THE INTERPRETER (continued 7)

CHAPTER XXXIII

MY PATIENT

"With the blessing of Allah! rub the palms of her hands with saffron!"

"Allah-Illah! Allah-Illah!--tickle the soles of her feet with feathers!"

"It is destiny! In the name of the Prophet pour cold water down her back!" "Room for the Frankish Hakim!" "May dogs defile the grave of the Giaour!"

Such were the exclamations that followed me into the apartment of Zuleika; for the Moslem daughters of Eve are not exempt from the curiosity attributed by tradition to the common mother; and have, moreover, superinduced on that pardonable failing certain prejudices of their own against the Christian unbeliever, whom, even when availing themselves of his assistance, they do not scruple to curse fluently, spitting the while between their teeth with considerable energy and effect.

Pending the application of their customary remedies, which in my ignorance of fainting-fits I judged to be the professional course of treatment, the ladies of the harem crowded and chatted at the door, peering over each other's shoulders, advancing a step into the apartment, retiring in confusion with a giggle and a scream, flirting atrociously with their negro guards--men of ebony without and ice within, as indeed they had need be--and otherwise to the best of their abilities increasing the general confusion.

One alone came boldly forward to my assistance; venerable she was, but a dame whom age, though it had deprived her of charms, had not robbed of the enchanting timidity of youth.

In her efforts to assist the sufferer she had cast her veil aside, but true to Oriental modesty she scrupulously covered her mouth[#] (and a very black set of teeth) with her hand even while she addressed me. Authoritative in her manner, and evidently accustomed to despotic sway in this part of the establishment, I confess I sincerely pitied the Pasha to whom this energetic lady must for several years have belonged. She came close up to me, tore the yashmak from Zuleika's face, and exclaimed in tones which admitted of no dispute--

[#] A curious custom peculiar to the sex all over the East. The veil, indeed, seems only adopted as a screen for the mouth, since the eyes are suffered to flash undimmed by its transparent folds. Should a Turkish woman be surprised by chance without her yashmak, she immediately claps her hand to her lips, and so remains till the male stranger has passed by.

"Bring otto of roses to anoint our dove; strip her at once from head to foot; and kick the Giaour downstairs!"

It was now time to assume a certain amount of dignified authority. I waved away the uncompromising old lady with the air of a magician dismissing his familiar; I ordered the lattice to be immediately thrown open--fortunately it looked towards the east, which was considered much to enhance the virtue of the breeze that stole through its aperture--and taking advantage of the returning animation which dawned on Zuleika's countenance, I repeated an incantation in English--if I remember right it was the negro melody of "Oh, Susannah!" accompanying the monotonous tones with appropriate gestures, until my patient opened her languishing black eyes, glanced heavily around her, and sitting upright on her couch, announced herself completely recovered.

My popularity was now at the flood. Had I administered the simple remedies which I have since been informed are beneficial in such cases, I should, however successful, have been looked upon merely in the light of a common practitioner; but that the lady should recover to the tones of a popular air, accompanied by a deportment of ludicrous solemnity, constituted a success which stamped me at once as a proficient in the Black Art, and won for me unqualified obedience and respect, not wholly devoid of fear.

To take advantage of the happy moment, I pulled my watch from my pocket, and placing my finger on the patient's wrist, bid the imperious dame aforesaid remark how the pulsations corresponded with the ticks of that instrument. This, too, was a great discovery, and the watch was handed round for examination to all the curious inmates of the harem in turn.

I then ordered the room to be cleared, and insisted that I should be left alone with my patient until the minute-hand of my watch had reached the favourable hour.

This I knew would give me five minutes' conversation with Zuleika, and as I expected the Pasha home at every instant, I could not afford more than this short space of time to give my friend the Beloochee's message and plead his cause. The room was speedily cleared, not, however, without much laughing, screaming, and scuffling in the passage. As soon as I was alone with Zuleika, I whispered gently in her ear not to be afraid, but to trust me, as I came from him she loved best in the world.

The girl started, and began to tremble violently; she was so pale that I dreaded another fainting-fit, and the consequent destruction of my reputation as a doctor. Though an Arab, she was a woman; and at this crisis of her destiny was of course paralysed by fear and totally incapable of acting for herself. Had her emotion mastered her once more, the golden opportunity would have been lost; there was nothing for it but to work upon her feelings, and I proceeded in a tone of indifference--

"You have forgotten him. He bids me say that 'the rose has been transplanted into a garden of purer air and cooler streams; he has seen with his own eyes that she is blooming and fragrant, and he is satisfied. He rejoices in your happiness, and bids you farewell!'"

She burst into a flood of tears; her woman's heart was touched, as I hoped it would be, by the sentiment I had put into her lover's mouth, and the relief thus afforded brought her composure and self-command. She came of a race, too, that never lacked courage or fortitude, and the wild desert-blood soon mantled once more in her rich, soft cheek--the tameless spirit of the Bedouin soon flashed again from her large dark eyes.

"Effendi!" she replied, in a firm though mournful voice, "my father's daughter can never forget. Bid him think no more of the rose he cherished so fondly. She has been plucked from the stem, and now she is drooping and withering away."

"But Allah suffers not the flowers to perish," I proceeded in Oriental metaphor, while she clasped her slender hands and seemed to look through me with her glittering eyes. "He sends the dews from heaven to refresh them at night. A wild bird will sing to the rose before dawn, and she will open her petals and bloom once more fresh and glistening in the morning sun. Zuleika, have you completely forgotten Ali Mesrour?"

At the sound of his name a soft, saddened expression stole over her eager face, large drops gathered in her drooping eyelashes, and it was with a thrilling voice that she replied--"Never! never! once more to see him, only once more to hear his voice, and so to die! so to die!" she repeated, looking dreamily as if into the hopeless future.

"It is destiny," was my answer. "There is but one Allah! An hour before dawn there will be a caïque at the garden gate. Zuleika must contrive the rest. The risk is great, but 'the diver cannot fetch pearls without wetting his hair.' Will Zuleika promise?"

"I promise!" was all she had time to reply, for at this instant no slight commotion was heard in the household, and looking from the casement I perceived an eight-oared caïque brought alongside of the palace steps, from which a pipe-bearer springing rapidly ashore, followed by a more sedate personage, evidently a kiâtib, or secretary, heralded the great man of the party, who, emerging from the shade of a white silk umbrella, hitherto held carefully over him by a third official, now laboured majestically up the marble steps, pausing occasionally to draw a long breath, and looking around him the while with an air of corpulent satisfaction that no one but a Turk could imitate with the slightest prospect of success.

It was indeed the Pasha himself--the fortunate possessor of the magnificent dwelling, the owner of all these negro slaves, this gorgeous retinue, these beautiful women--and more still, the lord and master of poor Zuleika. I thought it better to meet him on the threshold than to risk his astonishment and displeasure by awaiting his entrance into the harem; accordingly I hurried down to the court-yard of his palace, and presented myself before him with a mixture of Eastern courtesy and European self-respect, such as never fails to impress a Turk with the feeling that in the presence of a Frank he is himself but of an inferior order of mankind.

"Salaam, Effendi!" was the observation of the proprietor, as polite and unmoved as if he had expected me all day. "You are welcome! My house with all it contains is at your disposal!" He motioned me courteously into a large, handsome apartment on the ground-floor of the palace, bid me to be seated, and clapping his palms together, called for pipes and coffee; then placing himself comfortably on the divan, he crossed his hands over his stomach, and repeated, "You are welcome!" after which he sat perfectly silent, nodding his head from side to side, and peering curiously at me out of his small, twinkling grey eyes.

He was an enormously fat man, buttoned up of course into the usual single-breasted frock-coat, on the outside of which glittered the diamond order of the Medjidjie. His huge, shapeless legs were encased in European trousers of the widest dimensions, and terminated in varnished Wellington boots, from which he had just cast off a pair of india-rubber goloshes. It was the modern Turkish costume, affected by the Sultan himself, and a dress so ill-adapted for the dog-days at Constantinople can hardly be imagined; yet every official, every dignitary, every military man, is now clad in these untoward habiliments, for which they have discarded the picturesque draperies of their ancestors; so that the fine old Turk, "shawled to the eyes, and bearded to the nose," is only to be seen in Stamboul amongst the learned professions and the inferior orders of tradesmen and mechanics. A red fez was the single characteristic article of clothing worn by the Pasha; and a more villainous expression of countenance than that which it overshadowed, it has seldom been my lot to confront. We stared at each other without speaking. It would have been ill-bred on the part of my host to ask me what I wanted, and I should have been guilty of an equal solecism in entering on my business until I had partaken of the customary refreshment.

Coffee was ere long brought in by negro slaves armed to the teeth, and of savage, scowling aspect. It was served in delicate filigree cups, set with priceless diamonds. Long chibouques were then filled and lighted. As I pressed the pure amber to my lips, and inhaled the fragrant aroma of the narcotic weed, I resolved to brazen it out manfully; but never, never again to find myself in such another scrape, no, not for all the warriors in Beloochistan, nor all the "Zuleikas" that ever eloped with them from the desert.

I thought I would say nothing of my visit to the harem. I judged, and rightly, that neither the ladies themselves, nor the negro-guard, whose duty it was to watch over those caged birds, would be over anxious to communicate the breach of discipline which had just been enacted, and that, although the secret was sure to ooze out in the course of a day or two, it was needless to anticipate the turmoil and disturbance which would attend its discovery.

