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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Bride of the Nile, by Georg Ebers, v2
+#79 in our series by Georg Ebers
+
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+Title: The Bride of the Nile, Volume 2.
+
+Author: Georg Ebers
+
+Release Date: April, 2004  [EBook #5518]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 4, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRIDE OF THE NILE, BY EBERS, V2 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BRIDE OF THE NILE
+
+By Georg Ebers
+
+Volume 2.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Pangs of soul and doubtings of conscience had, in fact, prompted the
+governor to purchase the hanging and he therefore might have been glad if
+it had cost him still dearer.  The greater the gift the better founded
+his hope of grace and favor from the recipient!  And he had grounds for
+being uneasy and for asking himself whether he had acted rightly.
+Revenge was no Christian virtue, but to let the evil done to him by the
+Melchites go unpunished when the opportunity offered for crushing them
+was more than he could bring himself to.  Nay, what father whose two
+bright young sons had been murdered, but would have done as he did?  That
+fearful blow had struck him in a vital spot.  Since that day he had felt
+himself slowly dying; and that sense of weakness, those desperate
+tremors, the discomforts and suffering which blighted every hour of his
+life, were also to be set down to the account of the Melchite tyrants.
+
+His waning powers had indeed only been kept up by his original vigor and
+his burning thirst for revenge, and fate had allowed him to quench it in
+a way which, as time went on, seemed too absolute to his peace-loving
+nature.  Though not indeed by his act, still with his complicity he saw
+the Byzantine Empire bereft of the rich province which Caesar had
+entrusted to his rule, saw the Greeks and everything that bore the name
+of Melchite driven out of Egypt with ignominy--though he would gladly
+have prevented it--in many places slain like dogs by the furious populace
+who hailed the Moslems as their deliverers.
+
+Thus all the evil he had invoked on the murderers of his children and the
+oppressors and torturers of his people had come upon them; his revenge
+was complete.  But, in the midst of his satisfaction at this strange
+fulfilment of the fervent wish of years, his conscience had lifted up its
+voice; new, and hitherto unknown terrors had come upon him.  He lacked
+the strength of mind to be a hero or a reformer.  Too great an event had
+been wrought through his agency, too fearful a doom visited on thousands
+of men!  The Christian Faith--to him the highest consideration--had been
+too greatly imperilled by his act, for the thought that he had caused all
+this to be calmly endurable.  The responsibility proved too heavy for his
+shoulders; and whenever he repeated to himself that it was not he who had
+invited the Arabs into the land, and that he must have been crushed in
+the attempt to repel them, he could hear voices all round him denouncing
+him as the man who had surrendered his native land to them, and he
+fancied himself environed by dangers--believing those who spoke to him of
+assassins sent forth by the Byzantines to kill him.--But even more
+appalling, was his dread of the wrath of Heaven against the man who had
+betrayed a Christian country to the Infidels.  Even his consciousness of
+having been, all his life long, a right-minded, just man could not
+fortify him against this terror; there was but one thing which could
+raise his quelled spirit: the white pillules which had long been as
+indispensable to him as air and water.  The kind-hearted old bishop of
+Memphis, Plotinus, and his clergy had forgiveness for all; the Patriarch
+Benjamin, on the contrary, had treated him as a reprobate sentenced to
+eternal damnation, though at the time of this prelate's exile in the
+desert he had hailed the Arabs as their deliverers from the tyranny of
+the Melchites, and though George had principally contributed to his
+recall and reinstatement, and had therefore counted on his support.  And,
+although the Mukaukas could clearly see through the secondary motives
+which influenced the Patriarch, he nevertheless believed that Benjamin's
+office as Shepherd of souls gave him power to close the Gates of Heaven
+against any sheep in his flock.
+
+The more firmly the Arabs took root in his land, the wiser their rule,
+and the, more numerous the Egyptian converts from the Cross to the
+Crescent, the greater he deemed his guilt; and when, after the
+accomplishment of his work of vengeance--his double treason as the Greeks
+called it--instead of the wrath of God, everything fell to his lot which
+men call happiness and the favors of fortune, the superstitious man
+feared lest this was the wages of the Devil, into whose clutches his
+hasty compact with the Moslems had driven so many Christian souls.
+
+He had unexpectedly fallen heir to two vast estates, and his excavators
+in the Necropolis had found more gold in the old heathen tombs than all
+the others put together.  The Moslem Khaliff and his viceroy had left him
+in office and shown him friendship and respect; the bulaites--[Town
+councillors]--of the town had given him the cognomen of "the Just" by
+acclamation of the whole municipality; his lands had never yielded
+greater revenues; he received letters from his son's widow in her convent
+full of happiness over the new and higher aims in life that she had
+found; his grandchild, her daughter, was a creature whose bright and
+lovely blossoming was a joy even to strangers; his son's frequent
+epistles from Constantinople assured him that he was making progress in
+all respects; and he did not forget his parents; for he was never weary
+of reporting to them, of his own free impulse, every, pleasure he enjoyed
+and every success he won.
+
+Thus even in a foreign land he had lived with the father and mother who
+to him were all that was noblest and dearest.
+
+And Paula!  Though his wife could not feel warmly towards her the old man
+regarded her presence in the house as a happy dispensation to which he
+owed many a pleasant hour, not only over the draughts-board.
+
+All these things might indeed be the wages of Satan; but if indeed it
+were so, he--George the Mukaukas--would show the Evil One that he was no
+servant of his, but devoted to the Saviour in whose mercy he trusted.
+With what fervent gratitude to the Almighty was his soul filled for the
+return of such a son!  Every impulse of his being urged him to give
+expression to this feeling; his terrors and gratitude alike prompted him
+to spend so vast a sum in order to dedicate a matchless gift to the
+Church of Christ.  He viewed himself as a prisoner of war whose ransom
+has just been paid, as he handed to the merchant the tablet with the
+order for the money; and when he was carried to bed, and his wife was not
+yet weary of thanking him for his pious intention, he felt happier and
+more light-hearted than he had done for many years.  Generally he could
+hear Paula walking up and down her room which was over his; for she went
+late to rest, and in the silence of the night would indulge in sweet and
+painful memories.  How many loved ones a cruel fate had snatched from
+her!  Father, brother, her nearest relations and friends; all at once, by
+the hand of the Moslems to whom he had abandoned her native land almost
+without resistance.
+
+"I do not hear Paula to-night," he remarked, glancing up as though he
+missed something.  "The poor child has no doubt gone to bed early after
+what passed."
+
+"Leave her alone!"  said Neforis who did not like to be interrupted in
+her jubilant effusiveness, and she shrugged her shoulders angrily.  "How
+she behaved herself again!  We have heard a great deal too much about
+charity, and though I do not want to boast of my own I am very ready to
+exercise it--indeed, it is no more than my duty to show every kindness
+to a destitute relation of yours.  But this girl!  She tries me too far,
+and after all I am no more than human.  I can have no pleasure in her
+presence; if she comes into the room I feel as though misfortune had
+crossed the threshold.  Besides!--You never see such things; but Orion
+thinks of her a great deal more than is good.  I only wish she had been
+safe out of the house!"
+
+"Neforis!"  her husband said in mild reproach; and he would have reproved
+her more sharply but that since he had become a slave to opium he had
+lost all power of asserting himself vigorously whether in small matters
+or great.
+
+Ere long the Mukaukas had fallen into an uneasy sleep; but he opened his
+eyes more frequently than usual.  He missed the light footfall overhead
+to which he had been accustomed for these two years past; but she who was
+wont to pace the floor above half the night through had not gone to rest
+as he supposed.  After the events of the evening she had indeed retired
+to her room with tingling cheeks and burning eyes; but the slave-girls,
+who paid little attention to a guest who was no more than endured and
+looked on askance by their mistress, had neglected to open her window-
+shutters after sundown, as she had requested, and the room was
+oppressively sultry and airless.  The wooden shutters felt hot to the
+touch, so did the linen sheets over the wool mattrasses.  The water in
+her jug, and even the handkerchief she took up were warm.  To an Egyptian
+all this would have been a matter of course; but the native of Damascus
+had always passed the summer in her father's country house on the heights
+of Lebanon, in cool and lucent shade, and the all-pervading heat of the
+past day had been to her intolerable.
+
+Outside it was pleasant now; so without much reflection she pushed open
+the shutter, wrapped a long, dark-hued kerchief about her head and stole
+down the steep steps and out through a little side door into the court-
+yard.
+
+There she drew a deep breath and spread out her arms longingly, as though
+she would fain fly far, far from thence; but then she dropped them again
+and looked about her.  It was not the want of fresh air alone that had
+brought her out; no, what she most craved for was to open her oppressed
+and rebellious heart to another; and here, in the servants' quarters,
+there were two souls, one of which knew, understood and loved her, while
+the other was as devoted to her as a faithful dog, and did errands for
+her which were to be kept hidden from the governor's house and its
+inhabitants.
+
+The first was her nurse who had accompanied her to Egypt; the other was a
+freed slave, her father's head groom, who had escorted the women with his
+son, a lad, giving them shelter when, after the massacre of Abyla, they
+had ventured out of their hiding-place, and after lurking for some time
+in the valley of Lebanon, had found no better issue than to fly to Egypt
+and put themselves under the protection of the Mukaukas, whose sister had
+been Paula's father's first wife.  She herself was the child of his
+second marriage with a Syrian of high rank, a relation of the Emperor
+Heraclius, who had died, quite young, shortly after Paula's birth.
+
+Both these servants had been parted from her.  Perpetua, the nurse, had
+been found useful by the governor's wife, who soon discovered that size
+was particularly skilled in weaving and who had made her superintendent
+of the slave-girls employed at the loom; the old woman had willingly
+undertaken the duties though she herself was free-born, for her first
+point in life was to remain near her beloved foster-child.  Hiram too,
+the groom, and his son had found their place among the Mukaukas'
+household; in the first instance to take charge of the five horses from
+her father's stable which had brought the fugitives to Egypt, but
+afterwards--for the governor was not slow to discern his skill in such
+matters--as a leech for all sorts of beasts, and as an adviser is
+purchasing horses.
+
+Paula wanted to speak with them both, and she knew exactly where to find
+them; but she could not get to them without exposing herself to much that
+was unpleasant, for the governor's free retainers and their friends, not
+to mention the guard of soldiers who, now that the gates were closed,
+were still sitting in parties to gossip; they would certainly not break
+up for some time yet, since the slaves were only now bringing out the
+soldiers' supper.
+
+The clatter in the court-yard was unceasing, for every one who was free
+to come out was enjoying the coolness of the night.  Among them there
+were no slaves; these had been sent to their quarters when the gates were
+shut; but even in their dwellings voices were still audible.
