Ah, those beautiful eyes! How sadly they put all one's wits and self-possession to flight—by their arrows routing horse, foot, and artillery.
I regarded her as a caged bird longing for freedom. I could not conceive it possible that the wife of a Turk—especially such a devilish and unmitigated Turk as the fat Yuze Bashi Hussein—should be otherwise than most unhappy; for the Mohammedan deems women the mere appendage of a household—a necessary comfort among others; a handsome wife, a cup of coffee, and a well-filled chiboque, are the mainsprings of life in the eyes of a true Believer—unless we add a hot bath and a savoury kabob.
With these reflections, an hour after sunset, I found myself in the dewy twilight, under her window, and among those richly-wooded rocks on which the sea of Marmora was rolling in ripples of violet, blue, and gold.
It was one of those brilliant nights when all the constellations are visible, and the poor Mohammedan believes that all the imps of earth are climbing to Heaven, to pry into the actions and overhear the conversation of the blessed, who occasionally pelt and slay them with the falling stars.
I waited for a little time, and then her lattice slowly—I thought reluctantly—unclosed; and two white hands were clapped gently together.
I replied to the signal; the stem of a date-tree and the tough branches of a wild vine enabled me to reach the window with ease, and in a moment I found myself within the sanctum sanctorum of a Mohammedan house—the anderun, or female apartments of the Yuze Bashi Hussein.
Iola was trembling; she drew her yashmack closely about her face, and hastened to shut the casement. Her eyes were full of tears, and that she had been seized by some unusual qualm, or terror of these proceedings, was but too apparent. This was unpleasant, as it gave me the sensation of being somewhat of a conspirator, at least.
The successful peculations of Hussein had enabled him to make the apartments of his Greek wife magnificent. The roof was all of blue velvet, painted with the figures of birds and flowers. The walls were hung with silk, in alternate broad red and white stripes, on which shone gilded sentences from the Koran. An exquisite Persian carpet covered the floor, on which were a profusion of velvet and embroidered cushions of the softest and lightest down arranged in the form of couches; and there were two little stools bearing coffee-trays and chiboques. The lower end of the apartment, which was divided in two by festooned curtains of the finest muslin, was hung with leopard-skins, and trophies of Turkish and Arabian arms of the keenest steel—sabres, handjiars, carbines, pistols, lances, matchlocks, and ancient horsetailed standards, arranged, in the form of stars, round Tartar shields of brown bull-hide, all glittering with knobs of burnished brass. The perfume of rich pastiles and wood of aloes, burning in tripods of bronze, and the fragrance of six tall candelabra full of fresh flowers, pervaded the apartment, which was lit by two large lamps of fine oil, the smoke of which was consumed by cream-coloured globes, that diffused a warm and voluptuous light.
To complete the picture of this remarkable apartment, let me remind the reader of Iola, who, shrinking a little from me, stood in the centre of it, with irresolution and timidity in her air and eyes.
She wore the hideous feradjee of the Turkish women, which enveloped her whole form, permitting little of its oriental symmetry to be seen; yet from amid its ample folds I could discern her hands, which were gloveless, and her little feet, which had embroidered slippers, and the faultless form and delicacy of which there were no stockings to conceal.