“What spirit imparted to thee the tale of my woe, master?” cried the woman, in a thrilling tone; “thou must be a descendant of the all-knowing Prophet!”
“No! Is it not enough that I am thy child?” answered Omeyya, with an outburst of tears; and there was a pathetic moment beyond the reach of words.
It is again new-moon. Naïma is mistress of an elegant home, is waited on by slaves, moves among hangings of silk, on the softest of Moorish rugs; her eyelids are painted with kohl, her finger nails with henna; her harem opens on a courtyard pervaded by the odoriferous scent of the mandragora and the blossom of the orange, cooled by the splash and play of fountains, and animated by storks, who are sacred birds in Morocco as elsewhere. Mother and son have by this time unbosomed themselves to each other, and both are confident that the culmination of things will be equal to their expectations.
Once more Omeyya is alone in the dead of voiceless night, under cloud-obscured stars. He has been waiting since before the sun had withdrawn his last beam from the picturesque panorama afforded by the sight of the Western Mecca and its wreath of groves and gardens, spreading on the slopes of the valley through which flows the Wad-el-Jubar. Omeyya stood on the height crowned by Mulai Ismael’s bastion, whence the view of Fez is as perfect as that of the palace grounds. As night closed over the city and the green tops of Mulai Edris—the famous mosque, striking because of its all-overtopping golden globe,—faded in deepening twilight, Omeyya heard the nightingale at her best, and his soul was well attuned for the amorous cadence. Now the crescent soared in relief on heaven’s mystic tapestry, but a later hour was to evolve the vision of Egypt’s mystery. At the right moment the potency of Omeyya’s rod raised up the bird. Over court and palace broke a white radiance, and in its core hung the heron on wing in mid-heaven.
“There sprung, like Iris from the clouds, a smiling Hebe.”
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“Bird of Osiris, worship of Heliopolis! by the invisible masters who fashioned thee I demand to let me behold her whom destiny has decreed to be my consort.”
Omeyya was frightened on seeing the phœnix fade, as if offended by his command; but in its stead there sprung, like Iris from the clouds, a smiling Hebe; back of her rose in imperial majesty Muley Zidan and his foremost Sultana.—“Hamdillah!” cried Omeyya, falling on his face to praise Allah “the most merciful, the King of the Day of Judgment!” When he rose there were the stars above him and the silvery crescent, while the valley of the River of Pearls rang with the trill of a thousand nightingales.
The next morning the streets of Fez were filled with the cries of the Sultan’s heralds, calling on him, who was entitled to the great prize, to come forth and obtain it.—“Bring the crown and obtain thy reward!” was the cry heard in street and bazaar, no one knowing what it meant.