+
+With a beating heart Paula tried to see and hear all that came within the
+ken of her keen eyes and ears.  The growing moon lighted up half the
+enclosure, the rest, so far as the shadow fell, lay in darkness.  But in
+the middle of a large semi-circle of free servants a fire was blazing,
+throwing a fitful light on their brown faces; and now and again, as fresh
+pine-cones were thrown in, it flared up and illuminated even the darker
+half of the space before her.  This added to her trepidation; she had to
+cross the court-yard, as she hoped, unseen; for innocent and natural as
+her proceedings were, she knew that her uncle's wife would put a wrong
+construction on her nocturnal expedition.
+
+At first Neforis had begged her husband to assist Paula in her search for
+her father, of whose death no one had any positive assurance.  But his
+wife's urgency had not been needed: the Mukaukas, of his own free will,
+had for a whole year done everything in his power to learn the truth as
+to the lost man's end, from Christian or Moslem, till, many months since,
+Neforis had declared that any further exertions in the matter were mere
+folly, and her weak-willed husband had soon been brought to share her
+views and give up the search for the missing hero.  He had secured for
+Paula, not without some personal sacrifice, much of her father's
+property, had sold the landed estates to advantage, collected outstanding
+debts wherever it was still possible, and was anxious to lay before her a
+statement of what he had recovered for her.  But she knew that her
+interests were safe in his hands and was satisfied to learn that, though
+she was not rich in the eyes of this Egyptian Croesus, she was possessed
+of a considerable fortune.  When once and again she had asked for a
+portion of it to prosecute her search, the Mukaukas at once caused it to
+be paid to her; but the third time he refused, with the best intentions
+but quite firmly, to yield to her wishes.  He said he was her Kyrios and
+natural guardian, and explained that it was his duty to hinder her from
+dissipating a fortune which she might some day find a boon or indeed
+indispensable, in pursuit of a phantom--for that was what this search had
+long since become.
+
+     [Kyrios: The woman's legal proxy, who represented her in courts of
+     justice.  His presence gave her equal rights with a man in the eyes
+     of the Law.]
+
+The money she had already spent he had replaced out of his own coffers.
+
+This, she felt, was a noble action; still she urged him again and again
+to grant her wish, but always in vain.  He laid his hand with firm
+determination on the wealth in his charge and would not allow her another
+solidus for the sole and dearest aim of her life.
+
+She seemed to submit; but her purpose of spending her all to recover any
+trace of her lost parent never wavered in her determined soul.  She had
+sold a string of pearls, and for the price, her faithful Hiram had been
+able first to make a long journey himself and then to send out a number
+of messengers into various lands.  By this time one at least might very
+well have reached home with some news, and she must see the freed-man.
+
+But how could she get to him undetected?  For some minutes she stood
+watching and listening for a favorable moment for crossing the court-
+yard.  Suddenly a blaze lighted up a face--it was Hiram's.
+
+At this moment the merry semi-circle laughed loudly as with one voice;
+she hastily made up her mind--drew her kerchief closer over her face, ran
+quickly along the darker half of the quadrangle and, stooping low,
+hurried across the moonlight towards the slaves' quarters.
+
+At the entrance she paused; her heart throbbed violently.  Had she been
+observed?  No.--There was not a cry, not a following footstep--every dog
+knew her; the soldiers who were commonly on guard here had quitted their
+posts and were sitting with their comrades round the fire.
+
+The long building to the left was the weaving shop and her nurse Perpetua
+lived there, in the upper story.  But even here she must be cautious, for
+the governor's wife often came out to give her orders to the workwomen,
+and to see and criticise the produce of the hundred looms which were
+always in motion, early and late.  If she should be seen, one of the
+weavers might only too probably betray the fact of her nocturnal visit.
+They had not yet gone to rest, for loud laughter fell upon her ear from
+the large sheds, open on all sides, which stood over the dyers' vats.
+This class of the governor's people were also enjoying the cool night
+after the fierce heat of the day, and the girls too had lighted a fire.
+
+Paula must pass them in full moonshine--but not just yet; and she
+crouched close to the straw thatch which stretched over the huge clay
+water-jars placed here for the slave-girls to get drink from.  It cast a
+dark triangular shadow on the dusty ground that gleamed in the moonlight,
+and thus screened her from the gaze of the girls, while she could hear
+and see what was going on in the sheds.
+
+The dreadful day of torture ending in a harsh discord was at end; and
+behind it she looked back on a few blissful hours full of the promise of
+new happiness;--beyond these lay a long period of humiliation, the sequel
+of a terrible disaster.  How bright and sunny had her childhood been, how
+delightful her early youth!  For long years of her life she had waked
+every morning to new joys, and gone to rest every evening with sincere
+and fervent thanksgivings, that had welled from her soul as freely and
+naturally as perfume from a rose.  How often had she shaken her head in
+perplexed unbelief when she heard life spoken of as a vale of sorrows,
+and the lot of man bewailed as lamentable.  Now she knew better; and in
+many a lonely hour, in many a sleepless night, she had asked herself
+whether He could, indeed, be a kind and fatherly-loving God who could let
+a child be born and grow up, and fill its soul with every hope, and then
+bereave it of everything that was dear and desirable--even of hope.
+
+But the hapless girl had been piously brought up; she could still believe
+and pray; and lately it had seemed as though Heaven would grant that for
+which her tender heart most longed: the love of a beloved and love-worthy
+man.  And now--now?
+
+There she stood with an inconsolable sense of bereavement--empty-hearted;
+and if she had been miserable before Orion's return, now she was far more
+so; for whereas she had then been lonely she was now defrauded--she, the
+daughter of Thomas, the relation and inmate of the wealthiest house in
+the country; and close to her, from the rough hewn, dirty dyers' sheds
+such clear and happy laughter rang out from a troop of wretched slave
+wenches, always liable to the blows of the overseer's rod, that she could
+not help listening and turning to look at the girls on whom such an
+overflow of high spirits and light-heartedness was bestowed.
+
+A large party had collected under the wide palm-thatched roof of the
+dyeing shed-pretty and ugly, brown and fair, tall and short; some upright
+and some bent by toil at the loom from early youth, but all young; not
+one more than eighteen years old.  Slaves were capital, bearing interest
+in the form of work and of children.  Every slave girl was married to a
+slave as soon as she was old enough.  Girls and married women alike were
+employed in the weaving shop, but the married ones slept in separate
+quarters with their husbands and children, while the maids passed the
+night in large sleeping-barracks adjoining the worksheds.  They were now
+enjoying the evening respite and had gathered in two groups.  One party
+were watching an Egyptian girl who was scribbling sketches on a tablet;
+the others were amusing themselves with a simple game.  This consisted in
+each one in turn flinging her shoe over her head.  If it flew beyond a
+chalk-line to which she turned her back she was destined soon to marry
+the man she loved; if it fell between her and the mark she must yet have
+patience, or would be united to a companion she did not care for.
+
+The girl who was drawing, and round whom at least twenty others were
+crowded, was a designer of patterns for weaving; she had too the gift
+which had characterized her heathen ancestors, of representing faces in
+profile, with a few simple lines, in such a way that, though often
+comically distorted, they were easily recognizable.  She was executing
+these works of art on a wax tablet with a copper stylus, and the others
+were to guess for whom they were meant.
+
+One girl only sat by herself by the furthest post of the shed, and gazed
+silently into her lap.
+
+Paula looked on and could understand everything that was going forward,
+though no coherent sentence was uttered and there was nothing to be heard
+but laughter--loud, hearty, irresistible mirth.  When a girl threw the
+shoe far enough the youthful crowd laughed with all their might, each one
+shouting the name of some one who was to marry her successful companion;
+if the shoe fell within the line they laughed even louder than before,
+and called out the names of all the oldest and dirtiest slaves.  A dusky
+Syrian had failed to hit the mark, but she boldly seized the chalk and
+drew a fresh line between herself and the shoe so that it lay beyond, at
+any rate; and their merriment reached a climax when a number of them
+rushed up to wipe out the new line, a saucy, crisp-haired Nubian tossed
+the shoe in the air and caught it again, while the rest could not cease
+for delight in such a good joke and cried every name they could think of
+as that of the lover for whom their companion had so boldly seized a
+spoke in Fortune's wheel.
+
+Some spirit of mirth seemed to have taken up his quarters in the draughty
+shed; the group round the sketcher was not less noisy than the other.  If
+a likeness was recognized they were all triumphant, if not they cried the
+names of this or that one for whom it might be intended.  A storm of
+applause greeted a successful caricature of the severest of the
+overseers.  All who saw it held their sides for laughing, and great was
+the uproar when one of the girls snatched away the tablet and the rest
+fell upon her to scuffle for it.
+
+Paula had watched all this at first with distant amazement, shaking her
+head.  How could they find so much pleasure in such folly, in such
+senseless amusements?  When she was but a little child even she, of
+course, could laugh at nothing, and these grown-up girls, in their
+ignorance and the narrow limitations of their minds, were they not one
+and all children still?  The walls of the governor's house enclosed their
+world, they never looked beyond the present moment--just like children;
+and so, like children, they could laugh.
+
+"Fate," thought she, "at this moment indemnifies them for the misfortune
+of their birth and for a thousand days of misery, and presently they will
+go tired and happy to bed.  I could envy these poor creatures!  If it
+were permissible I would join them and be a child again."
+
+The comic portrait of the overseer was by this time finished, and a
+short, stout wench burst into a fit of uproarious and unquenchable
+laughter before any of the rest.  It came so naturally, too, from the
+very depths of her plump little body that Paula, who had certainly not
+come hither to be gay, suddenly caught the infection and had to laugh
+whether she would or no.  Sorrow and anxiety were suddenly forgotten,
+thought and calculation were far from her; for some minutes she felt
+nothing but that she, too, was laughing heartily, irrepressibly, like the
+young healthful human creature that she was.  Ah, how good it was thus to
+forget herself for once!  She did not put this into words, but she felt
+it, and she laughed afresh when the girl who had been sitting apart
+joined the others, and exclaimed something which was unintelligible to
+Paula, but which gave a new impetus to their mirth.
+
+The tall slight form of this maiden was now standing by the fire.  Paula
+had never seen her before and yet she was by far the handsomest of them
+all; but she did not look happy and perhaps was in some pain, for she had
+a handkerchief over her head which was tied at the top over the thick
+fair hair as though she had the toothache.  As she looked at her Paula
+recovered herself, and as soon as she began to think merriment was at an
+end.  The slave-girls were not of this mind; but their laughter was less
+innocent and frank than it had been; for it had found an object which
+they would have done better to pass by.
