“Thy name is unknown, yet thy image is in my heart;
Thine eyes have pierced me, and if thou show not mercy, I die.”
Again he crept softly up the steps and looked out; but the lattice was closed, and the fair vision had disappeared.
On the following morning Hassan was afoot before sunrise, and in walking across the space between the house and the stable he turned round in hopes of discovering the latticed window opposite to his own room. On carrying his eye along the wall that separated the outer palace from the harem, he easily recognised the window that he sought, in the upper storey of the harem, which faced the quarter of the house where his own room was situated, and being at the corner of the building, commanded a view of the space where he was walking, which was the Meidàn, where the Mamelukes and followers of the Pasha played at the jereed, and other equestrian sports in vogue at the time.
His thoughts still bent upon the lovely vision of the preceding night, he reached the stable, and on his approaching and speaking to Shèitan, the horse turned round and looked at him, seemingly more desirous of receiving something from him than of kicking or biting him. “So,” said Hassan, smiling, “we shall be friends after all!” The half-pail of water that he carried up to the horse’s head was swallowed, and Shèitan no longer disdained to eat the barley out of his hands. Allowing the horse only a few handfuls, Hassan gave him another canter over the desert, stopping every now and then to coax and caress him. After his return he gave Shèitan his full meal of barley, and from that day they grew more and more intimate, until at the end of a week the formerly vicious horse was as gentle as a lamb, and followed him like a dog.
During the first days of his stay he was chiefly employed in examining the accounts of his predecessor, in which he received great assistance from his friend Ahmed Aga; but the task was far from being easy, as the Pasha was very thoughtless and extravagant in all that regarded money, and the preceding khaznadâr had thought it his duty to follow his chief’s example.
Hassan had also formed the acquaintance of the chief eunuch of the harem—a venerable-looking negro, with a beard as white as snow—and the old man took pleasure in relating to so enthusiastic and intelligent a listener some of the stirring and tragical scenes that he had witnessed in the days of the Mameluke beys and the French invasion, at which period he had been in the service of the famous Ibrahim Elfi Bey. Hassan had another motive in cultivating the acquaintance of Mansour Aga; for, as the old man seemed to know something of the history of every influential family in Egypt, he hoped through him to find some clue to his own parentage.
Every evening Hassan crept softly up to the aperture in the wall of his room; but the lattice was lost in the shade, owing to the change in the position of the moon. Nevertheless, though he could see nothing, he remained for a long time with his eyes fixed upon the lattice, as if the insensible wood could feel or return his gaze.
Lovers are never very good calculators, and thus Hassan forgot that the same change in the position of the moon which had thrown the latticed window into the shade, had also thrown her beams full upon his own face, and that the tenant of the opposite room could now, while perfectly concealed herself, trace every emotion that passed over his countenance.
The lovely songstress, behind her latticed shield, gazed in silence, night after night, on what was in her eyes the noblest face they had ever beheld; and when his longing and ardent gaze seemed to him to be arrested by that envious lattice, it fell in reality on the lustrous orbs and blushing cheeks of the lovely girl within, who, although concealed, trembled at her own audacity, and at the new emotions that agitated her. Having waited for some time in the vain hope of seeing a symptom of movement in the lattice, Hassan descended to his room, having sung before he left the following verse in a low voice:—