It is true that where lovers are concerned, the shadow sometimes assumes a form and the reality evaporates.
Be this as it may, Djezzar had returned to Baïla, and the latter, more assured than ever of her power, made him expiate his late infidelity by her caprices and her extravagances. They wondered in the Harem to see the Pacha of Shivas, before whom every thing trembled, bow before this handsome slave, so frail, so white, so delicate, whom he might have broken by a gesture or a word. The rumor of it spread even to the city, where it was whispered that Djezzar would turn Jew if Baïla wished it.
This Ali-ben-Ali, surnamed Djezzar, or the Butcher, was, however, a terrible man. Originally a page in the palace of the Sultan, and brought up by Mahmoud, he had not participated at all in the civilizing ameliorations the latter had endeavored to introduce into his empire. The decree of Gulhana had found him the opponent of all reform. Assured of a protection in the divan, which he knew how to preserve, he sustained himself as the type of the old pachas, of whom his predecessors, Ali of Janina and Djezzar of Acre, were the paragons. He especially redoubled his barbarism when a philosophical breeze from Europe endeavored to breathe tolerance over his country.
Adjudging to himself the double part of judge and executioner, thanks to his expeditious justice, decrees emanating from his tribunal were executed as soon as rendered; sometimes the punishment preceded the judgment. A thousand examples were cited, tending to prove clearly that in Turkey, Djezzar was a relique of the old regime. An aga had prevaricated. The pacha unable to inflict punishment upon the culprit in person, as the friend of prompt and good justice, had ordered a young effendi, his secretary, to go at once to the residence of the prevaricator and deprive him of an eye. The young man hesitating and excusing himself on the plea of his inexperience, “Come nearer,” said Djezzar to him; and when the poor effendi approached him, the pacha, with marvelous dexterity, plunging quickly one of his fingers into the corner of an eye, drew out the globe from its socket, then with a quick twist and the assistance of his nail, the operation was performed.
“Slave, thou knowest now how to do it; obey at once,” he said to him; and the poor victim, with his wound undressed and bleeding, was constrained, on peril of his life, to inflict on the aga the punishment he had just undergone.
No one excelled as he did in cutting off a head at a blow of the yataghan. It is true, no one else had so much practice. There was a story told at Shivas, of a feat of this kind which did him the highest credit.
Two Arabian peasants, feulahs, were brought before him, on a charge of murder, and each of them accusing the other of the crime. Djezzar was perplexed for a moment. It was possible that one of them was innocent. Wanting proof of this, and not being in the humor to wait for it, he thought of an ingenious and prompt means of referring the judgment to God. By his orders the accused were fastened back to back by their bodies and shoulders; he draws his sabre—the head which falls is to be that of the guilty man.
Seeing death so near, the two wretched men struggle to avoid falling beneath the hand of the executioner; they turn—they shift—each endeavoring to place his companion on the side where the blow is to fall. Djezzar regarded this manœuvering for some time with pleasure; at length, after having pronounced the name of Allah three times, he made his Damascene blade describe a large circle, and both heads fell off at a blow.
Notwithstanding his habitual gravity, the pacha could not avoid laughing at this unexpected result; he laughed immoderately, which he had probably never before done in his life, and his noisy bursts mingled with the hoarse roars and panting of a lion, which, confined in a neighboring apartment, inhaled the odor of the blood.
This lion was his master’s favorite. Custom had for a long time prescribed to the pachas of Shivas, as to other pachas of the East, that they should be accompanied by a lion on all solemn occasions. Galib, the predecessor of Djezzar, and a great partisan of reform, had a monstrous one which he fed particularly with Janizaries; the story ran, that the fanatical Djezzar appeased the appetite of his occasionally with Christian flesh.