+
+The girl with the handkerchief over her head was a slave too, but she had
+only lately come into the weaving-sheds after being employed for a long
+time at needle work under two old women, widows of slaves.  She had been
+brought as an infant from Persia to Alexandria with her mother, by the
+troops of Heraclius, after the conquest of Chosroes II.; and they had
+been bought together for the Mukaukas.  When her little one was but
+thirteen the mother died under the yoke to which she was not born; the
+child was a sweet little girl with a skin as white as the swan and thick
+golden hair, which now shone with strange splendor in the firelight.
+Orion had remarked her before his journey, and fascinated by the beauty
+of the Persian girl, had wished to have her for his own.  Servants and
+officials, in unscrupulous collusion, had managed to transport her to a
+country-house belonging to the Mukaukas on the other side of the Nile,
+and there Orion had been able to visit her undisturbed as often as fancy
+prompted him.  The slave-girl, scarcely yet sixteen, ignorant and
+unprotected, had not dared nor desired to resist her master's handsome
+son, and when Orion had set out for Constantinople--heedless and weary
+already of the girl who had nothing to give him but her beauty--Dame
+Neforis found out her connection with her son and ordered the head
+overseer to take care that the unhappy girl should not "ply her seductive
+arts" any more.  The man had carried out her instructions by condemning
+the fair Persian, according to an ancient custom, to have her ears cut
+off.  After this cruel punishment the mutilated beauty sank into a state
+of melancholy madness, and although the exorcists of the Church and other
+thaumaturgists had vainly endeavored to expel the demon of madness, she
+remained as before: a gentle, good-humored creature, quiet and diligent
+at her work, under the women who had charge of her, and now in the common
+work-shop.  It was only when she was idle that her craziness became
+evident, and of this the other girls took advantage for their own
+amusement.
+
+They now led Mandane to the fire, and with farcical reverence requested
+her to be seated on her throne--an empty color cask, for she suffered
+under the strange permanent delusion that she was the wife of the
+Mukaukas George.  They laughingly did her homage, craved some favor or
+made enquiries as to her husband's health and the state of her affairs.
+Hitherto a decent instinct of reserve had kept these poor ignorant
+creatures from mentioning Orion's name in her presence, but now a woolly-
+headed negress, a lean, spiteful hussy, went up to her, and said with a
+horrible grimace:
+
+"Oh, mistress, and where is your little son Orion?"  The crazy girl did
+not seem startled by the question; she replied very gravely: "I have
+married him to the emperor's daughter at Constantinople."
+
+"Hey day!  A splendid match!"  exclaimed the black girl.  "Did you know
+that the young lord was here again?  He has brought home his grand wife
+to you no doubt, and we shall see purple and crowns in these parts!"
+
+These words brought a deep flush into the poor creature's face.  She
+anxiously pressed her hands on the bandage that covered her ears and
+said: "Really Has he really come home?"
+
+"Only quite lately," said another and more good-natured girl, to soothe
+her.
+
+"Do not believe her!"  cried the negress.  "And if you want to know the
+latest news of him: Last night he was out boating on the Nile with the
+tall Syrian.  My brother, the boatman, was among the rowers; and he went
+on finely with the lady I can tell you, finely. . . ."
+
+"My husband, the great Mukaukas?"  asked Mandane, trying to collect her
+ideas.
+
+"No.  Your son Orion, who married the emperor's daughter," laughed the
+negress.
+
+The crazy girl stood up, looked about with a restless glance, and then,
+as though she had not fully understood what had been said to her,
+repeated: "Orion?  Handsome Orion?"
+
+"Aye, your sweet son, Orion!"  they all shouted, as loud as though she
+were deaf.  Then the usually placable girl, holding her hand over her
+ear, with the other hit her tormentor such a smack on her thick lips that
+it resounded, while she shrieked out loud, in shrill tones:
+
+"My son, did you say?  My son Orion?--As if you did not know!  Why, he
+was my lover; yes, he himself said he was, and that was why they came and
+bound me and cut my ears.--But you know it.  But I do not love him--I
+could, I might wish, I. . . ."  She clenched her fists, and gnashed her
+white teeth, and went on with panting breath:
+
+"Where is he?--You will not tell me?  Wait a bit--only wait.  Oh, I am
+sharp enough, I know you have him here.--Where is be?  Orion, Orion,
+where are you?"
+
+She sprang away, ran through the sheds and lifted the lids of all the
+color-vats, stooping low to look down into each as if she expected to
+find him there, while the others roared with laughter.
+
+Most of her companions giggled at this witless behavior; but some, who
+felt it somewhat uncanny and whom the unhappy girl's bitter cry had
+struck painfully, drew apart and had already organized some new
+amusement, when a neat little woman appeared on the scene, clapping her
+plump hands and exclaiming:
+
+"Enough of laughter--now, to bed, you swarm of bees.  The night is over
+too soon in the morning, and the looms must be rattling again by sunrise.
+One this way and one that, just like mice when the cat appears.  Will you
+make haste, you night-birds?  Come, will you make haste?"
+
+The girls had learnt to obey, and they hurried past the matron to their
+sleeping-quarters.  Perpetua, a woman scarcely past fifty, whose face
+wore a pleasant expression of mingled shrewdness and kindness, stood
+pricking up her ears and listening; she heard from the water-shed a
+peculiar low, long-drawn Wheeuh!--a signal with which she was familiar
+as that by which the prefect Thomas had been wont to call together his
+scattered household from the garden of his villa on Mount Lebanon.  It
+was now Paula who gave the whistle to attract her nurse's attention.
+
+Perpetua shook her head anxiously.  What could have brought her beloved
+child to see her at so late an hour?  Something serious must have
+occurred, and with characteristic presence of mind she called out, to
+show that she had heard Paula's signal: "Now, make haste.  Will you be
+quick?  Wheeuh! girls--wheeuh!  Hurry, hurry!"
+
+She followed the last of the slave-girls into the sleeping-room, and when
+she had assured herself that they were all there but the crazy Persian
+she enquired where she was.  They had all seen her a few minutes ago in
+the shed; so she bid them good-night and left them, letting it be
+understood that she was about to seek the missing girl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Paula went into her nurse's room, and Perpetua, after a short and vain
+search for the crazy girl, abandoned her to her fate, not without some
+small scruples of conscience.
+
+A beautifully-polished copper lamp hung from the ceiling and the little
+room exactly suited its mistress both were neat and clean, trim and
+spruce, simple and yet nice.  Snowy transparent curtains enclosed the bed
+as a protection against the mosquitoes, a crucifix of delicate
+workmanship hung above the head of the couch, and the seats were covered
+with good cloth of various colors, fag-ends from the looms.  Pretty straw
+mats lay on the floor, and pots of plants, filling the little room with
+fragrance, stood on the window-sill and in a corner of the room where a
+clay statuette of the Good Shepherd looked down on a praying-desk.
+
+The door had scarcely closed behind them when Perpetua exclaimed: "But
+child, how you frightened me!  At so late an hour!"
+
+"I felt I must come," said Paula.  I could contain myself no longer."
+
+"What, tears?"  sighed the woman, and her own bright little eyes twinkled
+through moisture.  "Poor soul, what has happened now?"
+
+She went up to the young girl to stroke her hair, but Paula rushed into
+her arms, clung passionately round her neck, and burst into loud and
+bitter weeping.  The little matron let her weep for a while; then she
+released herself, and wiped away her own tears and those of her tall
+darling, which had fallen on her smooth grey hair.  She took Paula's chin
+in a firm hand and turned her face towards her own, saying tenderly but
+decidedly: "There, that is enough.  You might cry and welcome, for it
+eases the heart, but that it is so late.  Is it the old story: home-
+sickness, annoyances, and so forth, or is there anything new?"
+
+"Alas, indeed!"  replied the girl.  She pressed her handkerchief in her
+hands as she went on with excited vehemence: "I am in the last extremity,
+I can bear it no longer, I cannot--I cannot!  I am no longer a child, and
+when in the evening you dread the night and in the morning dread the day
+which must be so wretched, so utterly unendurable. . . ."
+
+"Then you listen to reason, my darling, and say to yourself that of two
+evils it is wise to choose the lesser.  You must hear me say once more
+what I have so often represented to you before now: If we renounce our
+city of refuge here and venture out into the wide world again, what shall
+we find that will be an improvement?"
+
+"Perhaps nothing but a hovel by a well under a couple of palm-trees; that
+would satisfy me, if I only had you and could be free--free from every
+one else!"
+
+"What is this; what does this mean?"  muttered the elder woman shaking
+her head.  "You were quite content only the day before yesterday.
+Something must have.  .  .  ."
+
+"Yes, must have happened and has," interrupted the girl almost beside
+herself.  "My uncle's son.--You were there when he arrived--and I
+thought, even I firmly believed that he was worthy of such a reception.
+--I--I--pity me, for I.  .  .  You do not know what influence that man
+exercises over hearts.--And I--I believed his eyes, his words, his songs
+and--yes, I must confess all--even his kisses on this hand!  But it was
+all false, all--a lie, a cruel sport with a weak, simple heart, or even
+worse--more insulting still!  In short, while he was doing all in his
+power to entrap me--even the slaves in the barge observed it--he was in
+the very act--I heard it from Dame Neforis, who is only too glad when she
+can hurt me--in the very act of suing for the hand of that little doll--
+you know her--little Katharina.  She is his betrothed; and yet the
+shameless wretch dares to carry on his game with me; he has the face...."
+
+Again Paula sobbed aloud; but the older woman did not know how to help in
+the matter and could only mutter to herself:  "Bad, bad--what, this too!
+--Merciful Heaven! .  .  ."  But she presently recovered herself and said
+firmly: "This is indeed a new and terrible misfortune; but we have known
+worse--much, much worse!  So hold up your head, and whatever liking you
+may have in your heart for the traitor, tear it out and trample on it.
+Your pride will help you; and if you have only just found out what my
+lord Orion is, you may thank God that things had gone no further between
+you!"  Then she repeated to Paula all that she knew of Orion's misconduct
+to the frenzied Mandane, and as Paula gave strong utterance to her
+indignation, she went on:
+
+"Yes, child, he is a man to break hearts and ruin happiness, and perhaps
+it was my duty to warn you against him; but as he is not a bad man in
+other things--he saved the brother of Hathor the designer--you know her
+--from drowning, at the risk of his own life--and as I hoped you might be
+on friendly terms with him at least, on his return home, I refrained....
+And besides, old fool that I am, I fancied your proud heart wore a
+breastplate of mail, and after all it is only a foolish girl's heart like
+any other, and now in its twenty-first year has given its love to a man
+for the first time."