But what excuse to make for my ill-timed visit? How to account for my intrusion on the leisure of so great a man as Papoosh Pasha, one of the half-dozen highest dignitaries of the empire, the friend and counsellor of the Sultan himself, even then fresh from the sacred precincts of the Seraglio Palace, where he had been helping sundry other ponderous Pashas to mismanage the affairs of his country, and to throw dust in the eyes of the enervated voluptuary who held the reins of power in a sadly palsied grasp. I too must take a leaf out of the book of Asiatic duplicity. I had seen a ship full of wounded dropping her anchor as I came along; there must have been another attack on the stronghold at Sebastopol--I was pretty safe in surmising, with no satisfactory result. I would pretend then that I had been sent to inform his Excellency of the particulars, and accordingly I puffed forth a volume of pure white smoke towards the ceiling, and advanced under cover of the discharge.

"His Highness has sent me hither in haste to inform your Excellency of the great news from the front. Am I too late to be the fortunate bearer, or has your Excellency already heard the particulars from the Elshie?"[#]

[#] The ambassador.

He darted a keen, suspicious glance at me, and replied gravely enough, "The war goes on prosperously in the front. We shall yet sweep 'the Moscov' from the face of the earth!"

"I am desired to inform your Excellency," I resumed, determined to persevere at all hazards, "that the Allies have again attacked the place. The Moscov came out in great numbers to repel the assault; the French have suffered severely; the Turkish troops covered the retreat with great gallantry and steadiness; fifteen hundred Russians remained dead upon the field; many more are disabled; Sebastopol must surrender within ten days."

"Mashallah!" replied the Pasha, laying his pipe down by his side; but for the life of me I could not make out whether or not he believed a word I had been telling him.

"Have I fulfilled my duty to your Excellency?" I continued, becoming every moment more and more anxious to make my escape. "I am at your Excellency's disposal; I am the humblest of your slaves. Have I your permission to depart?"

He looked uneasily around, but there seemed no apparent excuse for delay. It was evident to me that he wished to communicate with his retainers, but that his politeness forbade him to do so in my presence, and a Turk never allows any emergency to make him forget the exigencies of etiquette. He bade me farewell with much cordiality, ordered a horse to be got ready to carry me home, and dismissed me with many expressions of affection, but with the same fierce twinkle in that cunning leaden eye that had already more than once warned me to beware.

Many and devoted were the Pasha's retainers; hundreds slept on his mats, and followed at his heels, but I question whether I, the poor nameless Interpreter, could not command a greater amount of affection, courage, and fidelity, in the breast of my one trusty four-footed slave and companion, than existed in the whole retinue, black and white, of the Oriental dignitary.

Bold had followed me through my wanderings, faced with me many of the dangers of warfare, and shared in all its privations. The old dog was getting very time-worn now, quite grizzled about the muzzle, and ludicrously solemn, both in countenance and demeanour. To the world in general his temper was anything but conciliatory, and it required little provocation to make him set his mark on man or beast that affronted him; but with me he was always the same, obedient, devoted, and affectionate. He accompanied me everywhere, and would wait for hours in the court-yards of the Seraskerât or the Embassy, till his master emerged from the long-watched portal, when he would rise, give himself a lazy shake, and stalk on gravely by my side, occasionally thrusting his wet cold nose into my hand, and scowling at all strangers, even of his own species, with a very ominous "noli me tangere" expression, that forbade the slightest approach to familiarity.

Now the dog is an unclean animal to the Mussulman, and although his life is spared, as being the authorised scavenger of the streets, the true disciple of the Prophet scrupulously shuns all contact with the brute that the Christian loves to train as a servant and cherish as a friend. There is a curious old Arabic legend, which, although not to be found in the Koran, is recognised by the faithful as a trustworthy tradition, and to believe in which is esteemed an essential point of doctrine by the devout, that accounts for this unkindly superstition. Freely translated, it runs much in the following fashion:--

"When Allah had created the land and the sea, the mountains, the forests, the flowers, and the precious stones, he looked, and behold there was beauty and silence all over the earth.

"Then Allah created the birds and the beasts and the fishes; all things that swim, and creep, and fly, and run, and every living thing rejoiced in the sunshine.

"So Allah rested from his work in the Garden of Eden, by the Four Rivers, and looked around him, and behold the whole earth was astir in the forepart of the day.

"Then the breeze blew, and the waters laughed and rippled, and the birds sang, and the blossoms fell.

"So the angels smiled, and said, Praise be to Allah. It is very good--Allah! Bismillah!

"Then Allah saw that there were none of the inhabitants of earth that could smile as the angels smiled, or walk erect and praise him with the face to heaven.

"For the steed was grazing downward, and the lion lay couched in his lair, and the eagle, though she turned her eye to the sun, had neither praise nor smile.

"Then Allah took clay, and moistened it, and fashioned it till the sun went down.

"And Allah rested from his work, and left it in the Garden of Eden, by the Great Tree, where the Four Rivers spring.

"Now Gabriel walked in the garden, and he stopped where the work of Allah lay plastic on the sward, and the star shone bright on his forehead, for he praised Allah in his heart.

"And Shaitán came to walk in the garden, to cool his brow, and he stopped over against Gabriel and mocked.

"And Shaitán said, 'What is this, that I may know it, and name it, and claim my share in it for my own?'

"And Gabriel answered, 'Praise be to Allah; who has made all things well. This is Allah's work, and it shall be the perfection of all. Bismillah!'

"Then Shaitán laughed once more, and he turned the image over with his foot, so that it stood on all fours, with its face to the dust, and spat upon it, and said, 'It is empty! On my eyes be it!'

"And in the morning there was silence in Eden, for the work of Allah had been defiled.

"And Allah said, 'This is the doing of Shaitán. Behold, I will make of it yet another brute, and it shall be called the Dog, and be accursed.

"'And I will take other clay, and fashion another image that shall smile as the angels smile, and walk erect with its face to heaven, and I will call it Man.'

"And Shaitán cowered behind the Great Tree and listened to the voice of Allah, and though he trembled, he smiled.

"For Shaitán knew that he would have his share in the Man as in the beast."

Poor Bold, unconscious of his excommunication, hurried up to me in the court-yard of the Pasha's palace, where a fine horse, richly caparisoned, was being brought alongside the mounting-block for my use. In doing so the dog's tail, waving to greet his master, touched the hand of a tall forbidding-looking negro that stood by, grinning from ear to ear, as is the custom of his countrymen. The black swore a great oath, and kicked my dog savagely in the jaws. As Bold pinned him by the leg, I caught him such a buffet under the ear as knocked him fairly into the dust; from which abject position he embraced my feet and called me "his father." With some little difficulty I rated Bold off his prostrate foe, and mounting my horse, or rather the Pasha's, rode quietly to my hotel, where I dismissed the steed, and the groom who had accompanied him on foot, with a "baksheesh," and thought nothing more of the transaction. "A word and a blow" is as common a proceeding in Constantinople as at Donnybrook fair, though it leads to far different results; inasmuch as in the former abode of despotic authority and slavish submission it is very generally the only argument that is capable of enforcing proper subordination and respect.

It is seldom that a man loses his temper, even under the greatest provocation, without having cause, sooner or later, to regret his want of self-command. There are few of our fellow-creatures so unimportant that it is not worth while to conciliate them, none that may not some time have it in their power to inflict on us an injury; besides, an angry man is only less contemptible than a frightened one. And, like everything else that is unchristianlike, it is surely ungentlemanlike to put oneself in a passion. There was not much in knocking down a negro slave for his brutality towards my favourite, yet, ere long, I had cause bitterly to rue that I had not let him alone.

CHAPTER XXXIV

"MESSIRIE'S"

A narrow street, paved with the roughest and sharpest of flints, debouching into three other streets even less commodious than itself; a Turkish sentry dozing torpid at his post--half-a-dozen hamauls[#] clad in rough frieze jackets, and wide pantaloons of the same material, gathered in at the knee, scratching their brown herculean legs, and examining their broad flat feet, as they recline against a dirty dead wall, and interchange their jests with a degree of humour foreign to our English ideas of Turkish gravity--a rascally-looking dragoman in a black frock-coat and a fez, rolling a cigarette, prepared to cheat, rob, swindle, or lie at the shortest notice, a slave to every sensual vice except drunkenness, and speaking all the languages on earth in bad Italian--a brace of English Jack-tars, afire with raki, trolling out "Cheer, boys, cheer," and a stray Zouave, equally exhilarated, joining in chorus; a T.G., or travelling gent, with nascent beard, and towel wound turban-wise around his straw-hat, wishing himself in Pall Mall, and indignant at the natives, who call him "Johnny."

[#] Porters.

The REAL thing from the Crimea, in a curiously worn-out shell jacket, patched and darned, stained and tarnished, with a bronzed face, a bushy beard of two years' growth, and a slight limp that for the rest of his life will bid him "remember the fifth of November," and the turning of the tide upon the declivity of Inkermann.

Two or three English merchants, like crows, to be seen all over the world, and everywhere in the same dress, with white shirts, and honest broad-cloth coats, that remind one of home; a Queen's messenger, with tweed shooting-jacket and official forage-cap, clean shaved and clear-looking, after the bad passage and gale of wind he is sure at all seasons to encounter in the Mediterranean, a miracle to us habitués of the place, being actually as fresh from London as yonder copy of The Times newspaper, which came with him by the same mail, the only unfeathered biped in creation that thoroughly carries out the idea of "Here to-day, gone to-morrow." Such are the concomitants of the scene upon which I enter at the door of Messirie's hotel, that well-known rendezvous in Pera where congregate all that have any connection with the mother country; a place where every rumour is to be heard with its latest embellishments, and where, for the sum of seventeen francs a day, I can command a moderate breakfast, a dinner into the components of which it is better not to inquire, and a murky bedroom, where the fierce mosquito shall drain my life-blood all the weary night.

