Timar was intensely happy at being engaged to Timéa.
The unearthly beauty of the girl had captivated his heart at first sight. He admired her then, and afterward the sweet nature which he learned to appreciate won his respect. The shameful trick played on her in the house of Brazovics awoke in him a chivalrous sympathy. The airy courtship of the captain aroused his jealousy; all these were symptoms of love, and at last he had reached the goal of his wishes: the lovely maiden was his, and would be his wife.
And a great burden was lifted from his soul—self-reproach; for from the day when Timar found the treasures of Ali Tschorbadschi in the sunken ship, his peace was gone. After each brilliant success of any of his undertakings, the voice of the accuser rose in his breast "This does not belong to you—it was the property of an orphan which you usurped. You a lucky man? You a man of gold? It is not true! Benefactor of the poor? Not true! Not true! You are a thief!"
Now the suit is decided. The inward judge acquits him. The defrauded orphan receives back her property, and in double measure, for whatever belongs to her husband is hers too. She will never know that the foundation of this great fortune was once hers; she only knows it is hers now—thus fate is reconciled.
But is it really reconciled? Timar forgot the sophism that he offered Timéa something besides the treasures which were hers—himself—and in exchange demanded the girl's heart, and that this was a deception, and like taking her by force.
He wished to hasten the wedding. There was no need of delay on account of the trousseau, for he had bought everything in Vienna. Timéa's wedding-dress was made by the best Parisian house, and the bride was not obliged to work at it herself for six weeks, as at that other. That double unlucky dress was buried in a closet which no one ever opened; it would never be brought out again.
But other hinderances of an ecclesiastical nature presented themselves—Timéa was still unbaptized. It was only natural that Timar should wish Timéa, when she left the Moslem faith for Christianity, to enter at once the Protestant Church to which he belonged, so that they might worship together after their marriage. But then the Protestant minister announced it as an indispensable condition of conversion that neophytes should be instructed in the creed of that church into which they were to be received. Here a great difficulty arose. The Mohammedan religion has nothing to say to women in its dogmas. To a Moslem a woman is no more than a flower which fades and falls, whose soul is its fragrance, which the wind carries away, and it is gone. Timéa had no creed.
The very reverend gentleman found his task by no means easy when he tried to convince Timéa of the superiority of the Christian religion. He had converted Jews and Papists, but he had never tried it with a Turkish girl.
On the first day, when the minister was explaining the splendors of the other world, and declaring that there all who in this world had loved each other would be reunited, the girl put this question to him—"Would those meet who had loved each other, or only those whom the minister had united?" This was a ticklish question; but the reverend gentleman answered, from his own puritanical point of view, that only those could possibly love each other who were united by the church, and that it was of course impossible for those who were thus united not to love each other. But he was careful not to repeat this question to Herr Timar.
The next day Timéa asked him whether her father, Ali Tschorbadschi, would also arrive in that world to which she was going?