+
+But Paula interrupted her:  "I love the traitor no more!  No, I hate him,
+hate him beyond words!  And the rest of them!  I loathe them all!"
+
+"Alas! that it should be so!" sighed the nurse.  "Your lot is no doubt a
+hard one.  He--Orion--of course is out of the question; but I often ask
+myself whether you might not mend matters with the others.  If you had
+not made it too hard for them, child, they must have loved you; they
+could not have helped it; but ever since you have been in the house you
+have only felt miserable and wished that they would let you go your own
+way, and they--well they have done so; and now you find it ill to bear
+the lot you chose for yourself.  It is so indeed, child, you need not
+contradict me.  This once we will put the matter plainly: Who can hope to
+win love that gives none, but turns away morosely from his fellow-
+creatures?  If each of us could make his neighbors after his own pattern
+--then indeed!  But life requires us to take them just as we find them,
+and you, sweetheart, have never let this sink into your mind!"
+
+"Well, I am what I am !"
+
+"No doubt, and among the good you are the best--but which of them all can
+guess that?  Every one to some extent plays a part.  And you!  What
+wonder if they never see in you anything but that you are unhappy?  God
+knows it is ten thousand times a pity that you should be!  But who can
+take pleasure in always seeing a gloomy face?"
+
+"I have never uttered a single word of complaint of my troubles to any
+one of them!"  cried Paula, drawing herself up proudly.
+
+"That  is  just the difficulty,"  replied  Perpetua.  "They took you in,
+and thought it gave them a claim on your person and also on your sorrows.
+Perhaps they longed to comfort you; for, believe me, child, there is a
+secret pleasure in doing so.  Any one who is able to show us sympathy
+feels that it does him more good than it does us.  I know life!  Has it
+never occurred to you that you are perhaps depriving your relations in
+the great house of a pleasure, perhaps even doing them an injury by
+locking up your heart from them?  Your grief is the best side of you, and
+of that you do indeed allow them to catch a glimpse; but where the pain
+is you carefully conceal.  Every good man longs to heal a wound when he
+sees it, but your whole demeanor cries out: 'Stay where you are, and
+leave me in peace.'--If only you were good to your uncle!"
+
+"But I am, and I have felt prompted a hundred times to confide in him--
+but then. . ."
+
+"Well--then?"
+
+"Only look at him, Betta; see how he lies as cold as marble, rigid and
+apathetic, half dead and half alive.  At first the words often rose to my
+lips.  .  ."
+
+"And now?"
+
+"Now all the worst is so long past; I feel I have forfeited the right to
+complain to him of all that weighs me down."
+
+"Hm," said Perpetua who had no answer ready.  "But take heart, my child.
+Orion has at any rate learnt how far he may venture.  You can hold your
+head high enough and look cool enough.  Bear all that cannot be mended,
+and if an inward voice does not deceive me, he whom we seek. . ."
+
+"That was what brought me here.  Are none of our messengers returned
+yet?"
+
+"Yes, the little Nabathaean is come," replied her nurse with some
+hesitation, "and he indeed--but for God's sake, child, form no vain
+hopes!  Hiram came to me soon after sun-down.  .  ."
+
+"Betta!"  screamed the girl, clinging to her nurse's arm.  "What has he
+heard, what news does he bring?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing!  How you rush at conclusions!  What he found out is
+next to nothing.  I had only a minute to speak to Hiram.  To-morrow
+morning he is to bring the man to me.  The only thing he told me.  .  ."
+
+"By Christ's Wounds!  What was it?"
+
+"He said that the messenger had heard of an elderly recluse, who had
+formerly been a great warrior."
+
+"My father, my father!"  cried Paula.  "Hiram is sitting by the fire with
+the others.  Fetch him here at once--at once; I command you, Perpetua, do
+you hear?  Oh best, dearest Betta!  Come with me; we will go to him."
+
+"Patience, sweetheart, a little patience!"  urged the nurse.  "Ah, poor
+dear soul, it will turn out to be nothing again; and if we again follow
+up a false clue it will only lead to fresh disappointment."
+
+"Never mind: you are to come with me."
+
+"To all the servants round the fire, and at this time of night?  I should
+think so indeed!--But do you wait here, child.  I know how it can be
+managed.
+
+"I will wake Hiram's Joseph.  He sleeps in the stable yonder--and then he
+will fetch his father.  Ah! what impatience!  What a stormy, passionate
+little heart it is!  If I do not do your bidding, I shall have you awake
+all night, and wandering about to-morrow as if in a dream.--There, be
+quiet, be quiet, I am going."
+
+As she spoke she wrapped her kerchief round her head and hurried out;
+Paula fell on her knees before the crucifix over the bed, and prayed
+fervently till her nurse returned, Soon after she heard a man's steps on
+the stairs and Hiram came in.
+
+He was a powerful man of about fifty, with a pair of honest blue eyes in
+his plain face.  Any one looking at his broad chest would conclude that
+when he spoke it would be in a deep bass voice; but Hiram had stammered
+from his infancy; and from constant companionship with horses he had
+accustomed himself to make a variety of strange, inarticulate noises in a
+high, shrill voice.  Besides, he was always unwilling to speak.  When he
+found himself face to face with the daughter of his master and
+benefactor, he knelt at her feet, looked up at her with faithful, dog-
+like eyes full of affection, and kissed first her dress, and then her
+hand which she held out to him.  Paula kindly but decidedly cut short the
+expressions of delight at seeing her again which he painfully stammered
+out; and when he at length began to tell his story his words came far too
+slowly for her impatience.
+
+He told her that the Nabathaean who had brought the rumor that had
+excited her hopes, was not unwilling to follow up the trace he had found,
+but he would not wait beyond noon the next day and had tried to bid for
+high terms.
+
+"He shall have them--as much as he wants!"  cried Paula.  But Hiram
+entreated her, more by looks and vague cries than by articulate words,
+not to hope for too much.  Dusare the Nabathaean--Perpetua now took up
+the tale--had heard of a recluse, living at Raithu on the Red Sea, who
+had been a great warrior, by birth a Greek, and who for two years had
+been leading a life of penance in great seclusion among the pious
+brethren on the sacred Mount of Sinai.  The messenger had not been able
+to learn what his name in the world had been, but among the hermits he
+was known as Paulus."
+
+"Paulus!"  interrupted the girl with panting breath.  "A name that must
+remind him of my mother and of me, yes, of me!  And he, the hero of
+Damascus, who was called Thomas in the world, believing that I was dead,
+has no doubt dedicated himself to the service of God and of Christ, and
+has taken the name of Paulus, as Saul, the other man of Damascus did
+after his con version,--exactly like him!  Oh!  Betta, Hiram, you will
+see: it is he, it must be!  How can you doubt it?"
+
+The Syrian shook his head doubtfully and gave vent to a long-drawn
+whistle, and Perpetua clasped her hands exclaiming distressfully: "Did I
+not say so?  She takes the fire lighted by shepherds at night to warm
+their hands for the rising sun--the rattle of chariots for the thunders
+of the Almighty!--Why, how many thousands have called themselves Paulus!
+By all the Saints, child, I beseech you keep quiet, and do not try to
+weave a holiday-robe out of airy mist!  Be prepared for the worst; then
+you are armed against failure and preserve your right to hope!  Tell her,
+tell her, Hiram, what else the messenger said; it is nothing positive;
+everything is as uncertain as dust in the breeze."
+
+The freedman then explained that this Nabathaean was a trustworthy man,
+far better skilled in such errands than himself, for he understood both
+Syriac and Egyptian, Greek and Aramaic; and nevertheless he had failed to
+find out anything more about this hermit Paulus at Tor, where the monks
+of the monastery of the Transfiguration had a colony.  Subsequently,
+however, on the sea voyage to Holzum, he had been informed by some monks
+that there was a second Sinai.  The monastery there--but here Perpetua
+again was the speaker, for the hapless stammerer's brow was beaded with
+sweat--the monastery at the foot of the peaked, heaven-kissing mountain,
+had been closed in consequence of the heresies of its inhabitants; but in
+the gorges of these great heights there were still many recluses, some in
+a small Coenobium, some in Lauras and separate caves, and among these
+perchance Paulus might be found.  This clue seemed a good one and she and
+Hiram had already made up their minds to follow it up; but the warrior
+monk was very possibly a stranger, and they had thought it would be cruel
+to expose her to so keen a disappointment.
+
+Here Paula interrupted her, crying in joyful excitement:
+
+"And why should not something besides disappointment be my portion for
+once?  How could you have the heart to deprive me of the hope on which my
+poor heart still feeds?--But I will not be robbed of it.  Your Paulus of
+Sinai is my lost father.  I feel it, I know it!  If I had not sold my
+pearls, the Nabathaean. . . . But as it is.  When can you start, my good
+Hiram?"
+
+"Not before a fort--a fortnight at--at--at--soonest," said the man.
+"I am in the governor's service now, and the day after to-morrow is the
+great horse-fair at Niku.  The young master wants some stallions bought
+and there are our foals to. . . ."
+
+"I will implore my uncle to-morrow, to spare you," cried Paula.
+"I will go on my knees to him."
+
+"He will not let him go," said the nurse.  "Sebek the steward told him
+all about it from me before the hour of audience and tried to have Hiram
+released."
+
+"And he said.... ?"
+
+"The lady Neforis said it was all a mere will-o'-the-wisp, and my lord
+agreed with her.  Then your uncle forbade Sebek to betray the matter to
+you, and sent word to me that he would possibly send Hiram to Sinai when
+the horse-fair was over.  So take patience, sweetheart.  What are two
+weeks, or at most three--and then. . . ."
+
+"But I shall die before then!"  cried Paula.  "The Nabathaean, you say,
+is here and willing to go."
+
+"Yes, Mistress."
+
+"Then we will secure him," said Paula resolutely.  Perpetua, however, who
+must have discussed the matter fully with her fellow-countryman, shook
+her head mournfully and said: "He asks too much for us!"
+
+She then explained that the man, being such a good linguist, had already
+been offered an engagement to conduct a caravan to Ctesiphon.  This would
+be a year's pay to him, and he was not inclined to break off his
+negotiations with the merchant Hanno and search the deserts of Arabia
+Petraea for less than two thousand drachmae.
+
+"Two thousand drachmae!"  echoed Paula, looking down in distress and
+confusion; but she presently looked up and exclaimed with angry
+determination: "How dare they keep from me that which is my own?  If my
+uncle refuses what I have to ask, and will ask, then the inevitable must
+happen, though for his sake it will grieve me; I must put my affairs in
+the hands of the judges."
