"Assent to the demand," said the Sultan. "The time will the sooner come to avenge the insult, if we seem not to see it."
The Vizier continued looking at his tablets. "Maria Sultana[71] asks, through the Kislar Aga, that she may be allowed, since the death of her lord, to return to her kindred."
"Let her go! She is a Giaour whose cursed blood was not bettered by six and twenty years' habitation with my father. She is fair enough in her wrinkles for some Christian prince, and George Brankovitch needs to make new alliances."
"Hunyades"—said the Vizier.
"Ay, make peace with him, and with Scanderbeg, too, if that wild beast can be tamed, which I much doubt."
The Sultan rose from his cushion, his form animated with strong excitement, and, putting his hand upon the shoulders of the Vizier—who drew back at the strange familiarity—and looking him fixedly in the face, he whispered: "Everything must wait,"—and the words hissed in the hot eagerness with which he said them—"until—I have Constantinople."
Turning upon his heel, he withdrew toward his private chamber.
The Sultan threw himself upon his bed. The Capee Aga, or chief of the white eunuchs, whose duty it was to act as valet-de-chambre, as well as to stand at the right hand of the Sultan on state occasions, began to draw the curtains around the silver posts upon which the bed rested.
"You may leave me," said his majesty. "Nay, hold! Send Captain Ballaban of the Janizaries."
As the young officer entered, the face of the Sultan relaxed.