“He is a lemonade seller.” I judged so from the practiced facility with which he appeared to open the bottle.
“You are farther from the mark than ever,” said my companion.
“Well, then, let us talk about something else.”
Once at the Butard we thought no more of our two Parisian cockneys. Whilst they were preparing our breakfast, and even whilst we were breakfasting, my friend naturally recommenced speaking of his travels in the Taurus and Anti-Taurus, in the Balkan, the Caucasus, on the banks of the Euphrates, and then, to give me a respite from all his botanical and geological descriptions, he related to me, piece by piece, without appearing to attach the least importance to them, a story, which interested me very much. He had collected the details of it (the scene of which was laid not far from the shores of the Black Sea, between Erzerum and Constantinople) from the lips of one of the principal actors in it.
I endeavored to reduce it to writing when with him, not in the same order, or disorder, as to events, but at least so far as regards their exactness, and availing myself of the knowledge of persons and places acquired by my traveler.
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CHAPTER I.
Toward the middle of the month of July, in the year 1841, in the pachalick of Shivas, in the vast gardens situated near the Red River, a young girl, dressed in the Turkish costume, was walking slowly, with her head bent down, followed by an old negress. At times she turned her head rapidly, and when her eyes, through the massive maples and sycamores, rested on the angle of a large building, with gilded lattices and balconies of finely carved cedar, her complexion, usually pale, became suddenly suffused, her small foot contracted against the ground, her breast heaved, and she restrained with difficulty the sigh that endeavored to escape.
Silent and pre-occupied she stopped, and with her finger designated a plantain tree to the negress. The latter immediately entered an elegant kiosk, a few paces distant, and returned, bearing the skin of a tiger, which she placed at the foot of the tree. After the old negress had passed and repassed several times from the skin to the kiosk, and from the kiosk to the skin, the young girl seated herself, cross-legged, on the latter, leaning against the plantain tree, on a cushion of black velvet, holding carelessly in her left hand an ornamented pipe, with a tube of Persian cherry, and in her right, in a small stand of filagreed gold, shaped like an egg-cup, a slight porcelain cup, which the old slave replenished from time to time with the fragrant Mocha.
Baïla was seventeen years old; her black and lustrous hair, parted over her temples, resembled the raven’s wing; her eye-brows thin, and forming a perfect arch, though of the same color as her hair, were, as well as her long eye-lashes and the edge of the lids, covered with a preparation of antimony, called sourmah. Still other colors had been employed to heighten the lustre of her beauty; the carnation of her lips had disappeared beneath a light touch of indigo; and, by way of contrary effect, beneath her eyes, where the fine net work of her veins naturally produced a light blue tint, the purple of the henna shone out. The henna, a kind of vegetable carmine, much used in the east, also blushed upon the nails of her hands and feet, and even upon her heels, which peeped out, naked, from her small, beautiful sandals, embroidered with gold and pearls.