+
+"The judges?"  Perpetua smiled.  "But you cannot lay a complaint without
+your kyrios, and your uncle is yours.  Besides: before they have settled
+the matter the messenger may have been to Ctesiphon and back, far as it
+is."
+
+Again her nurse entreated her to have patience till the horse-fair should
+be over.  Paula fixed her eyes on the ground.  She seemed quite crushed;
+but Perpetua started violently and Hiram drew back a step when she
+suddenly broke out in a loud, joyful cry of "Father in Heaven, I have
+what we need!"
+
+"How, child, what?"  asked the nurse, pressing her hand to her heart.
+But Paula vouchsafed no information; she turned quickly to the Syrian:
+
+"Is the outer court-yard clear yet?  Are the people gone?"  she asked.
+
+The reply was in the affirmative.  The freed servants had retired when
+Hiram left them.  The officials would not break up for some time yet, but
+there was less difficulty in passing them.
+
+"Very good," said the girl.  "Then you, Hiram, lead the way and wait for
+me by the little side door.  I will give you something in my room which
+will pay the Nabathaean's charges ten times over.  Do not look so
+horrified, Betta.  I will give him the large emerald out of my mother's
+necklace."  The woman clasped her hands, and cried out in dismay and
+warning.
+
+"Child, child!  That splendid gem!  an heirloom in the family--that stone
+which came to you from the saintly Emperor Theodosius--to sell that of
+all things!  Nay-to throw it away; not to rescue your father either, but
+merely--yes child, for that is the truth, merely because you lack
+patience to wait two little weeks!"
+
+"That is hard, that is unjust, Betta," Paula broke in reprovingly.  "It
+will be a question of a month, and we all know how much depends on the
+messenger.  Do you forget how highly Hiram spoke of this very man's
+intelligence?  And besides--must I, the younger, remind you?--What is the
+life of man?  An instant may decide his life or death; and my father is
+an old man, scarred from many wounds even before the siege.  It may make
+just the difference between our meeting, or never meeting again."
+
+"Yes, yes," said the old woman in subdued tones, "perhaps you are right,
+and if I.  .  ."  But Paula stopped her mouth with a kiss, and then
+desired Hiram to carry the gem, the first thing in the morning, to
+Gamaliel the Jew, a wealthy and honest man, and not to sell it for less
+than twelve thousand drachmae.  If the goldsmith could not pay so much
+for it at once, he might be satisfied to bring away the two thousand
+drachmae for the messenger, and fetch the remainder at another season.
+
+The Syrian led the way, and when, after a long leave-taking, she quitted
+her nurse's pleasant little room, Hiram had done her bidding and was
+waiting for her at the little side door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+As Hiram had supposed, the better class of the household were still
+sitting with their friends, and they had been joined by the guide and by
+the Arab merchant's head man: Rustem the Masdakite, as well as his
+secretary and interpreter.
+
+With the exception only of Gamaliel the Jewish goldsmith, and the Arab's
+followers, the whole of the party were Christians; and it had gone
+against the grain to admit the Moslems into their circle--the Jew had for
+years been a welcome member of the society.  However, they had done so,
+and not without marked civility; for their lord had desired that the
+strangers should be made welcome, and they might expect to hear much that
+was new from wanderers from such a distance.  In this, to be sure, they
+were disappointed, for the dragoman was taciturn and the Masdakite could
+speak no Egyptian, and Greek very ill.  So, after various futile attempts
+to make the new-comers talk, they paid no further heed to them, and
+Orion's secretary became the chief speaker.  He had already told them
+yesterday much that was fresh and interesting about the Imperial court;
+to-day he entered into fuller details of the brilliant life his young
+lord had led at Constantinople, whither he had accompanied him.  He
+described the three races he had won in the Circus with his own horses;
+gave a lively picture of his forcing his way with only five followers
+through a raging mob of rioters, from the palace to the church of St.
+Sophia; and then enlarged on Orion's successes among the beauties of the
+Capital.
+
+"The queen of them all," he went on in boastful accents, "was Heliodora
+--no flute-player nor anything of that kind; no indeed, but a rich,
+elegant, and virtuous patrician lady, the widow of Flavianus, nephew to
+Justinus the senator, and a relation of the Emperor.  All Constantinople
+was at her feet, the great Gratian himself sought to win her, but of
+course, in vain.  There is no palace to compare with hers in all Egypt,
+not even in Alexandria.  The governor's residence here--for I think
+nothing of mere size--is a peasant's hut--a wretched barn by comparison!
+I will tell you another time what that casket of treasures is like.  Its
+door was besieged day and night by slaves and freedmen bringing her
+offerings of flowers and fruit, rare gifts, and tender verses written on
+perfumed, rose-colored silk; but her favors were not to be purchased till
+she met Orion.  Would you believe it: from the first time she saw him in
+Justinus' villa she fell desperately in love with him; it was all over
+with her; she was his as completely as the ring on my finger is mine!"
+
+And in his vanity he showed his hearers a gold ring, with a gem of some
+value, which he owed to the liberality of his young master.  "From that
+day forth," he eagerly went on, "the names of Orion and Heliodora were in
+every mouth, and how often have I seen men quite beside themselves over
+the beauty of this divine pair.  In the Circus, in the theatre, or
+sailing about the Bosphorus--they were to be seen everywhere together;
+and through the hideous, bloody struggle for the throne they lived in a
+Paradise of their own.  He often took her out in his chariot; or she took
+him in hers."
+
+"Such a woman has horses too?"  asked the head groom contemptuously.
+
+"A woman!" cried the secretary.  "A lady of rank!--She has none but
+bright chestnuts; large horses of Armenian breed, and small, swift beasts
+from the island of Sardinia, which fly on with the chariot, four abreast,
+like hunted foxes.  Her horses are always decked with flowers and ribbons
+fluttering from the gold harness, and the grooms know how to drive them
+too!--Well, every one thought that our young lord and the handsome widow
+would marry; and it was a terrible blow to the hapless Heliodora when
+nothing came of it--she looks like a saint and is as soft as a kitten.
+I was by when they parted, and she shed such bitter tears it was pitiable
+to see.  Still, she could not be angry with her idol, poor, gentle,
+tender kitten.  She even gave him her lap-dog for a keepsake--that little
+silky thing you have seen here.  And take my word for it, that was a true
+love-token, for her heart was as much set on that little beast as if it
+had been her favorite child.  And he felt the parting too, felt it
+deeply; however, I am his confidential secretary, and it would never do
+for me to tell tales out of school.  He clasped the little dog to his
+heart as he bid her farewell, and he promised her to send some keepsake
+in return which should show her how precious her love had been--and it
+will be no trifle, that any one may swear who knows my master.  You,
+Gamaliel, I daresay he has been to you about it by this time."
+
+The man thus addressed--the same to whom Hiram was to offer Paula's
+emerald--was a rich Alexandrian of a happy turn of mind; as soon as the
+incursion of the Saracens had made Alexandria an unsafe residence, so
+that the majority of his fellow Israelites had fled from the great port,
+he had found his way to Memphis, where he could count on the protection
+of his patron, the Mukaukas George.
+
+He shook his grizzled curls at this question, but he presently whispered
+in the secretary's ear.  "We have the very thing he wants.  You bring me
+the cow and you shall have a calf--and a calf with twelve legs too.  Is
+it a bargain?"
+
+"Twelve per cent on the profits?  Done!"  replied the secretary in the
+same tone, with a sly smile of intelligence.
+
+When, by-and-bye, an accountant asked him why Orion had not brought home
+this fair dame, the bearer too of a noble name, to his parents as their
+daughter-in-law, he replied that, being a Greek, she was of course a
+Melchite.  Those present asked no better reason; as soon as the question
+of creed was raised the conversation, as usual in these convivial
+evenings, became a squabble over dogmatic differences; in the course of
+it a legal official ventured to opine that if the case had been that of a
+less personage than a son of the Mukaukas--for whom it was, of course,
+out of the question--of a mere Jacobite citizen and his Melchite
+sweetheart, for instance, some compromise might have been effected.
+They need only have made up their minds each, respectively, to subscribe
+to the Monothelitic doctrine--though, he, for his part, could have
+nothing to say to anything of the kind; it was warmly upheld by the
+Imperial court, and by Cyrus, the deceased patriarch of Alexandria, and
+was based on the assumption that there were indeed two natures in Christ,
+but both under the control of one and the same will.  By this dogma there
+were in the Saviour two persons no doubt; still it asserted His unity in
+a certain qualified sense, and this was the most important point.
+
+Such an heretical proposition was of course loudly disapproved of by the
+assembled Jacobites; differences of opinion were more and more strongly
+asserted, and a calm interchange of views turned to a riotous quarrel
+which threatened to end in actual violence.
+
+This discussion was already beginning when Paula succeeded in slipping
+unseen across the court-yard.
+
+She silently beckoned to Hiram to follow her; he cautiously took off his
+shoes, pushed them under the steep servants' stairs, and in a few minutes
+was standing in the young girl's room.  Paula at once opened a chest, and
+took out a costly and beautifully-wrought necklace set with pearls.  This
+she handed to the Syrian, desiring him to wrench from its setting a large
+emerald which hung from the middle.  The freedman's strong hand, with the
+aid of a knife, quickly and easily did the work; and he stood weighing
+the gem, as it lay freed from the gold hemisphere that had held it,
+larger than a walnut, shining and sparkling on his palm, while Paula
+repeated the instructions she had already given him in her nurse's room.
+
+The faithful soul had no sooner left his beloved mistress than she
+proceeded to unplait her long thick hair, smiling the while with happy
+hope; but she had not yet begun to undress when she heard a knock.  She
+started, flew to the door and hastily bolted it, while she enquired:
+
+"Who is there?"--preparing herself for the worst.  "Hiram," was the
+whispered reply.  She opened the door, and he told her that meanwhile
+the side door had been locked, and that he knew no other way out from
+the great rambling house whither he rarely had occasion to come.
+
+What was to be done?  He could not wait till the door was opened again,
+for he must carry out her commission quite early in the morning, and if
+he were caught and locked up for only half the day the Nabathaean would
+take some other engagement.
+
+With swift decision she twisted up her hair, threw a handkerchief over
+her head, and said: "Then come with me; the moon is still up; it would
+not be safe to carry a lamp.  I will lead the way and you must keep
+behind me  If only the kitchen is empty, we can reach the Viridarium
+unseen.  If the upper servants are still sitting in the court-yard the
+great door will be open, for several of them sleep in the house.  At any
+rate you must go through the vestibule; you cannot miss your way out of
+the viridarium.  But stay! Beki generally lies in front of the tablinum--
+the fierce dog from Herrionthis in Thebais; and he does not know you, for
+he never goes out of the house, but he will obey me.
