But Hassan the same hour sent for his goldsmith, and bade him prepare immediately a silver chain, four yards long, with golden shackles at each end, for Azrael and Mariska. The goldsmith took the measure of the hands of the two damsels, and brought in the evening a chain made of beaten silver, whose shackles were fastened by masterly-constructed padlocks, which Hassan himself fastened on the hands of the damsels, thrusting the key which opened the padlocks into his girdle, which he tapped a hundred times a day to discover whether it was still there or not. Then he dismissed the pair of them into Azrael's dormitory. Mariska endured everything—the chain, the shame, and rough words—for the privilege of being able to embrace her child. She lay down content on the carpets as far from Azrael as the chain would permit it, and folding her hands above the baby's innocent head, prayed with burning devotion to the God of mercy, and calmly went to sleep holding the child in her arms.
A little beyond midnight the child began softly wailing. At the first sound of its crying Mariska awoke, and as she moved her hand the chain rattled. Azrael was instantly alert.
"Hast thou had evil dreams?" inquired the odalisk of Mariska; "the rattling of the chain aroused me."
"The weeping of my child awoke me," said Mariska softly; and drawing the little one to her bosom, as it embraced its mother's beautiful velvet breast with its chubby little finger, and drank from the sweetest of all sources the draught of life, the young mother gazed upon it with unspeakable joy, smiled, laughed, caught the child's rosy little fingers in her mouth, and implanted resounding kisses on its rosy, chubby cheeks. She had no thought at that moment for chain and dungeon.
Azrael felt in her heart the torments of the demons—it was that jealousy which those who are rocked in the lap of happiness feel at the sight of a luckless wretch who is happier than they are in spite of all his wretchedness.
"Wherefore dost thou rejoice?" she asked, gazing upon the lady with the eyes of a serpent.
"Because my child is with me."
"But the whole world has abandoned thee."
"It is more to me than the whole world."