As the Sultan withdrew, the eunuch Tamlich remarked to him:
"My surmise of your Excellency's judgment was verified. Said I not that the two Arnaouts were the fairest? And did I not behold your Majesty gaze longest upon them?"
"I commend your taste, Tamlich," replied Mahomet. "But those two are as unlike as a ruby and a pearl."
"But as fair as either, are they not? The chief hamamjina[86] declares that the blue-eyed one has the most perfect form she ever saw; and that it is a form which will improve with years. Morsinia Hanoum[87] will be more fit for Paradise, while Elissa Hanoum may lose the grace of the maiden as a matron. But the cherry is ripe for the plucking now."
"I like the ruby better than the pearl," said the Sultan. "I cannot quite fathom the deep eye of the latter. She thinks too much. I would not have women think. They are to make us stop thinking. The problems of state are sufficiently perplexing: I want no human problem in my arms."
"But one who thinks may have some skill in affording amusement. Have I not heard thee say, Sire, 'Blessed is the one who can invent a new recreation?' That requires thinking."
"Right, Tamlich! can she sing?"
"Ay! your Majesty, to the Greek cythera; and such songs that, though they know not a word of them—for the songs are in her own Arnaout tongue—the odalisks all fall to weeping."
"I like not such singing," said Mahomet. "To make people think with her thoughtful eyes is bad enough in a woman. To make them weep with her voice is wicked, is Christian. I will give her away to some one who wants a wife that thinks. There is Hamed Bey, one of the muderris[88] who is to be put at the head of my new chain of Ulemas.[89] He will want a wife who thinks; and his eyes are that blind with dry study that it will do him good to weep. But who is the woman? I think I saw her face in St. Sophia the day of our entry."
"She belonged to the house-hold of Phranza, the Chamberlain, who possessed this very house," replied the eunuch. "And I think, from its goodly size and decoration, he must have used the treasury of the empire freely."