+
+"When I lift my hand, hang back a little.  He is quite quiet with his
+masters, and does not hurt a stranger if they are by.  Now, we must not
+utter another word.--If we are discovered, I will confess the truth;
+if you alone are seen, you can say--well, say you were waiting for Orion,
+to speak to him very early about the horse-fair at Niku."
+
+"A horse was off--off--offered me for sale this very day."
+
+"Good, very good; then you lingered in the vestibule to speak of that--to
+ask the master about it before he should go out.  It must be daylight in
+a few hours.--Now, come."
+
+Paula went down the stairs with a sure and rapid step.  At the bottom
+Hiram again took off his shoes, holding them in his hand, so as to lose
+no time in following his mistress.  They went on in silence through the
+darkness till they reached the kitchen.  Here Paula turned and said to
+the Syrian:
+
+"If there is any one here, I will say I came to fetch some water; if
+there is no one I will cough and you can follow.  At any rate I will
+leave the door open, and then you will hear what happens.  If I am
+obliged to return, do you hurry on before me back by the way we came.
+In that case I will return to my room where you must wait outside till
+the side door is opened again, and if you are found there leave the
+explanation to me.--Shrink back, quite into that corner."
+
+She softly opened the door into the kitchen; the roof was open to the
+light of the declining moon and myriad stars.  The room was quite empty:
+only a cat lay on a bench by the wide hearth, and a few bats flitted to
+and fro on noiseless wings; a few live coals still glowed among the ashes
+under the spits, like the eyes of lurking beasts of prey.  Paula coughed
+gently, and immediately heard Hiram's step behind her; then, with a
+beating heart and agonizing fears, she proceeded on her way.  First down
+a few steps, then through a dark passage, where the bats in their
+unswerving flight shot by close to her head.  At last they had to cross
+the large, open dining-hall.  This led into the viridarium, a spacious
+quadrangle, paved at the edges and planted in the middle, where a
+fountain played; round this square the Governor's residence was built.
+All was still and peaceful in this secluded space, vaulted over by the
+high heavens whose deep blue was thickly dotted with stars.  The moon
+would soon be hidden behind the top of the cornice which crowned the roof
+of the building.  The large-leaved plants in the middle of the quadrangle
+threw strange, ghostly shadows on the dewy grass-plot; the water in the
+fountain splashed more loudly than by day, but with a soothing,
+monotonous gurgle, broken now and then by a sudden short pause.  The
+marble pillars gleamed as white as snow, and filmy mists, which were
+beginning to rise from the damp lawn, floated languidly hither and
+thither on the soft night breeze, like ghosts veiled in flowing crape.
+Moths flitted noiselessly round and over the clumps of bushes, and the
+whole quiet and restful enclosure was full of sweetness from the Lotos
+flowers in the marble basin, from the blossoms of the luxuriant shrubs
+and the succulent tropical herbs at their feet.  At any other time it
+would have been a joy to pause and look round, only to breathe and let
+the silent magic of the night exert its spell; but Paula's soul was
+closed against these charms.  The sequestered silence lent a threatening
+accent to the furious wrangling in the court-yard, which was audible even
+here in bursts of uproar; and it was with an anxious heart that she
+observed that everything was not in its usual order; for her sharp eyes
+could discern no one, nothing, at the entrance to the tablinum, which was
+usually guarded by an armed sentinel or by the watch-dog; and surely--
+yes, she was not mistaken--the bronze doors were open, and the moon shone
+on the bright metal of one half which stood ajar.
+
+She stopped, and Hiram behind her did the same.  They both listened with
+such tension that the veins in their foreheads swelled; but from the
+tablinum, which was hardly thirty paces from them, came only very faint
+and intermittent sounds, indistinct in character and drowned by the
+tumult without.
+
+A few long and anxious minutes, and then the half-closed door was
+suddenly opened and a man came forth.  Paula's heart stood still, but she
+did not for an instant lose her keenness of vision; she at once and
+positively recognized the man who came out of the tablinum as Orion and
+none other, and the big, long-haired dog too came out and past him,
+sniffed the air and then, with a loud bark, rushed on the two watchers.
+Trembling and with clenched teeth, but still mistress of herself, she let
+him come close to her, and then, calling him by his name: "Beki" in low,
+caressing tones, as soon as he recognized her, she laid her hand on his
+shaggy head to scratch his ears, as he loved it done.
+
+Paula and her companion were standing behind a column in the deepest
+shadow.  Thus Orion could not see her, and the dog's loud bark had
+prevented his hearing her coaxing call; so when Beki was quiet and stood
+still, Orion whistled to him.  The obedient and watchful beast, ran back,
+wagging his tail; and his master, greeting him as "a stupid old cat-
+hunter," let him spring over his arm, hugged the creature and then pushed
+him off again in play.  Then he closed the door and went into the
+apartments leading to the courtyard.
+
+"But he must come back this way to go to his own rooms," said Paula to
+her companion with a sigh of relief.  "We must wait.  But now we must not
+lose a minute.  Come over to the door of the tablinum.  The dog will know
+me now and will not bark again."  They hastened on, and when they had
+reached the door, which lay in shadow within a deep doorway, Paula asked
+her companion:  "Did you see who the man was who came out?"
+
+"My lord Orion," said Hiram.  "He was co--co--coming home from the town
+when I preceded you across the yard."
+
+"Indeed?"  she said with apparent indifference, and as she leaned against
+the cold metal door-panels she looked back into the garden and thought
+she was now free to return.  She would describe to the freedman the way
+he must now go--it was quite simple; but she had not had time to do so
+when, from a room dividing the viridarium from the vestibule she heard
+first a woman's shrill voice; then the deeper tones of a man; and hardly
+had they exchanged a few sentences, when every sound was lost in the
+furious barking of the hound, and immediately after a loud shriek of pain
+from a woman fell upon her ear, and the noise of a heavy object falling
+to the ground.
+
+What had happened?  It must be something portentous and terrible; of that
+there could be no doubt; and ere long Paula's fears were justified.  Out
+from the room where the scene had taken place rushed Orion, and with him
+the dog, across the grass-plot which was usually respected and cherished
+as holy ground, towards the side of the house facing the river, which was
+where he and all the family had their rooms.
+
+"Now!"  cried Paula, quickly leading the way.
+
+She flew in breathless haste through the first room and into the
+unguarded hall; but she had not reached the middle of it when she gave a
+scream, for before her in the moonlight, lay a body, motionless, at full
+length, on the hard, marble floor.
+
+"Run, Hiram, fly !"  she cried to her companion.  "The door is ajar--
+open--I can see it is."
+
+She fell on her knees by the side of the lifeless form, raised the head,
+and saw--the beautiful, deathlike face of the crazy Persian slave.  She
+felt her hand wet with the blood that had soaked the hapless girl's
+thick, fair hair, and she shuddered; but she resisted her impulse of
+horror and loathing, and perceiving some dark stains on the torn peplos
+she pulled it aside and saw that the white bosom was bleeding from deep
+wounds made in the tender flesh by the cruel fangs of the hound.
+
+Paula's heart thrilled with indignation, grief and pity.  He--he whom she
+had only yesterday held to be the epitome of every manly perfection--
+Orion, was guilty of so foul a deed!  He, of whose unflinching, dauntless
+courage she had heard so much, had fled like a coward, and had left the
+victim to her fate--twice a victim to him!
+
+But something must be done besides lamenting and raging, and wondering
+how in one human soul there could be room for so much that was noble and
+fine with so much that was shameful and cruel.  She must save the girl,
+she must seek help, for Mandane's bosom still faintly rose and fell under
+Paula's tremulous fingers.
+
+The freedman's brave heart would not allow him to fly to leave her with
+the injured girl; he flung his shoes on the floor, raised the senseless
+form, and propped it against one of the columns that stood round the
+hall.  It was not till his mistress had repeated her orders that he
+hurried away.  Paula watched him depart; as soon as she heard the heavy
+door of the atrium close upon him, heedless of her own suspicious-looking
+position, she shouted for help, so loudly that her cries rang through the
+nocturnal silence of the house, and in a few minutes, from this side and
+that, a slave, a maid, a clerk, a cook, a watchman, came hurrying in.
+
+Foremost of all--so soon indeed that he must have been on his way when he
+heard her cry--came Orion.  He wore a light night-dress, intended, so she
+said to herself, to give the wretch the appearance of having sprung out
+of bed.  But was this indeed he?  Was this man with a flushed face,
+staring eyes, disordered hair and hoarse voice, that favorite of fortune
+whose happy nature, easy demeanor, sunny gaze and enchanting song had
+bewitched her soul?  His hand shook as he came close to her and the
+injured slave; and how forced and embarrassed was his enquiry as to what
+had happened; how scared he looked as he asked her what had brought her
+into this part of the house at such an hour.
+
+She made no reply; but when his mother repeated the question soon after,
+in a sharp voice, she--she who had never in her life told a lie--said
+with hasty decision: "I could not sleep, and the bark of the dog and a
+cry for help brought me here."
+
+"I call that having sharp ears!"  retorted Neforis with an incredulous
+shrug.  "For the future, at any rate, under similar circumstances you
+need not be so prompt.  How long, pray, have young girls trusted
+themselves alone when murder is cried?"
+
+"If you had but armed yourself, fair daughter of heroes!"  added Orion;
+but he had no sooner spoken than he bitterly regretted it.  What a glance
+Paula cast at him!  It was more than she could bear to hear him address
+her in jest, almost in mockery: him of all men, and at this moment for
+the first time--and to be thus reminded of her father!  She answered
+proudly and with cutting sharpness: "I leave weapons to fighting men and
+murderers!"
+
+"To fighting men, and murderers!"  repeated Orion, pretending not to
+understand the point of her words.  He forced a smile; but then, feeling
+that he must make some defence, he added bitterly: "Really, that sounds
+like the utterance of a feeble-hearted damsel!  But let me beg you to
+come closer and be calm.  These pitiable gashes on the poor creature's
+shoulder--I care more about her than you do, take my word for it--were
+inflicted by a four-footed assassin, whose weapons were given by nature.
+Yes, that is what happened.  Rough old Beki keeps watch at the door of
+the tablinum.  What brought the poor child here I know not, but he caught
+scent of her and pulled her down."
+
+"Or nothing of the kind!"  interrupted Neforis, picking up a pair of
+man's shoes which lay on the ground by the sufferer.