"Is Major Manners in the hotel?" I inquire, as I throw myself off the Pasha's horse, and, glancing at a face in the street very like that of the man I knocked down some three-quarters of an hour ago, reflect what a family resemblance reigns amongst the wretched sons of Ham. Bold is in his worst of humours, and growls ominously. "Is Major Manners here?" I repeat, and three Greek servants, with an abortive attempt to pronounce the Frankish name, shrug their shoulders and open their hands to express the hopeless imbecility in which they rejoice. I perceive a stout man in a white hat, picking his teeth unconcernedly in the passage, and, recognising him for the master, I apply at once for the information I require. He looks contemptuously at me in reply, and, turning his broad back upon me, walks off without deigning to take any further notice of a customer; but I have been here before, and I know there is balm in Gilead. I know that in a certain little room on the left I shall find the hostess, and that she, the mainstay and prop of the establishment, will spare no pains to assist a countryman. Kindly Madame Messirie! always ready to aid one in a difficulty, always busy, always good-humoured, always so thoroughly English, it was quite refreshing to hear the tones of your homely voice, and fancy oneself in the "White Lion," or the "Blue Bear," or some other pleasant hostelry, with post-horses and a bar, and an ostler's bell, far away in merry England.

"Vere Egerton! can that be you?" said a voice that I thought I recognised, as I entered the sanctum in which the hostess reigned supreme. "Little Egerton, as I'm alive, growed out of knowledge, and doubtless by this time a Pasha with three tails, and a true believer. Tell me all about the process of conversion and the tenets of your faith."

It was indeed Ropsley,--Ropsley the Guardsman--Ropsley the dandy, but how altered! The attenuated roué of former days had grown large and muscular, his face was brown and healthy, his forehead frank and open, the clear grey eye was brighter and quicker than it used to be; it had caught the ready, eager glance of those who look death habitually in the face, but had lost much of the cruel, calculating, leaden expression I remembered so well. Despite his worn-out uniform, the rents in which showed here and there a red flannel shirt,--despite his close-cropped hair and flowing beard,--I could not but confess to myself, as I grasped his hand, that Ropsley looked ten years younger and ten times handsomer than when I saw him last.

Yes, I met him cordially, and as an old friend. 'Tis true he had been my greatest enemy, 'tis true he had inflicted on me a wound, the scar of which I felt I should carry to my grave; but months had passed away since then; months which, crowding events upon events, had seemed like years; months of danger, labour, hardship, and tribulation. Of what avail is suffering if it does not soften and purify the heart? Why are those that mourn blessed, if it is not that they learn the bitter lesson grief alone can teach? My task had been a hard one--how hard none knew save the poor humbled scholar who conned it day by day, and blistered the page with his tears; but I had conquered it at last, and so I freely forgave Ropsley, and clasped him by the hand.

"You dine here, of course," he said, in his old half-humorous, half-sarcastic voice. "Madame Messirie, princess of Pera, and queen of my soul, order a place to be set for my friend the Pasha, and lots of champagne to be put in ice. I have only just come down from the front; I have scarcely had a decent dinner, or seen a silver fork, for a year and a half. It's an endless business, this, Egerton; hammer, hammer, hammer, yet nothing comes of it, and the old place looks whiter and more inviting than ever, but we can't get in!"

"And the Mamelon?" said I, eager for the last news from the spot to which millions of hearts were reaching, all athirst for hope.

"Got it at last," was his reply, "at least, our neighbours have; I hope they'll keep it. We made a sad mess last week, Egerton; lost no end of men, and half our best officers. Whew! I say nothing, only mark my words, if ever--but there's the bell! Never mind the siege now. War's a mistake, but dinner (if you can get it) never deceives you." And so saying, the ci-devant dandy patted me on the back, and pushed me before him into the well-lighted and now crowded salon.

In that strange country, so thoroughly Asiatic, which we call Turkey in Europe, there were so few links to connect us with the life of civilisation which seemed to have passed from us like a dream, that it was no wonder we clung to Messirie's hotel and thronged its table d'hôte with a constancy and devotion less to be attributed to its own intrinsic merits than to the associations and reminiscences it called forth. Here were to be met all the gallant fellows who were going to, or coming from, the front. Heroes, whose names were destined to gild the page of history, might here be seen drinking bad tea and complaining of the butter like ordinary mortals; but always in the highest spirits, as men seem invariably to be during the short lulls of a campaign. When you are likely to be shot next Monday week, if you have small hopes, you have few anxieties. Here, too, you might sit opposite a diplomatist, who was supposed to know the innermost secrets of the court at Vienna, and to be advised of what "the Austrians meant to do," whilst rubbing shoulders with you as he helped himself to fish; and confronting the man of ciphers, some heroic refugee, Pole, Croat, or Hungarian, whose name was in every journal in Europe, as it was inscribed on every military post in Austria or Russia, munched away with a capital appetite, and appeared only conspicuous for the extreme modesty and gentleness of his demeanour. Contractors of every nation jabbered in every language, nor was the supple Armenian, grafting the bold spirit of European speculation on his own Oriental duplicity, wanting to grasp his share of the plunder, which John Bull was so magnanimously offering as a premium to every description of fraud. Even the softer sex was not without its representatives. Two or three high-born English ladies, whose loving hearts had brought them hovering as near the seat of war as it was possible for a non-combatant to venture, daily shed the light of their presence at the dinner-table, and were silently welcomed by many a bold spirit with a degree of chivalrous enthusiasm, of which, anxious and pre-occupied, they were but little aware. A man must have been living for months among men, must have felt his nature gradually brutalising amidst the hardships, the sufferings, and the horrors of war, thoroughly to appreciate the softening influence of a woman's, and especially of a countrywoman's, society. Even to look on those waving white dresses, those gentle English faces, with their blooming cheeks and rich brown hair, was like a draught of water to a pilgrim in a weary land. It reminded us of home--of those we loved--and we went our way back into the desert a thought saddened, perhaps, yet, for all that, kindlier and happier men.

"What a meeting!" exclaimed Manners, as, gorgeously arrayed in the splendours of a full-dress uniform, he took his seat by my side and shook hands with Ropsley, who returned his greeting with a cordial pressure and a look of quiet amusement in his eye that almost upset my gravity: "Everdon at Constantinople!" continued our former usher; "we only want De Rohan to make our gathering quite perfect!"

I winced, and for the first time in my life I saw Ropsley colour, but Manners was too much occupied to notice the emotion of either of us; for, during his many visits to Constantinople, the dashing officer of Bashi-Bazouks had made such numerous acquaintances, and become so necessary an ingredient in the society of Pera, that there seemed to be hardly an individual at table, from the attaché of the Embassy down to the last-joined officer of the Commissariat, with whom he was not on terms of intimate familiarity. He had scarcely taken his seat and unfolded his dinner-napkin, ere the cross-fire of greetings and inquiries began. Manners, too, in the sunshine of all his popularity, had expanded into a wag; and although his witticisms were of a somewhat profound order, and not always very apparent to the superficial observer, they were generally well received; for a wag was a scarcer article in Constantinople than at the front.

So Manners proceeds with his dinner in great satisfaction and glory. After a couple of glasses of champagne he becomes overpoweringly brilliant. He is good enough, too, to take upon himself the onerous task of drilling the waiters, which he affects in bad French, and of abusing the deficiencies of the cuisine; a topic affording, indeed, ample scope for declamation. The waiters, especially a cunning old Greek, with a most villainous expression of countenance, betray an immense respect for Manners, tinged with an amused sort of amazement, and always help him first.

They bring him a dish of hare, large of limb and venerable in point of years. Our Bashi-Bazouk exclaims indignantly, "Qu'est que ça?"

"C'est un lièvre, M'sieur," replies the waiter, with a forced smile, as of one who expects a jest he will not comprehend.

"C'est un chat!" gasps out Manners, glaring indignantly on the official.

"Pardon, M'sieur," says the waiter, "c'est trop gros pour un chat."

"Chat," repeats Manners; "Chat THOMAS!" he adds, in a sepulchral voice, and with a frowning brow. The waiter shrinks abashed, the company laugh, and Manners's observation counts for a joke.

By this time conversation begins to buzz pretty freely around. Everybody drinks champagne, and tongues soon become loosened by the exhilarating fluid. Various topics are discussed, including a new beauty that has just arrived from Smyrna, of French extraction, and supposed to possess a fortune that sounds perfectly fabulous when calculated in francs. Manners listens attentively, for he has not totally abandoned the idea of combining the excitement of war with the pursuit of beauty--properly gilded, of course--and his maxim is that "None but the brave deserve the fair." Her praises, however, as also her name and address, are intercepted by the voluble comments of two stout gentlemen, his neighbours, on the utter incapacity of the Turkish Government, and the hopeless imbecility of "the people of this unhappy country, Sir,--a people without a notion of progress---destined to decay, Sir, from the face of the earth," as the stouter of the two, a British merchant, who is about investing in land here, remarks to his neighbour, a jovial Frenchman, who has already bought many a fertile acre in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, under the new Hatti-Sheriff;[#] and who replies, fixing his napkin securely in his button-hole--

[#] An act empowering foreigners to hold land in Turkey.

"Pourri, voyez-vous, mon cher. Crac! ça ne durera pas trois ans."

