“You may punish him, doubtless,” said Hassan calmly; “you may punish any in your house, for you have the power: but if you do punish him now, and after a few days we bring you the sword, or proof that it was stolen not by him but by others—I know your generous heart—you will then suffer tortures; you will curse this hour of hasty passion, and will say, ‘Had I not one faithful servant to say to me, Do not stain your name with this act of cruelty?’”
During this speech the rage of the Pasha had been burning with a fiercer fire: to be thus lectured and reproved in the height of his fury by a mere youth, and in the presence of all his household, was a trial to which his fierce temper had never before been exposed. His lip grew white, and his limbs literally trembled with concentrated passion.
“Son of a dog!” he cried, “if thou wilt not hold thy peace this shall silence thee——”
As he spoke he drew his dagger from his shawl-sash and rushed at Hassan, who was standing a few yards in front of him.
Hassan plainly saw the movement, and with his activity and gigantic strength could easily have either sprung back a few feet and drawn his sword or have wrested the dagger from the feebler hand of the Pasha, but he saw before him only Amina’s father. Opening wide his arms, with a calm, unblenching eye, he presented his broad chest to the descending blade: it fell, but harmlessly over his shoulder, for the demon-spirit had overpowered the frame which it possessed, and muttering, “Allah! I cannot do it,” Delì Pasha staggered back a few paces, and would have fallen to the ground had not Hassan caught him in his arms and borne him gently to the divan whence he had so lately risen in the full tide of excited passion.
All the attendants now crowded round the insensible form of their lord, whom, by the order of Ahmed Aga and Hassan, they caused to be instantly transported to the private apartments of the harem, while servants were sent in all directions for the most skilful surgeon that could be found. Not many minutes elapsed before the arrival of one possessed of some skill and of presence of mind; blood was freely taken from the arm; soon afterwards twenty or thirty leeches were applied to the back of the neck, and before nightfall the symptoms that threatened a dangerous brain fever had passed away.
Meanwhile Kasem was confined to his room and a guard placed at the door. He was a general favourite, and none believed him guilty of the theft; but as the sword had been in his custody, it was judged necessary to keep him in confinement until some further light could be thrown on the case, or the Pasha’s ulterior pleasure be ascertained.
In the course of two days, during which the invalid was tended by the affectionate and unremitting care of Amina, the Pasha made rapid progress towards recovery, but he observed a sullen and profound silence as to the cause of his illness, neither did he issue any orders respecting the punishment of Kasem; but all the circumstances were already known throughout the harem, the eunuchs having gathered them from the servants and repeated them, with various additions and exaggerations, to the women under their charge. On one subject all the reports agreed—namely, that Hassan had mortally offended his chief, and that his dismissal was certain.
Meanwhile all the exertions made by Ahmed Aga, Hassan, and others to trace the missing sword or discover the thief had been unavailing, until on the third day Reschid, the favourite Mameluke of the Kiahia Pasha, came to see his friend Hassan, and the smile on his countenance announced that he had some good news to communicate.
“Hassan,” he said, “you may remember that on the evening of your Pasha’s illness I was sent here to make inquiries after his health by my lord: you told me about the missing sword which he so much valued. One was brought to me for sale this morning by a Jew who resides in the farthest part of Cairo, which formerly belonged, as he said, to Ibrahim Elfi, the great Mameluke Bey. I doubt the story. Should you know your Pasha’s sword if you saw it?”