The night was now drawing to a close. Feriz Beg, quietly intent, was sitting at the window of his kiosk, as he had promised the odalisk. He had not understood her mysterious words, but he did as she asked, for he knew instinctively that it was the last wish of one about to die.
Suddenly, as he gazed at the black waves of the Danube and the still blacker clouds in the sky, he saw a bright column of fire ascend with the rapidity of the wind from the midst of the opposite island, driving before it round white clouds of smoke. A few moments later the flames of the burning kiosk lit up the whole region. The startled inhabitants gazed at the splendid conflagration, whose flames mounted as high as a tower in the roaring blast. Nobody thought of saving it.
"No human life is lost, at any rate," they said quietly; "the harem and its guards were transferred yesterday."
The wind, too, greatly helped the fire. The kiosk, built entirely of the lightest of wood, was a heap of ashes by the morning, when Feriz, accompanied by the müderris in his official capacity, got into a skiff and were rowed across to the island. Not even a remnant of embers was to be found, everything had been burnt to powder. Nothing was to be seen but a large, black, open patch powdered with ashes. The fire had utterly consumed the abode of sin and vice. Nothing remained but a black spot. In the coming spring it will be a green meadow.
In the afternoon of the following day we see a familiar horseman trotting up to the gates of the fortress—if we mistake not, it is Yffim Beg.
All the way from Klausenburg he had been cudgelling his brains to find words sufficiently dignified to soften the expression of the insulting message which the Estates of Transylvania had sent through him to his gracious master. On arriving in front of Hassan's palace he dismounted as usual, without asking any questions, and gave the reins to the familiar eunuchs that they might lead the horse to the stables.
There was no trace of the scaffold that had been erected in front of the gate the day before. Yffim Beg entered and passed through all the rooms he knew so well, all the doors of which were still guarded by the drabants of Hassan as of yore; at last he reached Hassan's usual audience chamber, and there he found Olaj Beg sitting on a divan reading the Alkoran.
Yffim Beg gazed around him, and after a brief inspection, not discovering what he sought, he addressed Olaj Beg:
"I want to speak to Hassan Pasha," said he.