CHAPTER XIII.
THE PERSECUTED WOMAN.
Perhaps by this time you have clean forgotten our dear acquaintance, pretty Mariska, the wife of the Prince of Wallachia?
Ah, she is happy! Although her husband is far away, her sorrow is forgotten in the near approach of a new joy—the joy of motherhood.
There she sits at eventide in the garden of her castle, weaving together dreams of a happy future, and her court ladies by her side are making tiny little garments adorned with bright ribbons.
When the peasant women pass by her on the road with their children in their arms, she takes the children from them, presses them to her bosom, kisses, and talks to them. She is the godmother of every new-born infant, and what a tender godmother! Day after day she visits the churches, and before the altar of the Virgin-Mother prays that she also may have her portion of that happiness which is the greatest joy God gives to women.
After the battle of St. Gothard it was Prince Ghyka's first thought to send a courier to his wife, bidding her not to be anxious about her husband, for he was alive and would soon be home.
This was Mariska's first tidings of the lost battle, and she thanked God for it. What did she care that the battle was lost, that the glory of the Turkish Sultan was cracked beyond repair, so long as her husband remained to her? With him the husbands of all the other poor Wallachian wives were also safe. She at once hastened to tell the more remote of these poor women that they were not to be alarmed if they heard that the Turkish army had been cut down, for their husbands were free and quite near to them.
What joy at the thought of seeing him again! How she watched for her husband from morn till eve, and awoke at night at the slightest noise. If a horse neighed in the street, if she heard a trumpet far away, she fancied that her husband was coming.
One night she was aroused by the sound of a light tapping at her bedroom door, and her husband's voice replied to her question of "Who is there?"
Her surprise and her joy were so great that in the first moment of awaking she knew not what to do, whereupon her husband impatiently repeated: