“Nothing, son of Ali.”
“If my chastisements cannot loose his tongue, my clemency may,” said Djezzar, with a sinister smile. “Let him be brought before me, and let Haïder come also. By Allah, I will myself teach him to speak.”
When the Mangrebian had departed, Djezzar, alone with Baïla, became at once the man of the harem—the effeminate, the voluptuous pacha; he caused her to resume her seat on the divan, and he himself stretched at her feet, smoking his hooka, engaged, apparently alone, in watching the smoke from his Persian pipe escape on one side in massive clouds to remount from the other, purifying itself in a crystal flask full of perfumed water. He awaited, in this indolent posture, the arrival of his captive.
This captive was named Ferdinand Laperre. Born at Paris, of a good family of the middle classes, of a character addicted to exaltation and revery, an orphan from his cradle, he had been unable to give a natural course to his sensibilities. Notwithstanding his university education, the religious sentiment had germinated and developed itself in him. In the want of those tender affections of which he was ignorant, holy and ardent belief had filled the void in his soul. He held a small employment in the office of the minister of foreign affairs, when one day at the close of a sermon, by the Abbé La Ardaire, he determined to become a priest.
His only remaining relative, an uncle, recently appointed to a consulate in one of the important cities of Asia Minor, thought it best to take him with him in the capacity of a cadet. He hoped to divert him from his pious abstractions, to induce him to renounce his plans, and to lead him even to doubting, by the sight of those numerous sects of schismatic Christians who inhabit the east. The uncle was a philosopher.
But faith was more brightly kindled in the heart of the neophyte as he approached those holy places in which evangelical truths had borne their first branches and produced their most savory fruits. The summits of Taurus were for him illuminated by the lightnings of Tabor and Sinai. More than ever strengthened in his first calling, he wore hair-cloth beneath his diplomatic dress, and promised himself, should the occasion offer, to accomplish, in despite of his relative, a novitiate signalized by apostolic labors.
After having perfected himself in the Turkish and common Arabian languages, he went to Shivas and its environs, on a visit to the followers of the different dissenting churches—Armenians, Greeks, Maronites, Nestorians, Eutycheans and even Latin Catholics, separated from Rome only by the marriage of their priests. He went among them to effect conversions; he was more alarmed at their misery than their ignorance, and, like a true apostle, he returned among them less to preach to them than to succor them.
He was passing down the Red River one day, on a small skiff, which he had learned to manage in the eastern style, dreaming of the desert and of an hermitage in some Thebais, and was creating in the future an ascetic happiness, tempered with clear water, when the oar broke. His barque stranding, cast him upon a small spot, a delta, located as an island, between Kizil-Ermak and a regular ditch. Ferdinand was not a skillful swimmer, but, notwithstanding the usual sedateness of his thoughts, he was a good jumper. He measured with his eye the river and the ditch by turns, and the question being decided in favor of the latter, he crossed it at a bound. The ditch passed, he perceived a low wall, which had been hidden from his view by a thick copse of nopals and wild apricot trees. Had he jumped back, to regain his delta, it would have been at the risk of his neck, for he had now no room to take a start; and should he succeed, he would still have an impassable river before him.
Whilst in this position, very much embarrassed what to do, and not doubting that he was in the neighborhood of the summer gardens of the pacha, he perceived a low door in the wall; he tried it, and to his great joy it opened.
There are about Shivas, and especially on the banks of the river, enclosures in which the cultivators, chiefly Christians, from the great abundance of water, raise vegetables for the market, and enormous citrons, savory water-melons, dates, and pistachios which rival those of Aleppo and Damascus. Ferdinand thought he had reached one of those Christian enclosures; the carelessness evinced in closing the gate strengthened the idea. He entered. Then, for the first time, he found himself face to face with Baïla, who was seated carelessly beneath the plantain tree. More surprised than charmed at the sight of the graceful odalisk, bedaubed with red and black, he could only stammer forth a few words, expressive of his eager desire to escape, safe and sound, from this perilous adventure, which he had not sought. Entrapped in the windings of the garden, he had again found himself in the presence of Baïla and the negress. Regaining at last, with difficulty, the little gate, which was still open, he was again alarmed at the double obstacle of the ditch and the river, when, in the midst of the shades of the evening, he saw a man advance, mysteriously, toward the delta, traversing the Kizil-Ermak by a ford, of which Ferdinand was quite ignorant.