Opposite these worthies, an ensign in the Guards, and the Queen's messenger, who is of a theatrical turn, are busy with the character, private as well as professional, of a certain star of the Opera, whom the latter has already criticised in the execution of his duty at Vienna, and an ardent desire to hear whom haunts the former enthusiast to such a degree, even in the very trenches, that he longs to attack and take Sebastopol single-handed, in order to get home again before she leaves London for the winter. The Turkish Ministry, changing as it does about once a week; the policy of Austria; the Emperor Napoleon's energy; the inefficiency of our own Commissariat; the ludicrous blunders of the War Office, and the last retort courteous of Lord Stratford, all come in for their share of remark from prejudiced observers of every party and every opinion; but by degrees one voice rises louder than the rest, one individual attracts the notice of the whole dinner-table, and nowise abashed, but rather encouraged by the attention he commands, details volubly his own account of the capture of the Mamelon. He is a Frenchman, and a civilian, but somehow he has a red ribbon on his breast, and belongs to the Legion of Honour, so he "assisted," as he calls it, at the attack; and if he speaks truth, it must indeed have been an awful sight, and one in which his countrymen outdid themselves for valour, and that quality peculiar to the soldiers of France which they term élan, a word it is hopeless to think of translating. His opinions are decided, if not satisfactory; his plan of storming the place an excellent one, if it could only be carried out.

"We have taken the Mamelon!" says he, "and what remains? Bah! The Malakhoff Tower is the key to the whole position. What would you have? Every simple soldier in the army knows it as well as you and I do. I tell you I 'assisted' at the capture of the Mamelon Vert. They received us with a fire, well sustained, of grape and small arms. Our ammunition failed us at the critical moment. I was in the ditch--me!--when the Zouaves came on with their yell--the 152nd of the line were in front of them. It must be carried with the bayonet!--Pflan!--our little red pantaloons were swarming up the work and over the parapet ere you could count ten--the tricolor was hoisted and the guns spiked in a twinkling--that is the only way to arrange these affairs. Now, see here--you have your Redan, you others--you have sapped up to it, as near as you can get. There must be a combined attack. You cannot hold it till we have silenced that little rogue of a Malakhoff. What to do? One of these 'four mornings,' as it was with the Mamelon so will it be with the Malakhoff! Give me a thick column, with the Zouaves in front and rear. These are not follies. I advance my column under cover--I pour in a volley!--I rush on with the bayonet! At the same moment the Redan falls. Your Guards and Scotchmen run in with their heads, a thousand cannon support you with their fire, the Allies hold the two most important defences, the Garden Batteries are silenced. Chut! the place is ours! France and England are looking on. I do not say that this will be done; but this is how it ought to be done. If your generals are fools, what is that to me? I am not a general--I!--but a simple civilian!--Waiter, a cigar! Qui vivra, verra."

It is all pipe-clay, as the soldiers call it, now. The one engrossing topic silences every other. Alma, Inkermann, Lord Raglan's flank march, and the earlier incidents of the siege, are related by the very men who took an active share in those deeds of glory. Two cavalry officers, both wounded on the fatal day, recapitulate once more the pros and cons of the immortal charge at Balaklava--a question that has been vexed and argued till the very actors themselves in that most brilliant of disasters scarcely know how they got in, and still less how they ever got out. Though struck down by the same shell, and within ten yards of one another, each takes a diametrically opposite view of the whole transaction from his comrade. They differ materially as to time, position, pace, and results; above all, as to the merits of the leader whose wreath of laurels faded as undeservedly as it bloomed prematurely.

"I was close behind him the whole way," says the one; "I never saw a fellow so cool in my life, or so well 'got up.' He regulated every stride of that good chestnut horse like clock-work. When we came into fire, our line was dressed as if on parade. I know it by my own squadron. Will you tell me that man lost his head?"

"But where was he after we rode through the guns?" replied the other. "Answer me that! I grant you he took us in like a brick. But why didn't he bring us out? I never saw him after I was hit, and I must have seen him if he had rallied the first line, and been in his proper place to look out for his support. You were close to me, old fellow! I never knew before that bob-tailed Irish horse of yours could gallop a mile and a half. You were sickish, my boy, for I saw your face; but your eyesight was unimpaired. Tell me, did you see him, and what was he doing?"

"I did, I'll swear!" answers the partisan, as fine a specimen of a young hussar as ever drew a sword. "And I'll tell you what he was doing. Mind, I don't say it because I like him, for I don't. Confound him! he put me under arrest once in Dublin, and I believe it was only because my boots weren't well blacked. But I saw him, with my own eyes, striking at three Cossacks, who were prodding him with their long lances; and if poor old Champion had not dropped under me just at that moment, I'd have gone in and had a shy to help him, if I lost my stick. No, no! he's game as a pebble, let them say what they will; and if it wasn't for those cursed papers, he'd have had all the credit he deserves. It was the quickest thing I ever rode to, my boy," adds the young one, rather flushed, and drinking off his champagne at a gulp in his excitement. "He had a lead, and he kept it right well, and I won't hear him run down."

"I don't care," replies his friend. "I maintain it's a general's duty to know everything that's going on. I maintain he ought to have stood still and looked about him (to be sure, we couldn't see much in that smoke); ay! and, if necessary, waited there for the Heavies to come up. Now, I'll prove it to you in five minutes, if you'll only listen, you obstinate young beggar! Do you remember, just before we were both hit, your saying to me, 'What a go this is!' and my answering, 'Whatever we do, we must keep the men together, but half my horses are blown.' Do you remember that?"

"I admit nothing," answers the young man, laughing, "but I do remember that. It was just before we saw that strong body of Russian cavalry in rear of the guns, and I don't make out now why they weren't down upon us."

"Never mind that," pursues his opponent. "They behaved very steadily, and retired in good order; but you remember the circumstance. Well, he was then about six horses' lengths from us on our fight."

"On our left," interposes the younger man--"on our left; for I remember poor Blades was knocked over between me and him."

"On our right," persists the other. "I am certain of it, my dear fellow, for I remarked at the time----"

"I am positive he was on our left! I remember it as well as if it was yesterday."

"I could take my oath he was on our right; for I recollect seeing his sabretasche swinging."

"Left!" says one, "Right!" says the other; and they never advance one step farther in the discussion, which will be prolonged far into the night, to the consumption of much brandy and water, together with countless cigars, but with no further result.

If no two men see any one action of common life in the same light, how hopeless must it be to endeavour to get at the true statement of an event which takes place in the presence of a crowd of witnesses, all excited, all in peril of their lives, all enveloped in the dense smoke of a hundred guns, all maddening with the fierce, blood-stirring turmoil of such a deed of arms as the death-ride at Balaklava.

The instant dinner is finished, and coffee served, cigars are lit. It is a signal for the ladies to retire, and our handsome countrywomen sail out of the room, with that stately walk that none but an English lady ever succeeds in effecting. Many a glance follows them as they disappear; many a stout heart tightens under its scarlet covering, to think of the ideal at home--her gloves, her dress, her fragrant hair, her graceful gestures, and the gentle smile that may never gladden him again. Men are strange mixtures! the roughest and the coldest exteriors sometimes hide the most sensitive feelings; and when I hear a man professing audacious libertinism, and a supreme contempt for women, I always mistrust the bravado that is but a covering for his weakness, and set him down at once as a puppet, that a pair of white hands--if one only knew where to find them--can turn and twist and set aside at will.

Ropsley was much softer in his manner than he used to be. Had he, too, experienced the common fate? Was the dandy Guardsman no longer impervious, nulli penetrabilis astro? Painful as was the subject, he talked much of the De Rohans. He had seen Constance married; he had heard repeatedly from Victor during the past year; and though he evidently knew my hopes and their disappointment, by the tenderness with which he handled the subject, he could not resist enlarging on the topic, and talking to me of that family, in which I could never cease to take the warmest interest. I winced, and yet I listened, for I longed to know and hear of her even now. I would have lain quietly on the rack only to be told of her welfare. It was painful too. Perhaps there is no moment at which the heart feels so empty--at which the hopelessness of a loss is so completely realised, as when we hear the idol of our lives talked of in a matter-of-course way, as being totally unconnected with, and independent of, ourselves.

I remarked that, of his own accord, Ropsley never mentioned Valèrie. To an inquiry of mine as to the welfare of my kind and handsome nurse, he gave, I thought, rather an abrupt reply; and, turning suddenly round to Manners, asked him "if there was nothing to be done in the evening in this stupid place?" To which our gallant Bashi-Bazouk, who considered himself responsible for our amusement, answered delightedly, "No opera yet, Ropsley, though we shall have one in six weeks; no evening parties either, except a few amongst the French inhabitants--delightful people, you know, and very select. I am invited to-night to a little music, not far from here. I could take you both, if you like, with me. As friends of mine you would be most welcome. You speak French, Ropsley, if I remember right?"

"A little," replied the latter, much amused, "but not with your accent;" which, indeed, was true enough; for he had lived a good deal at Paris, and knew Chantilly as well as Newmarket. "Am I well enough dressed, though, for your fastidious friends?" he added, glancing, not without a gleam of inward satisfaction, from his own war-worn, threadbare uniform, to Manners's brilliant and somewhat startling costume.

"Couldn't be better!" replied the latter; "looks workmanlike, and all that. This time next year I only hope mine will be half as good. Meanwhile, come along, you and Egerton; never mind your cigars, they all smoke here."