+
+Orion turned as pale as death and hastily took the shoes from his
+mother's hand; he would have liked to fling them up and away through the
+open roof.  How came they here?  Whose were they?  Who had been here this
+night?  Before going into the tablinum he had locked the outer door on
+that side, and had returned subsequently to open it again for the people
+in the court-yard.  It was not till after he had done this that the crazy
+girl had rushed upon him; she must have been lurking somewhere about when
+he first went through the atrium but had not then found courage enough to
+place herself in his way.  When she had thrown herself upon him, the dog
+had pulled her down before he could prevent it: he would certainly have
+sprung past her and have come to the rescue but that he must thus have
+betrayed his visit to the tablinum.
+
+It had required all his presence of mind to hurry to his room, fling on
+his night garments, and rush back to the scene of disaster.  When Paula
+had first called for help he was already on his way, and with what
+feelings!  Never had he felt so bewildered, so confused, so deeply
+dissatisfied with himself; for the first time in his life, as he stood
+face to face with Paula, he dared not look straight into the eyes of his
+fellow-man.
+
+And now these shoes!  The owner must have come there with the crazy girl,
+and if he had seen him in the tablinum and betrayed what he was doing
+there, how could he ever again appear in his parents' presence?  He had
+looked upon it as a good joke, but now it had turned to bitter earnest.
+At any cost he must and would prevent his nocturnal doings from becoming
+known!  Some new wrong-doing-nay, the worst was  preferable to a stain on
+his honor.--Whose could the shoes be?  He suddenly held them up on high,
+crying with a loud voice: "Do these shoes belong to any of you, you
+people?  To the gate-keeper perhaps?"
+
+When all were silent, and the porter denied the ownership, he stood
+thinking; then he added with a defiant glare, and in a husky voice:
+"Then some one who had broken into the house has been startled and
+dropped them.  Our house-stamp is here on the leather: they were made in
+our work-shop, and they still smell of the stable-here, Sebek, you can
+convince yourself.  Take them into your keeping, man; and tomorrow
+morning we will see who has left this suspicious offering in our
+vestibule.--You were the first to reach the spot, fair Paula.  Did you
+see a man about?"
+
+"Yes," she replied with a hostile and challenging stare.
+
+"And which way did he go?"
+
+"He fled across the viridarium like a coward, running across the poor,
+well-kept grass-plot to save time, and vanished upstairs in the dwelling-
+rooms."
+
+Orion ground his teeth, and a mad hatred surged up in him of this mystery
+in woman's form in whose power, as it seemed, his ruin lay, and whose
+eyes mashed with revenge and the desire to undo him.  What was she
+plotting against him?  Was there a being on earth who would dare to
+accuse him, the spoilt favorite of great and small....?  And her look had
+meant more than aversion, it had expressed contempt....  How dare she
+look so at him?  Who in the wide world had a right to accuse him of
+anything that could justify such a feeling?  Never, never had he met with
+enmity like this, least of all from a girl.  He longed to annihilate the
+high-handed, cold-hearted, ungrateful creature who could humble him so
+outrageously after he had allowed her to see that his heart was hers, and
+who could make him quail--a man whose courage had been proved a hundred
+times.  He had to exercise his utmost self-control not to forget that she
+was a woman.--What had happened?  What demon had been playing tricks on
+him--What had so completely altered him within this half-hour that his
+whole being seemed subverted even to himself, and that any one dared to
+treat him so?
+
+His mother at once observed the terrible change that came over her son's
+face when Paula declared that a man had fled towards the dwelling-rooms;
+but she accounted for it in her own way, and exclaimed in genuine alarm:
+"Towards the Nile-wing, the rooms where your father sleeps?  Merciful
+Heaven! suppose they have planned an attack there!  Run--fly, Sebek.
+
+"Go across with some armed men!  Search the whole house from top to
+bottom!  Perhaps you will catch the rascal--he had trodden down the
+grass--you must find him--you must not let him escape."
+
+The steward hurried off, but Paula begged the head gardener, who had come
+in with the rest, to compare the foot-prints of the fugitive, which must.
+yet be visible on the damp grass, with the shoes; her heart beat wildly,
+and again she tried to catch the young man's eye.  Orion, however,
+started forward and went into the viridarium, saying as he went: "That is
+my concern."
+
+But he was ashamed of himself, and felt as if something tight was
+throttling him.  In his own eyes he appeared like a thief caught in the
+act, a traitor, a contemptible rascal; and he began to perceive that he
+was indeed no longer what he had been before he had committed that fatal
+deed in the tablinum.
+
+Paula breathed hard as she watched him go out.  Had he sunk so low as to
+falsify the evidence, and to declare that the groom's broad sole fitted
+the tracks of his small and shapely feet?  She hated him, and yet she
+could have found it in her heart to pray that this, at least, he might
+not do; and when he came back and said in some confusion that he could
+not be sure, that the shoes did not seem exactly to fit the foot-marks,
+she drew a breath of relief and turned again to the wounded girl and the
+physician, who, had now made his appearance.  Before Neforis followed her
+example she drew Orion aside and anxiously asked him what ailed him, he
+looked so pale and upset.  He only said with some hesitation: "That poor
+girl's fate. . . ." and he pointed to the Persian slave.--"It troubles
+me."
+
+"You are so soft-hearted--you were as a boy!"  said his mother
+soothingly.  She had seen the moisture sparkling in his eyes; but his
+tears were not for the Persian, but for the mysterious something--he
+himself knew not what to call it--that he had forfeited in this last
+hour, and of which the loss gave him unspeakable pain.
+
+But their dialogue was interrupted: the first misfortune of this luckless
+night had brought its attendant: the body of Rustem, the splendid and
+radiantly youthful Rustem, the faithful Persian leader of the caravan,
+was borne into the hall, senseless.  He had made some satirical remark on
+the quarrel over creeds, and a furious Jacobite had fallen upon him with
+a log of wood, and dealt him a deep and perhaps mortal wound.  The leech
+at once gave him his care, and several of the crowd of muttering and
+whispering men, who had made their way in out of curiosity or with a wish
+to be of use, now hurried hither and thither in obedience to the
+physician's orders.
+
+As soon as he saw the Masdakite's wound he exclaimed angrily:
+
+"A true Egyptian blow, dealt from behind!--What does this mob want here?
+Out with every man who does not belong to the place!  The first things
+needed are litters.  Will you, Dame Neforis, desire that two rooms may be
+got ready; one for that poor, gentle creature, and one for this fine
+fellow, though all will soon be over with him, short of a miracle."
+
+"To the north of the viridarium," replied the lady, "there are two rooms
+at your service."
+
+"Not there!"  cried the leech.  "I must have rooms with plenty of fresh
+air, looking out upon the river."
+
+"There are none but the handsome rooms in the visitor's quarters, where
+my husband's niece has hers, Sick persons of the family have often lain
+there, but for such humble folk--you understand?"
+
+"No--I am deaf," replied the physician.
+
+"Oh, I know that," laughed Neforis.  "But those rooms are really just
+refurnished for exalted guests."
+
+"It would be hard to find any more exalted than such as these, sick unto
+death," replied Philippus.  "They are nearer to God in Heaven than you
+are; to your advantage I believe.  Here, you people!  Carry these poor
+souls up to the guests' rooms."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+"It is impossible, impossible, impossible!"  cried Orion, jumping up from
+his writing-table.  He thought of what he had done as a misfortune, and
+not as a crime; he himself hardly knew how it had all come about.  Yes,
+there must be demons, evil, spiteful demons--and it was they who had led
+him to so mad a deed.
+
+Yesterday evening, after the buying of the hanging, he had yielded to his
+mother's request that he should escort the widow Susannah home.  At her
+house he had met her husband's brother, a jovial old fellow named
+Chrysippus; and when the conversation turned on the tapestry, and the
+Mukaukas' purpose of dedicating this work of art with all the gems worked
+into it, to the Church, the old man had clasped his hands, fully sharing
+Orion's disapproval, and had exclaimed laughing "What, you the son, and
+is not even a part of the precious stones to fall to your share?  Why
+Katharina?  Just a little diamond, a tiny opal might well add to the
+earthly happiness of the young, though the old must lay up treasure in
+heaven.--Do not be a fool!  The Church's maw is full enough, and really
+a mouthful is your due."
+
+And then they drank a good deal of fine wine, till at last the older man
+had accompanied Orion home, to stretch his limbs in the cool night air.
+A litter was carried behind him for him to return in, and all the way he
+had continued to persuade the youth to induce his father not to fling the
+whole treasure into the jaws of the Church, but to spare him a few stones
+at least for a more pleasing use.  They had laughed over it a good deal,
+and Orion in his heart had thought Chrysippus very right, and had
+remembered Heliodora, and her love of large, handsome gems, and the
+keepsake he owed her.  But that neither his father nor his mother would
+remove a single stone, and that the whole hanging would be dedicated, was
+beyond a doubt; at the same time, some of this superfluous splendor was
+in fact his due as their son, and a prettier gift to Heliodora than the
+large emerald could not be imagined.  Yes--and she should have it!  How
+delighted she would be!  He even thought of the chief idea for the verses
+to accompany the gift.
+
+He had the key of the tablinum, in which the work was lying, about his
+person; and when, on his return, he found the servants still sitting
+round the fire, he shut the door of the out-buildings while a feeling
+came over him which he remembered having experienced last on occasions
+when he and his brothers had robbed a forbidden fruit-tree.  He was on
+the point of giving up his mad project; and when, in the tablinum itself,
+a horrible inward tremor again came over him he had actually turned to
+retreat--but he remembered old Chrysippus and his prompts.  To turn and
+fly now would be cowardice.  Heliodora must have the large emerald, and
+with his verses; his father might give away all the rest as he pleased.
+When he was kneeling in front of the work with his knife in his hand,
+that sickening terror had come over him for the third time; if the large
+emerald had not come off into his hand at the first effort he would
+certainly have rolled the bale up again and have left the tablinum clean-
+handed.  But the evil demon had been at his elbow, had thrust the gem
+into his hand, as it were, so that two cuts with the knife had sufficed
+to displace it from its setting.  It rolled into his hand and he felt its
+noble weight; he cast aside all care, and had thought no more with
+anything but pleasure of this splendid trick, which he would relate
+to-morrow to old Chrysippus--of course under seal of secrecy.
+
+But now, in the sober light of day, how different did this mad, rash deed
+appear; how heavily had he already been punished; what consequences might
+it not entail?  His hatred of Paula grew every minute: she had certainly
+seen all that had happened and would not hesitate to betray him--that she
+had shown last night.  War, as it were, was declared between them, and he
+vowed to himself, with fire in his eyes, that he would not shirk it!  At
+the same time he could not deny that she had never looked handsomer than
+when she stood, with hair half undone, confronting him--threatening him.
+"It is to be love or hate between us."  he muttered to himself.
