The girl shook her head sorrowfully.
"And we will walk along by the banks of the quiet streams in those ancient lands where not craft but valour rules, where the wise are only learned in the courses of the stars and the healing virtues of the plants, not in the science of the rise and fall of kingdoms. There from the window of my breeze-blown kiosk, which is built on the slopes of Lebanon, thou wilt view the whole region round about. Above, the shepherds kindle their fires in the blackness of the cedar forests; below, the mountain stream runs murmuring along, and all round about us the nightingale is singing, and what he singeth is the happiness of love. In the far distance thou seest the mirror of the great sea, and the white-sailed pleasure boat rocks to and fro on the transparent becalmed billows, and the moon looks down upon the limitless mirror, and a fair maiden sits in the pleasure-boat, and at her feet lies a youth, and both of them are silent, only a throbbing heart is speaking, and it speaks of the happiness of love."
A couple of tears dropped from the eyes of the girl—the future was so seductive—and that picture, that fair country, she did not seem to be regarding them from the earth, it seemed to her as if she was looking down upon them from the sky and regretting that she was forced to leave—the beautiful world.
Aranka adored her father. The man who was respected for his virtues by a whole kingdom was the highest ideal of his child. When Feriz began to speak of him, the girl's face brightened, and at the recital of his heroic deeds the tears dried up in her flashing eyes; and when the youth told her how the great patriot would return, glorious and powerful, supported by the mightiest of monarchs, and how he would throw open the prison doors of his children and be parted from them no more, then a smile would gradually transfigure the girl's face, and she would feel happy. And then she would steal apart into her own dungeon, and kneel down before her bed, and pray ardently that she might see her father soon, very soon.
And she was to see him before very long.
Paul Béldi's body was now six feet deep in the ground, and his soul a star farther off in the sky—to see him one must go to him.
Paler and paler she became every day, her waking moments were scarcely different from her dreams, and her dreams from her waking moments. The provost-marshal now had compassion on the withered flower, and allowed it on the sunny afternoons to walk about on the bastions and breathe the fresh air. But neither moonlight nor fresh air could cure her now.
Frequently she would take the hand of Feriz Beg and press it to her forehead. "See how it burns, just like fire! Oh, if only I might live till my father comes. How he would grieve for me!"
Feriz Beg saw her wither from day to day, and still there was no sign of liberty. The youth used frequently to walk about the courtyard half a day at a time, like a lion in a cage, beating the walls with his forehead at the thought that that for which he had been striving his whole life long, and the possession whereof was the final goal of his existence, was drawing nearer and nearer to Death every hour, and no human power could hold it back!
The wife of the provost-marshal, a good, true woman, nursed the rapidly declining girl. Medical science was then of very small account in Transylvania; the sick had resort to well-known herbs and domestic remedies based on the experience of the aged; they trusted for the most part to our blessed mother Nature and the mercy of God.