astonished at everything, and I practice, energetically enough, the nil admirari; but I was wonder-struck and amazed before this strange spectacle. Looking on at the genuflections, listening to the prayers, one would have supposed these actors guilty, only, of a little idolatry. Their faith seemed active and their conviction profound, but I who had seen them at work and who knew how little Christ-like they were in action, I could not help saying to myself: "Who is being fooled?"