"What! ladies and all, at these select parties?" laughed Ropsley. "I thought we were going amongst a lot of duchesses: but I hope they don't drink as well?"

"Custom of the country, my dear sir," replied Manners, gravely--"only cigarettes, of course. If a young lady offers to roll you one, don't refuse it. These little things are matters of etiquette, and it is as well to know beforehand." So, drilling us on the proper behaviour to be observed at a Pera party, our cicerone swaggered out into the night air, clanking his spurs, and rattling his sabre, with a degree of jingling vigour which seemed to afford him unlimited satisfaction. It was rather good to see Ropsley of the Guards--the man who had the entrée to all the best houses in London, the arbiter of White's, the quoted of diners-out, the favourite of fine ladies--listening with an air of the greatest attention to our former usher's lectures on the proper deportment to be assumed in the company to which he was taking us, and thanking him with the utmost gravity for his judicious hints and kind introduction to the élite of Pera society.

"Go home, Bold, go home." The old dog would accompany me out of the hotel, would persist in following close at my heel along the narrow street. Not a soul but our three selves seemed to be wandering about this beautiful starlight night. The Turkish sentry was sound asleep on his post; a dark figure, probably some houseless hamaul, crouched near the sentry-box. Savage Bold wanted to fly at it as he passed.

"How cantankerous the old dog grows," remarked Ropsley, as Bold stalked behind us, ears erect, and bristling all over with defiance. Ere we were fifty yards from the hotel he stopped short and barked loudly; a footstep was rapidly approaching up the street. Murders and robberies were at this time so frequent in Constantinople, that every passenger was an object of mistrust in the dark. We, however, were three strong men, all armed, and had nothing to fear. Bold, too, seemed to recognise the step. In another moment the Beloochee overtakes us, and with even a more imperturbable air than usual salutes me gravely, and whispers a few words in my ear. On my reply, he places my hand against his forehead, and says, "The brothers of the sword are brothers indeed. Effendi, you know Ali Mesrour, the son of Abdul. From henceforth my life is at the disposal of my Frankish brother."

A hurried consultation between the three Englishmen succeeds. Manners makes a great virtue of sacrificing sundry waltzes on which he seems to have set his heart, and is pathetic about the disappointment his absence will too surely inflict on Josephine, and Philippine, and Seraphine, but is amazingly keen and full of spirits notwithstanding. Ropsley, no longer the unimpressionable, apathetic dandy, whom nothing can excite or amuse, enters with zest into our project, and betrays a depth of feeling,--nay, a touch of romance--of which I had believed him incapable. Bold is ordered peremptorily to "go home," and obeys, though most unwillingly, stopping some twenty paces off, and growling furiously in the darkness. Two and two we thread the narrow streets that lead down to the water's edge. The Beloochee is very silent, as is his wont, but ever and anon draws his shawl tighter round his waist, and loosens his dagger in its sheath. It is evident that he means real business. Manners and Ropsley chat and laugh like boys out of school. The latter never seemed half so boyish as now; the former will be a boy all his life--so much the better for him. At the bridge Ali gives a low shrill whistle. It reminds me of the night we escaped from the Cossacks in Wallachia; but the good mare this time is safe in her stable, and little thinks of the errand on which her master is bound. The whistle is answered from the water, and a double-oared caïque, with its white-robed watermen, looms through the darkness to take us on board. As we glide silently up the Bosphorus, listening to the unearthly chorus of the baying wild-dogs answering each other from Pera to Stamboul, Manners produces a revolver from his breast-pocket, and passing his finger along the barrel shining in the starlight, observes, "Four of us, and five here, make nine. If the gate is only unlocked, we can carry the place by storm."

CHAPTER XXXV.

"THE WOLF AND THE LAMB."

Papoosh Pasha is taking his kief[#] in his harem. Two softly shaded lamps, burning perfumed oil, shed a voluptuous light over the apartment. Rich carpets from the looms of Persia are spread upon the floor; costly shawls from Northern India fall in graceful folds over the low divan on which he reclines. Jewel-hilted sabres, silver-sheathed daggers, and firearms inlaid with gold, glitter above his head, disposed tastefully against the walls, and marking the warlike character of the owner; for Papoosh Pasha, cruel, sensual, and corrupt to the very marrow, is nevertheless as brave as a lion.

[#] Repose.

Two nautch-girls belonging to his seraglio have been dancing their voluptuous measure for his gratification. As they stand now unveiled, panting and glowing with their exertions, the rich Eastern blood crimsoning their soft cheeks, and coursing wildly through their shapely, pliant limbs, the old man's face assumes a placid expression of content only belied by the gleam in that wicked eye, and he is good enough to wave his amber-tipped pipe-stick in token of dismissal, and to express his approbation by the single word "Peki" (very well). The girls prostrate themselves before their lord, their silver armlets and anklets ringing as they touch the floor, and bounding away like two young antelopes, flit from the presence, apparently not unwilling to escape so easily. Papoosh Pasha is left alone with the favourite; but the favourite looks restless and preoccupied, and glances ever and anon towards the casement which opens out into the garden of the seraglio, now beginning to glisten in the light of the rising moon, and breathing the odours of a thousand flowers, heavy and fragrant with the dews of night. This part of the harem is on the ground floor, and is a retreat much affected by his Highness for the facility with which the breeze steals into it from the Bosphorus.

Zuleika is dressed in all the magnificence of her richest Oriental costume. Her tiny feet, arched in true Arabian symmetry, are bare to the ankle, where her voluminous muslin trousers are gathered in by a bracelet, or more correctly an anklet, set with rubies and emeralds. A string of beads of the purest lemon-coloured amber marks the outlines of her slender waist, and terminates a short, close-fitting jacket of pink satin, embroidered with seed-pearls, open at the bosom, and with long sleeves fringed by lace of European manufacture. This again is covered by a large loose mantle of green silk, carelessly thrown over the whole figure. Zuleika has not forgotten that she is lineally descended from the Prophet, and wears his colour accordingly. Her hands, in compliance with Eastern custom, are dyed with henna, but even this horrid practice cannot disguise the symmetry of her tapered fingers; and although the hair is cut short on her left temple, the long raven locks from the other side are gathered and plaited into a lustrous diadem around her brows. She has pencilled her lower eyelashes with some dark substance that enhances their natural beauty, but even this effort of the toilette has not succeeded in imparting the languishing expression which a Turkish beauty deems so irresistible. No; the gleam in Zuleika's eye is more that of some wild animal, caught but not tamed glancing eagerly around for a chance of escape, and ready to tear the hand that would caress it and endeavour to reconcile it to its fetters.

She does not look as if she loved you, Papoosh Pasha, when you order her to your feet, and stroke her hair with your fat hand, and gloat on that mournful, eager face with your little twinkling eye. Better be a bachelor, Papoosh Pasha, and confine yourself to the solace of coffee and pipes, and busy your cunning intellect with those puzzling European politics, and look after the interests of your dissipated master the Sultan, than take a wild bird to your bosom that will never know you or care for you, or cease to pine and fret, and beat her breast against the bars of the cage in which you have shut her up.

The old man sinks back upon his cushions with a sigh of corporeal contentment. His fat person is enveloped in a flowing shawl-gown, which admits of his breathing far more freely than does that miserable tight frock-coat he wore all day. He has gorged himself with an enormous meal, chiefly composed of fat substances, vegetables, and sweetmeats. He has had his tiny measure of hot strong coffee, and is puffing forth volumes of smoke from a long cherry-stick pipe. He bids Zuleika kneel at his feet and sing him to his rest. The girl glances eagerly towards the window, and seems to listen; she dare not move at once to the casement and look out, for her lord is mistrustful and suspicious, and woe to her if she excites his jealousy to such a pitch that she cannot lull it to sleep again. She would give him an opiate if she dared, or something stronger still, that should settle all accounts; but there is a dark story in the harem of a former favourite--a Circassian--who tried to strike the same path for freedom, and failed in the attempt. She has long slept peacefully some forty fathom deep in the sparkling Bosphorus, and the caïques that take her former comrades to the Sweet-Waters glide along over her head without disturbing her repose. Since then, whenever Papoosh Pasha drinks in the women's apartment, he has the gallantry to insist on a lady pledging him first before he puts his own fat lips to the bowl.

"Come hither, Zuleika, little dove," says the old man, drawing her towards him; "light of my eyes and pearl of my heart, come hither that I may lay my head on thy bosom, and sleep to the soft murmurings of thy gentle voice."

The girl obeys, but glances once more uneasily towards the window, and takes her place with compressed lips, and cheeks as pale as death. A long Albanian dagger, the spoil of some lawless chief, hangs temptingly within arm's length. Another such caress as that, Papoosh Pasha, and who shall ensure you that she does not bury it in your heart!

But a more feminine weapon is in her hand--a three-stringed lute or gittern, incapable of producing much harmony, but nevertheless affording a plaintive and not inappropriate accompaniment to the measured chant with which the reigning Odalisque lulls her master to his rest. The tones of her voice are very wild and sad. Ever and anon she stops in her music and listens to the breathing of the Pasha; so surely he opens his eyes, and raising his head from her lap bids her go on,--not angrily nor petulantly, but with a quiet overbearing malice that irritates the free spirit of the girl to the quick. She strikes the gittern with no unskilful hand; and although her voice is mournful, it is sweet and musical as she sings; but the glance of her eye denotes mischief, and I had rather be sleeping over a powder magazine with my lighted chibouque in my mouth, than pillow my head, as you are doing, Papoosh Pasha, on the lap of a woman maddened by tyranny and imprisonment,--her whole being filled with but two feelings--Love stronger than death; Hatred fiercer than hell. And this is the caged bird's song:--

Down in the valley where the Sweet-Waters meet--where the Sweet-Waters meet under the chestnut trees,--

There Hamed had a garden; and the wild bird sang to the Rose.

In the garden were many flowers, and the pomegranate grew in the midst. Fair and stately she grew, and the fruit from her branches dropped like dew upon the sward.

And Hamed watered the tree and pruned her, and lay down in the cool freshness of her shade.

Beautiful was the pomegranate, yet the wild bird sang to the Rose.

The Lily bent lowly to the earth, and drooped for very shame, because the breeze courted the Lily and kissed her as he swept by to meet the Sweet-Waters under the chestnut trees.

For the Lily was the fairest of flowers; yet the wild bird sang to the Rose.

Then there came a blast from the desert, and the garden of Hamed was scorched and withered up;

And the pomegranate sickened and died; and Hamed cut her down by the roots, and sowed corn over the place of her shade.

And the breeze swept on, and stayed not, though the Lily lay trampled into the earth.

Every flower sickened and died; yet the wild bird sang to the Rose.

In the dawn of early morning, when the sky is green with longing, and the day is at hand,

When the winds are hushed, and the waters sleep smiling, and the stars are dim in the sky:

When she pines for his coming, and spreads her petals to meet him, and droops to hear his note;

When the garden gate is open, and the watchers are asleep, and the last, last hope is dying,--will the wild bird come to the Rose?

The concluding lines she sang in a marked voice there was no mistaking, and I doubt if they did not thrill to the heart's core of more than one listener.

The moon had now fairly risen, and silvered the trees and shrubs in the harem garden with her light, leaving, however, dense masses of shade athwart the smooth lawn and under the walls of the building. Cypress and cedar quivered in her beams. Not a breath of air stirred the feathery leaves of the tall acacia, with its glistening stem; and the swelling ripple of the Bosphorus plashed drowsily against the marble steps. All was peace and silence and repose. Far enough off to elude observation, yet within hail, lay our caïque, poised buoyantly on the waters, and cutting with its dark outline right athwart a glittering pathway as of molten gold. Close under the harem window, concealed by the thick foliage of a broad-leaved creeper, Ali Mesrour and myself crouched, silent and anxious, scarce daring to breathe, counting with sickening eagerness the precious moments that were fleeting by, so tedious yet so soon past. Twenty paces farther off, under a dark group of cypresses, lay Ropsley and Manners ready for action, the latter with his hand in his bosom caressing the trusty revolver by which he set such store.

Everything had as yet gone off prosperously. We had landed noiseless and unobserved. The garden gate, thanks to woman's foresight and woman's cunning, had been left open. The sentry on guard, like all other Turkish sentries when not before an enemy, had lain down, enveloped in his great-coat, with his musket by his side, and was snoring as only a true son of Osman can snore after a bellyful of pilaff. If his lord would but follow his example, it might be done; yet never was old man so restless, so ill at ease, so wakefully disposed as seemed Papoosh Pasha.

We could see right into the apartment, and the rich soft lamplight brought out in full relief the faces and figures of its two occupants. Zuleika sat with her feet gathered under her on the divan: one hand still held the lute; the other was unwillingly consigned to the caresses of her lord. The old man's head reclined against her bosom; his parted lips betokened rest and enjoyment; his eyes were half closed, yet there was a gleam of vigilant malice upon his features that denoted anything but sleep. The poor girl's face alternated from a scowl of withering hatred to a plaintive expression of heart-broken disappointment. Doubtless she was thinking "the last, last hope is dying, and the wild bird is not coming to the rose."

Ali Mesrour gazed on her he loved. If ever there was a trying situation, it was his--to see her even now in the very embrace of his enemy--so near, yet so apart. Few men could have enough preserved their self-command not to betray even by the workings of the countenance what a storm of feelings must be wasting the heart; yet the Beloochee moved not a muscle; his profile, turned towards me, was calm and grim as that of a statue. Once only the right hand crept stealthily towards his dagger, but the next moment he was again as still as death. The Pasha whispered something in the girl's ear, and a gleam of wild delight sparkled on her face as she listened. She rose cheerfully, left the room with a rapid, springing step, and returned almost immediately with a flask under her arm, and a huge goblet set with precious stones in her hand. Papoosh Pasha, true believer and faithful servant of the Prophet, it needs not the aid of a metal-covered cork, secured with wire, to enable us to guess at the contents of that Frankish flask. No sherbet of roses is poured into your brimming goblet--no harmless, unfermented liquor, flavoured with cinnamon or other lawful condiment; but the creaming flood of amber-coloured champagne whirls up to the very margin, and the Pasha's eye brightens with satisfaction as he stretches forth his hand to grasp its taper stem. Cunning and careful though, even in his debauches, he proffers the cup to Zuleika ere he tastes.

"Drink, my child," says the old hypocrite, "drink of the liquid such as the houris are keeping in Paradise for the souls of the true believers; drink and fear not--it is lawful. Allah Kerim!"

Zuleika wets her lips on the edge, and hands the cup to her lord, who drains it to the dregs, and sets it down with a sigh of intense satisfaction.

"It is lawful," he continues, wiping his moustaches. "It is not forbidden by the blessed Prophet. Wine indeed is prohibited to the true believer, but the Prophet knew not the flavour of champagne, and had he tasted it, he would have enjoined his servants to drink it four times a day. Fill again, Zuleika, oh my soul! Fill again! There is but one Allah!"

The girl needs no second bidding; once and again she fills to the brim; once and again the Pasha drains the tempting draught; and now the little twinkling eye dims, the cherry-stick falls from the opening fingers, the Pasha's head sinks upon Zuleika's bosom, and at last he is fast asleep. Gently, tenderly, like a mother soothing a child, she hushes him to his rest. Stealthily, slowly she transfers his head from her own breast to the embroidered cushions. Dexterously, noiselessly, see extricates herself from his embrace. A low whistle, scarcely perceptible, reaches her ear from the garden, and calls the blood into her cheek; and yet, a very woman even now, she turns to take one last look at him whom she is leaving for ever. A cool air steals in from the window, and plays upon the sleeper's open neck and throat. She draws a shawl carefully, nay, caressingly, around him. Brute, tyrant, enemy though he is, yet there have been moments when he was kindly and indulgent towards her, for she was his favourite; and she will not leave him in anger at the last. Fatal delay! mistaken tenderness! true woman! always influenced by her feelings at the wrong time! What did that moment's weakness cost us all? She had crossed the room--we were ready to receive her--her foot was on the very window-sill; another moment and she would have been in Ali's arms, when a footstep was heard rapidly approaching up the street, a black figure came bounding over the garden wall, closely followed by a large English retriever, and shouting an alarm wildly at the top of his voice. As the confused sentry fired off his musket in the air; as the Pasha's guards and retainers woke and sprang to their arms; as the Beloochee glared wildly around him; as Ropsley, no longer uninterested, swore volubly in English, and Manners drew the revolver from his bosom, Bold, for the second time that day, pinned a tall negro slave by the throat, and rolling him over and over on the sward, made as though he would have worried him to death in the garden.

It was, however, too late; the alarm was given, and all was discovered. The man I had struck in the afternoon of that very day had dogged me ever since, in hopes of an opportunity to revenge himself. He had followed me from place to place, overheard my conversation, and watched all those to whom I spoke. He had crouched under the sentry-box at the door of Messirie's hotel, had tracked us at a safe distance down to the very water's edge, and had seen us embark on our mysterious expedition. With the cunning of his race, he guessed at once at our object, and determined to frustrate it. Unable, I conclude, at that late hour to get a caïque, he had hastened by land to his master's house, and, as the event turned out, had arrived in time to overthrow all our plans. He was followed in his turn by my faithful Bold, who, when so peremptorily ordered to leave us, had been convinced there was something in the wind, and accordingly transferred his attentions to the figure that had been his object of distrust the live-long day. How he worried and tore at him, and refused to relinquish his hold. Alas! alas! it was too late--too late!

The Pasha sprang like a lion from his lair. At the same instant, Ali Mesrour and myself bounded lightly through the open window into the apartment. Zuleika flung herself with a loud shriek into her lover's arms. Manners and Ropsley came crowding in behind us, the former's revolver gleaming ominously in the light. The Pasha was surrounded by his enemies, but he never faltered for an instant. Hurrying feet and the clash of arms resounded along the passages; lights were already twinkling in the garden; aid was at hand, and, Turk, tyrant, voluptuary though he was, he lacked not the courage, the promptitude which aids itself. At a glance he must have recognised Ali; or it might have been but the instinct of his nation which bid him defend his women. Quick as thought, he seized a pistol that hung above his couch, and discharged it point-blank at the Beloochee's body. The bullet sped past Zuleika's head and lodged deep in her lover's bosom. At the same instant that Ropsley, always cool and collected in an emergency, dashed down both the lamps, Ali's body lurched heavily into my arms, and poor Zuleika fell senseless on the floor.

The next moment a glare of light filled the apartment. Crowds of slaves, black and white, all armed to the teeth, rushed in to the rescue. The Pasha, perfectly composed, ordered them to seize and make us prisoners. Encumbered by the Beloochee's weight, and outnumbered ten to one, we were put to it to make good our retreat, and ere we could close round her and carry her off, two stout negroes had borne the still senseless Zuleika through the open doorway into the inner chambers of the palace. Placing the Beloochee between myself and Ropsley, we backed leisurely into the garden, the poor fellow groaning heavily as we handed him through the casement, and so made our way, still fronting the Pasha and his myrmidons, towards our caïque, which at the first signal of disturbance had been pulled rapidly in shore. Manners covered our retreat with great steadiness and gallantry, keeping the enemy at bay with his revolver, a weapon with which one and all showed much disinclination to make further acquaintance. By this time shrieks of women pervaded the palace. The blacks, too, jabbered and gesticulated with considerably more energy than purpose, half-a-dozen pistol shots fired at random served to increase the general confusion, which even their lord's presence and authority were completely powerless to quell, and thus we were enabled to reach our boat, and shove off with our ghastly freight into the comparative safety of the Bosphorus.

"He will never want a doctor more," said Ropsley, in answer to an observation from Manners, as, turning down the edge of the Beloochee's jacket, he showed us the round livid mark that, to a practised eye, told too surely of the irremediable death-wound. "Poor fellow, poor fellow," he added, "he is bleeding inwardly now, he will be dead before we reach the bridge."

Ali opened his eyes, and raising his head, looked around as though in search of some missing face.

"Zuleika," he whispered, "Zuleika!" and sank back again with a piteous expression of hopeless, helpless misery on his wan and ghastly features. The end was obviously near at hand, his cheeks seemed to have fallen in the last few minutes, dark circles gathered round his eyes, his forehead was damp and clammy, and there was a light froth upon his ashy lips. Yet as death approached he seemed to recover strength and consciousness; a true Mussulman, the grave had for him but few terrors, and he had confronted the grim monarch so often as not to wince from him at last when really within his grasp.

He reared himself in the boat, and supported by my arm, which was wound round his body, made shift to sit upright and look about him, wildly, dreamily, as one who looks for the last time. "Effendi," he gasped, pressing my hand, "Effendi, it is destiny. The good mare--she is my brother's! Oh, Zuleika! Zuleika!"

A strong shudder convulsed his frame, his jaw dropped, I thought he was gone, but he recovered consciousness once more, snatched wildly at his sword, which he half drew, and whispering faintly, "Turn me to the East! There is but one Allah!" his limbs collapsed--his head sunk upon my shoulder--and so he died.

Row gently, brawny watermen, though your freight is indeed but the shell which contained even now a gallant, faithful spirit. One short hour ago, who so determined, so brave, so sagacious as the Beloochee warrior? and where is he now? That is not Ali Mesrour whom you are wafting so sadly, so smoothly towards the shore. Ali Mesrour is far away in space, in the material Paradise of your own creed, with its inexhaustible sherbets, and its cool gardens, and its dark-eyed maidens waving their green scarfs to greet the long-expected lover; or to the unknown region, the shadowy spirit-land of a loftier, nobler faith, the mystical world on which Religion herself dare hardly speculate, where "the tree shall be known by its fruits," "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."

So we carried him reverently and mournfully to the house he had occupied; and we laid him out in his warrior dress, with his arms by his side and his lance in his hand, and ere the morrow's sun was midway in the heavens, the earth had closed over him in his last resting-place, where the dark cypresses are nodding and whispering over his tomb, and the breeze steals gently up from the golden Bosphorus, smiling and radiant, within a hundred paces of his grave.

The good bay mare has never left my possession. For months she was restless and uncomfortable, neighing at every strange step, and refusing her food, as if she pined truly and faithfully for her master. He came not, and after a time she forgot him; and another hand fed and cared for her, and she grew sleek and fat and light-hearted. What would you? It is a world of change. Men and women, friends and favourites, lovers and beloved, all must forget and float with the stream and hurry on; if there be an exception--if some pale-eyed mourner, clinging to the bank, yearns hopelessly for the irrevocable Past, what matter, so the stream can eddy round him, and laugh and ripple by? Let him alone! he is not one of us. God forbid!

Of Zuleika's fate I shudder to think. Though I might well guess she could never expect to be forgiven, it was long before surmise approached certainty, and even now I strive to hope against hope, to persuade myself that there may still be a chance. At least I am thankful Ali was spared the ghastly tidings that eventually came to my ears--a tale that escaped the lips of a drunken caïgee, and in which I fear there is too much truth.

Of course the attack on the Pasha's palace created much scandal throughout Constantinople; and equally of course, a thousand rumours gained credence as to the origin and object of the disturbance. The English officers concerned received a hint that it would be advisable to get out of the way as speedily as possible; and I was compelled to absent myself for a time from my kind friend and patron, Omar Pasha. One person set the whole thing down as a drunken frolic; another voted it an attempt at burglary of the most ruffian-like description; and the Turks themselves seemed inclined to resent it as a gratuitous insult to their prejudices and customs. A stalwart caïgee, however, being, contrary to his religion and his practice, inebriated with strong drink, let out in his cups that, if he dared, he could tell more than others knew about the attack on the palace of Papoosh Pasha, and its sequel. Influenced by a large bribe, and intimidated by threats, he at length made the following statement:--"That the evening after the attack, about sun-down, he was plying off the steps of Papoosh Pasha's palace; that he was hailed by a negro guard, who bade him approach the landing-place; that two other negroes then appeared, bearing between them a sack, carefully secured, and obviously containing something weighty; that they placed it carefully in the bottom of his caïque, and that more than once he distinctly saw it move; that they desired him to pull out into mid-stream, and when there, dropped the sack overboard; that it sunk immediately, but that he fancied he heard a faint shriek as it went down, and saw the bubbles plainly coming up for several seconds at the place where it disappeared; further, that the negro gave him fifty piastres over his proper fare for the job, and that he himself had been uncomfortable and troubled with bad dreams ever since."

Alas, poor Zuleika! there is but little hope that you survived your lover four-and-twenty hours. The wild bird came, indeed, as he had promised, in the early morning, to the rose, but the wild bird got his death-wound; and the rose, I fear, lies many a fathom deep in the clear, cold waters of the silent Bosphorus.

CHAPTER XXXVI

"THE FRONT"

Man has been variously defined by philosophers as a cooking animal (the truth of this definition, unless when applied to our Gallic neighbours, I stoutly contest), as a reasoning animal (this likewise will hardly hold water), as a self-clothing animal, as an omnivorous one, as an unfeathered biped, and as an improved specimen of the order of Simiæ without the tail! None of these definitions will I accept as expressing exactly the conditions and necessities of our species. I believe man to be an animal fed on excitement--the only one in creation that without that pabulum, in some shape or another, languishes, becomes torpid, and loses its noblest energies both of mind and body. Why do men drink, quarrel, gamble, and waste their substance in riotous living? Why does Satan, according to good Dr. Watts, always provide work "for idle hands to do"? Why, but because man must have excitement. If he have no safety-valve for his surplus energies in the labour which earns his daily bread, they will find vent through some other channel, either for good or evil, according to his bias one way or the other. There is no such thing as repose on the face of the earth; "push on--keep moving," such is the motto of humanity. If we are not making we must be marring, but we cannot sit still. How else do we account for the proverbial restlessness of the sailor when he has been a few weeks ashore? How else can we conceive it possible for a rational being, whilst enjoying the luxuries and liberty of a landsman's existence, to pine for the hardships, the restraint, the utter discomfort which every one must necessarily experience on board ship? How, except upon this principle, can we understand the charm of a soldier's life, the cheering influence of a campaign? It is most unnatural to like rigid discipline, short rations, constant anxiety, and unremitting toil. A wet great-coat on the damp earth is a bad substitute for a four-post bed, with thick blankets, and clean sheets not innocent of the warming-pan. A tent is a miserable dwelling-place at the best of times, and is only just preferable to the canopy of heaven in very hot or very cold, or very windy or very wet weather. There is small amusement in spending the livelong night in sleepless watching for an enemy, and little satisfaction in being surprised by the same about an hour before dawn. It is annoying to be starved, it is irritating to be frightened, it is uncomfortable to be shot,--yet are all these casualties more or less incidental to the profession of arms; and still the recruiting sergeant flaunts his bunch of ribbons in every market town throughout merry England, and still the bumpkin takes the shilling, and sings in beery strains, "Huzza for the life of a soldier!"

And I too had tasted of the fierce excitement of strife--had drunk of the stimulating draught which, like some bitter tonic, creates a constant craving for more--had been taught by the influence of custom and companionship to loathe the quiet dreamy existence which was my normal state, and to long for the thrill of danger, the variety and unholy revelry of war.

So I returned with Ropsley to the Crimea. I had small difficulty in obtaining leave from Omar Pasha to resign, at least for a time, my appointment on his personal staff.

"They are queer fellows, my adopted countrymen," said his Highness, in his dry, humorous manner, and with his quaint smile, "and the sooner you get out of the way, friend Egerton, the better. I shall be asked all sorts of questions about you myself; and if you stay here, why, the nights are dark and the streets are narrow. Some fine morning it might be difficult to wake you, and nobody would be a bit the wiser. Our Turk has his peculiar notions about the laws of honour, and he cannot be made to comprehend why he should risk his own life in taking yours. Besides, he is ridiculously sensitive about his women, particularly with a Christian. Had you been a good Mussulman, now, Egerton, it could have been easily arranged. You might have bought the lady, got drunk on champagne with old Papoosh Pasha, and set up a harem of your own. Why don't you become a convert, as I did? The process is short, the faith simple, the practice satisfactory. Think it over, my good Interpreter, think it over. Bah! in ten minutes you would be as good a Mussulman as I am, and better." And his Highness laughed, and bid me "Good-bye," for he had a good deal upon his hands just then, being on the eve of marriage with his fifth wife, a young lady twelve years of age, daughter to his Imperial Majesty the Sultan, and bringing her husband a magnificent dowry of jewels, gold, and horses, in addition to many broad and fertile acres in Anatolia, not to mention a beautiful kiosk near Scutari and a stately palace on the Bosphorus, without which adventitious advantages she might perhaps have hardly succeeded in winning the heart of so experienced a warrior as Omar Pasha.

