In a clearer condition, his very inability to shut her out of mind, despite his thousand efforts of will, would have taught him that another judgment was upon him.
HE LOVED HER.
CHAPTER VII
COUNT CORTI TO MAHOMMED
At noon the days are a little more yellow, and the shadows a trifle longer, while at evening the snows on the far mountains give the air a coolness gently admonitory of the changing season; with these exceptions there is scarcely a difference between the September to which we now come and the closing stages of June.
Count Corti is fully settled in his position. Withal, however, he is very miserable. A new light has been let in upon his being. He finds it a severe trial to serve a Mahommedan, knowing himself a Christian born, and still more difficult trying to be a Turk, knowing himself an Italian. The stings grow sharper as experience makes it plainer that he is nefariously helping those whom he ought to regard enemies destroy an Emperor and people who never gave him offence. Worst of all, most crushing to spirit, is his passion for the Princess Irene while under obligations to Mahommed prohibitory of every hope, dream, and self-promise ordinarily the sweetest incidents of love.
The person with a mental ailment curable by prompt decision, who yet goes about debating what to do, will ere long find his will power so weakened as to leave him a confirmed wreck. Count Corti seemed likely to become an instance in point. The months since his visit to the paternal castle in Italy, really the beginning of the conflicts tossing him now here, now there, were full of warnings he could but hear; still he continued his course.
His reports to Mahommed were frequent, and as they are of importance to our story, we think it advisable to quote from some of them.
The following is from his first communication after the visit to Sancta Sophia: