'Her figure was graceful; her brow like alabaster; her eyes—strange in our sunny land—were a deep and bewitching blue, for her mother had been a Russian lady, stolen from the shores of the sea of Azof. Her eye-brows were brown, and arched, like the moon of the Prophet, and never did the divine Hafiz of Iraun pen a sonnet on a face more beautiful than hers; and as Jammee the Iraunee sings in his ode, I was miserable when absent from her.
'Oh! in what place soe'er I stray,
By midnight, morning, or by day,
Thou art the inmate of my breast;
I cannot linger, cannot stay,
But thy sweet image with me aye
Abides my bosom's dearest guest!'
Yet she was another's, and by one of the contrarieties of our nature for that reason, more perhaps than for her loveliness, did I love her! she was—'
'A wife?'
'No.'
'What then?'
'A slave.'
'Well?' said I, thinking it was only a distinction without a difference among 'the Faithful.'
'Her master was in the service of the Kislar Aga, so you will perceive at once that she was a dangerous person to meddle with. The arrival of the allied troops in the Bosphorus had attracted the attention of all in Stamboul, so Pera was almost deserted. Zarifa, by a prettily-arranged bouquet of flowers, asked me to visit her, and I did so, taking care, however, to arm me well. I had my sabre and a pair of pistols, which I loaded carefully, in case of being surprised by the Kislar Aga or any of the black guardians of the Royal Seraglio. I had with me a fleet horse, one of those carefully-trained barbs which are used by our Turkish cavalry, and are drilled to close to the right and close to the left; to dress back, or forward, at a single word of command; to remain beside the rider if he falls, or to drag him out of the press by their teeth. Leaving my horse concealed in an olive-thicket, without perceiving that I was watched and followed by a Moolah, named Moustapha, who had been a corporal in my regiment, I entered the garden of the Kislar Aga's country-house, and there Zarifa received me in a beautifully-gilded kiosk, covered with tendrils of the myrtle, the passion-flower, the gorgeous azalea, and the Damascus rose. There soft carpets were spread; hot coffee, sherbet, wine, and a chibouque awaited me—and more than all, Zarifa, in all her beauty, with her yashmack thrown aside!
'Reclining on that soft carpet, with my arm around the yielding waist of my love—a pipe on one hand, a cup of Greek wine on the other, I was in the seventh heaven!