Thus it was that I found myself one broiling sunny morning leaning over the side of a transport, just then dropping her anchor in Balaklava Bay.

The scorching rocks frowned down on the scorching sea; the very planks on the deck glistened with the heat. There was no shade on land, and not a breath of air ruffled the shining bosom of the water. The harbour was full, ay, choked with craft of every rig and every tonnage; whilst long, wicked-looking steamers and huge, unwieldy troop-ships dotted the surface of the land-locked bay. The union-jack trailed idly over our stern, the men were all on deck, gazing with eager faces on that shore which combined for them the realities of history with the fascinations of romance. Young soldiers were they, mostly striplings of eighteen and twenty summers, with the smooth cheeks, fresh colour, and stalwart limbs of the Anglo-Saxon race--too good to fill a trench! And yet what would be the fate of at least two-thirds of that keen, light-hearted draft? Vestigia nulla retrorsum. Many a time has it made my heart ache to see a troop-ship ploughing relentlessly onward with her living freight to "the front,"--many a time have I recalled Æsop's fable, and the foot-prints that were all towards the lion's den,--many a time have I thought how every unit there in red was himself the centre of a little world at home; and of the grey heads that would tremble, and the loving faces that would pale in peaceful villages far away in England, when no news came from foreign parts of "our John," or when the unrelenting Gazette arrived at last and proclaimed, as too surely it would, that he was coming back "never, never no more."

Boom!--there it is again! Every eye lightens at that dull, distant sound. Every man's pulse beats quicker, and his head towers more erect, for he feels that he has arrived at the real thing at last. No sham fighting is going on over yonder, not two short leagues from where he stands--no mock bivouac at Chobham, nor practice in Woolwich Marshes, nor meaningless pageant in the Park: that iron voice carries death upon its every accent. For those in the trenches it is a mere echo--the unregarded consequence that necessarily succeeds the fierce rush of a round-shot or the wicked whistle of a shell; but for us here at Balaklava it is one of the pulsations of England's life-blood--one of the ticks, so to speak, of that great Clock of Doom which points ominously to the downfall of the beleaguered town.

Boom! Yes, there it is again; you cannot forget why you are here. Day and night, sunshine and storm, scarce five minutes elapse in the twenty-four hours without reminding you of the work in hand. You ride out from the camp for your afternoon exercise, you go down to Balaklava to buy provisions, or you canter over to the monastery at St. George's to visit a sick comrade--the iron voice tolls on. In the glare of noon, when everything else seems drowsy in the heat, and the men lie down exhausted in the suffocating trenches--the iron voice tolls on. In the calm of evening, when the breeze is hushed and still, and the violet sea is sleeping in the twilight--the iron voice tolls on. So when the flowers are opening in the morning, and the birds begin to sing, and reviving nature, fresh and dewy, seems to scatter health and peace and good-will over the earth--the iron voice tolls on. Nay, when you wake at midnight in your tent from a dream of your far-away home--oh! what a different scene to this!--tired as you may be, ere you have turned to sleep once more, you hear it again. Yes, at midnight as at noon, at morn as at evening, every day and all day long, Death is gathering his harvest--and the iron voice tolls on.

"Very slack fire they seem to be keeping up in the front," yawns out Ropsley, who has just joined me on deck, and to whom the siege and all its accessories are indeed nothing new. Many a long and weary month has he been listening to that sound; and what with his own ideas on the subject, and the information a naturally acute intellect has acquired touching the proceedings of the besiegers, his is indeed a familiarity which "breeds contempt."

"Any news from the camp?" he shouts out to a middy in a man-of-war's boat passing under our stern. The middy, a thorough specimen of an English boy, with his round laughing face and short jacket, stands up to reply.

"Another sortie! No end of fellows killed; and they say the Malakhoff is blown up."

Our young soldiers listen eagerly to the news. They have heard and read of the Malakhoff for many a day, and though their ideas of the nature and appearance of that work are probably of a somewhat confused description, they are all athirst for intelligence, and prepared to swallow everything connected with the destruction of that or any other of the defences with a faith that is, to say the least of it, a sad temptation to the laughter-loving informant.

A middy, though from some organic cause of which I am ignorant, is always restless and impatient towards the hour of noon; and our friend plumps down once more in the stern of his gig, and bids his men "give way"; for the sun is by this time high in the heavens; so we take our places in the ship's boat which our own captain politely provides for us, and avoiding the confusion of a disembarkation of men and stores, Ropsley, Bold, and I leap ashore at Balaklava, unencumbered save by the slender allowance of luggage which a campaign teaches the most luxurious to deem sufficient.

Ashore at Balaklava! What a scene of hurry and crowding and general confusion it is! Were it not that every second individual is in uniform and bearded to the waist, it would appear more like the mart of some peaceful and commercial sea-port, than the threshold of a stage on which is being fought out to the death one of the fiercest and most obstinate struggles which History has to record on her blood-stained pages. There are no women, yet the din of tongues is perfectly deafening. Hurrying to and fro, doing as little work with as much labour as possible, making immense haste with small speed, and vociferating incessantly at the top of their voices, Turks and Tartars, Armenians, Greeks, and Ionians, all accosted by the burly English soldier under the generic name of "Johnny," are flitting aimlessly about, and wasting her Majesty's stores in a manner that would have driven the late Mr. Hume frantic. Here a trim sergeant of infantry, clean and orderly, despite his war-worn looks and patched garments, drives before him a couple of swarthy nondescripts, clad in frieze, and with wild elf-locks protruding over their jutting foreheads, and twinkling Tartar eyes. They stagger under huge sacks of meal, which they are carrying to yonder storehouse, with a sentry pacing his short walk at the door. The sacks have been furnished by contract, so the seams are badly sewn; and the meal, likewise furnished by contract, and of inferior quality, is rapidly escaping, to leave a white track in the mud, also a contract article, and of the deepest, stickiest, and most enduring quality. The labours of the two porters will be much lightened ere they reach their destination; but this is of less moment, inasmuch as the storehouse to which they are proceeding is by no means watertight, and the first thunderstorm that sweeps in from the Black Sea is likely much to damage its contents. It is needless to add that this edifice of thin deal planks has been constructed by contract for the use of her Majesty's Government.

A little farther on, a train of mules, guided by a motley crowd of every nation under heaven, and commanded by an officer in the workmanlike uniform of the Land Transport, is winding slowly up the hill. They have emerged from a perfect sea of mud, which even at this dry season shows not the least tendency to harden into consistency, and they will probably arrive at the front in about four hours, with the loss of a third only of their cargo, consisting of sundry munitions which were indispensable last week, and might have been of service the day before yesterday, but the occasion for which has now passed away for ever.

A staff officer on a short sturdy pony gallops hastily by, exchanging a nod as he passes with a beardless cornet of dragoons, whose English charger presents a curious study of the anatomy of a horse. He pulls up for an instant to speak to Ropsley, and the latter turns to me and says--

"Not so bad as I feared, Vere. It was a mere sortie, after all, and we drove them back very handsomely, with small loss on our side. The only officer killed was young ----, and he was dying, poor fellow! at any rate, of dysentery."

This is the news of the day here, and the trenches form just such a subject of conversation before Sebastopol as does the weather in a country-house in England--a topic never new, but never entirely worn out.

Side by side, Ropsley and myself are journeying up the hill towards the front. A sturdy batman has been in daily expectation of his master's return, and has brought his horses down to meet him. It is indeed a comfort to be again in an English saddle--to have the lengthy, powerful frame of an English horse under one--and to hear the homely, honest accents of a provincial English tongue. When a man has been long amongst foreigners, and especially serving with foreign troops, it is like being at home again to be once more within the lines of a British army; and to add to the pleasure of our ride, although the day is cloudless and insufferably hot in the valleys, there is a fresh breeze up here, and a pure bracing air that reaches us from the heights on which the army is encamped.

It is a wild, picturesque scene, not beautiful, yet full of interest and incident. Behind us lies Balaklava, with its thronging harbour and its busy crowds, whose hum reaches us even here, high above the din. It is like looking down on an ant-hill to watch the movements of the shifting swarm.

On our right, the plain, stretching far and wide, is dotted with the Land Transport--that necessary evil so essential to the very existence of an army; and their clustering wagons and scattered beasts carry the eye onwards to a dim white line formed by the neat tents and orderly encampment of the flower of French cavalry, the gallant and dashing Chasseurs d'Afrique.

On our left, the stable call of an English regiment of Light Dragoons reaches us from the valley of Kadikoi, that Crimean Newmarket, the doings of which are actually chronicled in Bell's Life! Certainly an Englishman's nationality is not to be rooted out of him even in the jaws of death. But we have little time to visit the race-course or the lines--to pass our comments on the condition of the troopers, or gaze open-mouthed at the wondrous field-batteries that occupy an adjoining encampment--moved by teams of twelve horses each, perhaps the finest animals of the class to be seen in Europe, with every accessory of carriage, harness, and appointments, so perfect as not to admit of improvement, yet, I believe, not found to answer in actual warfare. Our interest is more awakened by another scene. We are on classic ground now, for we have reached the spot whence