"Three lovely maidens I see, three maidens embracing each other;
Gentle, and burning, and bright—Sun, Moon, and Star I declare them.
Let others adore Sun and Moon, but give me my Star, my belovéd!"
"When the Sun leaves the heavens, her adorers are whelméd in slumber;
When the Moon quits the sky, sleep falls on the eyes of her lovers.
But the fall of the Star is the death of the man who adores her—
And oh! if my load-star doth fall, Machallah! I cease from the living!"
General applause rewarded the song, which it was difficult to believe had not been made expressly for the occasion.
"Who would think," said Paul Béldi to the Pasha, "that your people not only cut darts from reeds, but pens also, pens worthy of the poets of love?"
"Oh!" replied Achmed, "in the hands of our poets, blades and harps are equally good weapons; and if they bound the laurel-wreath round the brows of Hariri it was only to conceal the wounds which he received in battle."
When the banquet was over, Tököly, with courteous affability, parted from his fair neighbour, whom he immediately saw disappear in a window recess, arm-in-arm with Flora. He himself made the circuit of the table in order that he might meet the fair Aranka, but was stopped in mid-career by his host, who was so full of compliments that by the time Tököly reached the girl, he found her leaning on her mother's arm engaged in conversation with the Prince. Aranka, feeling herself out of danger when she had only a married man to deal with, had quite regained her childish gaiety, and was making merry with the bridegroom.
Tököly, with insinuating grace, wormed his way into the group, and gradually succeeded in so cornering the Prince, that he was obliged to confine his conversation to Dame Béldi, while Tököly himself was fortunate enough to make Aranka laugh again and again at his droll sallies.
The Prince was boiling over with venom, and was on the verge of forgetting himself and exploding with rage. Fortunately, Dame Béldi, observing in time the tension between the two men, curtseyed low to them both, and withdrew from the room with her daughter. Whereupon, the Prince seized Tököly's hand, and said to him with choleric jocosity: "If your Excellency's own bride is not sufficient for you, will you at least be satisfied with throwing in mine, and do not try to sweep every girl you see into your butterfly-net?"
Tököly quite understood the bitter irony of these words, and replied, with a soft but offensively condescending smile: "My dear friend, your theory of life is erroneous. I see, from your face, that you are suffering from an overflow of bile. You have not had a purge lately, or been blooded for a long time."
The Prince's face darkened. He squeezed Tököly's hand convulsively, and murmured between his teeth: