Although it never was so intended, this dropping of his hand was considered as the signal for my death. The string was tightened, and buried itself, cutting deeply into the flesh of a neck once as fair and smooth as the polished marble of Patras. For the first moments my torture was excruciating—my eyes were forcing out of their sockets—my tongue protruded from my mouth—my brain appeared to be on fire—but all recollection soon departed.
“Staffir Allah! God forgive me! but are you not laughing at our beards, old scarecrow? What think you, Mustapha?” continued the pacha, turning to him. “What is all this but lies?”
“Lies!” screamed the old woman. “Lies! you tell me they are lies! Well, well—the time has been. Pacha, after what I have suffered by telling the truth all my life, it is hard, in my old age, to be told that I lie: but you shall be convinced;” and the old woman put her hands up to the shrivelled, pendent skin of her neck, and stretching it out smooth, showed a deep blue mark, which encircled it like a necklace. “Now are you satisfied?”
The pacha nodded his head to Mustapha, as if convinced; and then said, “You may proceed.”
“Yes, I may proceed; but I tell you pacha, that if you doubt what I say once more, I will return your twenty pieces of gold, and hold my tongue. I proved that I could do it as a young woman, and we become more obstinate as we get old.”
“That is no lie,” observed Mustapha. “Continue, old woman, and we will not interrupt you with doubts again.”
My brother, who had watched every motion of the sultan’s, and who had determined to reveal all rather than that I should suffer, when he perceived the fatal mistake, which he did not till some moments afterwards, uttered a loud cry, and attempted to burst from his guards. Roused by the cry, the sultan looked up, and perceived what had taken place. In a moment he darted from his throne, and was kneeling by me with frantic exclamations. The mutes hastily tore away the bowstring, but I was, to all appearance, dead.
“Yes, sultan, well you may rave;” exclaimed my brother; “for you have good cause. You have destroyed one who, as she declared with her last breath, was most faithful and most true. I acknowledge the conspiracy. I told her my intentions, and she thought that she had succeeded in preventing me, for I promised by the three, to abandon my design. She has been faithful both to you and to me, for she believed that, although accused, I had atoned for my fault by repentance.”