+"No half-measures: and she has chosen hate!  Good!  Hitherto I have only
+had to fight against men; but this bold, hard, and scornful maiden, who
+rejects every gentle feeling, is no despicable foe.  She has me at bay.
+If she does her worst by me I will return it in kind!--And who is the
+owner of the shoes?  I have taken all possible means to find him.
+Shameful, shameful! that I cannot hold up my head to look boldly at my
+own face in the glass.  Heliodora is a sweet creature, an angel of
+kindness.  She loved me truly; but this--this--Ah; even for her, this is
+too great a sacrifice!"
+
+He pressed his hand to his brow and flung himself on a divan.  He might
+well be weary, for he had not closed his eyes for more than thirty hours
+and had already done much business that morning.  He had given orders to
+Sebek the house-steward and to the captain of the Egyptian guard to hunt
+out the owner of the sandals by the aid of the dogs, and to cast him into
+prison; next he had of his own accord--since his father generally did not
+fall asleep till the morning and had not yet left his room--tried to
+pacify the Arab merchant with regard to the mishap that had befallen his
+head man under the governor's roof; but with small success.
+
+Finally the young man had indulged his desire to compose a few lines
+addressed to the fair Heliodora--for there was no form of physical or
+mental effort to which he was not trained.  He had not lost the idea that
+had occurred to him yesterday before his theft in the tablinum, and to
+put it into verse was in his present mood an easy task.  He wrote as
+follows:
+
+     "'Like liketh like' saith the saw; and like to like is but fitting.
+     Yet, in the hardest of gems thy soft nature rejoices?
+     Nay, but if noble and rare, if its beauty is priceless,
+     Then, Heliodora, the stone is like thee--akin to thy beauty.
+     Thus let this emerald please thee;--and know that the fire
+     That fills it with light burns more fierce in the heart of thy
+                                                            Friend."
+
+He penned the lines rapidly; and as he did so he felt, he knew not why,
+an excited thrill, as though every word he threw off was a blow aimed at
+Paula.  Last night he had intended to send the costly jewel to the
+handsome widow in a suitable setting; but now it would be madly imprudent
+to order such a thing.  He must send it away at once; he had hastened to
+pack it up with the verses, with his own hand, and entrusted it to
+Chusar, a horsedealer's groom from Constantinople, who had brought his
+Pannonian steeds to Memphis.  He had himself seen off this trustworthy
+messenger, who could speak no Egyptian and very little Greek, and when
+his horse was lost to sight in the dust of the road leading to Alexandria
+he had returned home in a calmer mood.  Ships were constantly putting to
+sea from that port for Constantinople, and Chusar was enjoined to sail by
+the first that should be leaving.  At least the odious deed should not
+have been committed in vain; and yet he would have given a year of his
+life if now he could but know that it had never been done.
+
+"Impossible!"  and "Curse it!"  were the words he had most frequently
+repeated in the course of his retrospect during the past night and
+morning.  How he had had to rush and hurry under the broiling sun! and
+the sense of being compelled to do so for mere concealment's sake seemed
+to him--who had never in his life before done anything that he could not
+justify in the eyes of honest men--so humiliating, that it brought the
+sweat to his burning brow.  He--Orion--to dread discovery as a thief!
+It was inconceivable, and he was afraid, positively afraid for the first
+time since his boyhood.  His fortunate star, which in the Capital had
+shone on him so brightly and benevolently, seemed to have proved
+faithless in this ruinous hole!  What had that Persian girl taken into
+her crazy head that she must rush upon him like some furious beast of
+prey?  He had been bound to her once, no doubt, by a transient passion--
+and what youth of his age was blind to the charms of a pretty slave-girl?
+She had been a lovely child, and it was a vexation, nay a grief to him,
+that she should have been so shamefully punished.  If she should recover,
+and he could have prayed that she might, it would of course be his part
+to provide for her--of course.  To be just, he could not but confess that
+she indeed had good reason to hate him: but Paula?  He had shown her
+nothing but kindness and yet how unhesitatingly, how openly she had
+displayed her enmity.  He could see her now with the name "murderer" on
+her quivering lips; the word had stung him like a lance-thrust.  What a
+hideous, degrading and unjust accusation lay in that exclamation!  Should
+he submit to it unrevenged?
+
+Was she as innocent as she was haughty and cold?  What was she doing in
+the viridarium at midnight?--For she must have been there before that
+ill-starred dog flew at Mandane.  An assignation with the owner of the
+shoes his mother had found was out of the question, for they belonged to
+some man about the stables.  Love, thought he, for a wonder had nothing
+to do with it; but as he came in he had noticed a man crossing the court-
+yard who looked like Paula's freedman, Hiram the trainer.  Probably she
+had arranged a meeting with her stammering friend in order--in order?--
+Well, there was but one thing that seemed likely: She was plotting to fly
+from his parents' house and needed this man's assistance.
+
+He had seen within a few hours of his return that his mother did not make
+life sweet to the girl, and yet his father had very possibly opposed her
+wish to seek another home.  But why should she avoid and hate him?  In
+that expedition on the river and on their way home he could have sworn
+that she loved him, and the remembrance of those hours brought her near
+to him again, and wiped out his schemes of vengeance against her, of
+punishment to be visited on her.  Then he thought of little Katharina
+whom his mother intended him to marry, and at the thought he laughed
+softly to himself.  In the Imperial gardens at Constantinople he had once
+seen a strange Indian bird, with a tiny body and head and an immensely
+long tail, shining like silver and mother of pearl.  This was Katharina!
+She herself a mere nothing; but then her tail! vast estates and immense
+sums of money; and this--this was all his mother saw.  But did he need
+more than he had?  How rich his father must be to spend so large a sum
+on an offering to the Church as heedlessly as men give alms to a beggar.
+
+Katharina--and Paula!
+
+Yes, the little girl was a bright, brisk creature; but then Thomas'
+daughter--what power there was in her eye, what majesty in her gait,
+how--how--how enchanting her--her voice could be--her voice....
+
+He was asleep, worn out by heat and fatigue; and in a dream he saw Paula
+lying on a couch strewn with roses while all about her sounded wonderful
+heart-ensnaring music; and the couch was not solid but blue water, gently
+moving: he went towards her and suddenly a large black eagle swooped down
+on him, flapped his wings in his face and when, half-blinded, he put his
+hand to his eyes the bird pecked the roses as a hen picks millet and
+barley.  Then he was angry, rushed at the eagle, and tried to clutch him
+with his hands; but his feet seemed rooted to the ground, and the more he
+struggled to move freely the more firmly he was dragged backwards.  He
+fought like a madman against the hindering force, and suddenly it
+released him.  He was still under this impression when he woke, streaming
+with perspiration, and opened his eyes.  By his couch stood his mother
+who had laid her hand on his feet to rouse him.
+
+She looked pale and anxious and begged him to come quickly to his father
+who was much disturbed, and wished to speak with him.  Then she hurried
+away.
+
+While he hastily arranged his hair and had his shoes clasped he felt
+vexed that, under the influence of that foolish dream, and still half
+asleep, he had let his mother go before ascertaining what the
+circumstances were that had given rise to his father's anxiety.  Had it
+anything to do with the incidents of the past night?  No.--If he had been
+suspected his mother would have told him and warned him.  It must refer
+to something else.  Perhaps the old merchant's stalwart headman had died
+of his wounds, and his father wished to send him--Orion--across the Nile
+to the Arab viceroy to obtain forgiveness for the murder of a Moslem,
+actually within the precincts of the governor's house.  This fatal blow
+might indeed entail serious consequences; however, the matter might very
+likely be quite other than this.
+
+When he left his room the brooding heat that filled the house struck him
+as peculiarly oppressive, and a painful feeling, closely resembling
+shame, stole over him as he crossed the viridarium, and glanced at the
+grass from which--thanks to Paula's ill-meant warning--he had carefully
+brushed away his foot-marks before daybreak.  How cowardly, how base,
+it all was The best of all in life: honor, self-respect, the proud
+consciousness of being an honest man--all staked and all lost for nothing
+at all!  He could have slapped his own face or cried aloud like a child
+that has broken its most treasured toy.  But of what use was all this?
+What was done could not be undone; and now he must keep his wits about
+him so as to remain, in the eyes of others at least, what he had always
+been, low as he had fallen in his own.
+
+It was scorchingly hot in the enclosed garden-plot, surrounded by
+buildings, and open to the sun; not a human creature was in sight; the
+house seemed dead.  The gaudy flag-staffs and trellis-work, and the
+pillars of the verandah, which had all been newly painted in honor of his
+return and were still wreathed with garlands, exhaled a smell, to him
+quite sickening, of melting resin, drying varnish and faded flowers.
+Though there was no breath of air the atmosphere quivered, as it seemed
+from the fierce rays of the sun, which were reflected like arrows from
+everything around him.  The butterflies and dragonflies appeared to Orion
+to move their wings more languidly as they hovered over the plants and
+flowers, the very fountain danced up more lazily and not so high as
+usual: everything about him was hot, sweltering, oppressive; and the man
+who had always been so independent and looked up to, who for years had
+been free to career through life uncontrolled, and guarded by every good
+Genius now felt trammelled, hemmed in and harassed.
+
+In his father's cool fountain-room he could breathe more freely; but only
+for a moment.  The blood faded from his cheeks, and he had to make a
+strong effort to greet his father calmly and in his usual manner; for in
+front of the divan where the governor commonly reclined, lay the Persian
+hanging, and close by stood his mother and the Arab merchant.  Sebek, the
+steward awaited his master's orders, in the background in the attitude of
+humility which was torture to his old back, but in which he was never
+required to remain:  Orion now signed to him to stand up:
+
+The Arab's mild features wore a look of extreme gravity, and deep
+vexation could be read in his kindly eyes.  As the young man entered he
+bowed slightly; they had already met that morning.  The Mukaukas, who was
+lying deathly pale with colorless lips, scarcely opened his eyes at his
+son's greeting.  It might have been thought that a bier was waiting in
+the next room and that the mourners had assembled here.
+
+The piece of work was only half unrolled, but Orion at once saw the spot
+whence its crowning glory was now missing--the large emerald which, as he
+alone could know, was on its way to Constantinople.  His theft had been
+discovered.  How fearful, how fatal might the issue be!
+
+"Courage, courage!"  he said to himself.  "Only preserve your presence
+of mind.  What profit is life with loss of honor?  Keep your eyes open;
+everything depends on that, Orion!"
+
+He succeeded in hastily collecting his thoughts, and exclaimed in a voice
+which lacked little of its usual eager cheerfulness:
+
+"How dismal you all look!  It is indeed a terrible disaster that the dog
+should have handled the poor girl so roughly, and that our people should
+have behaved so outrageously; but, as I told you this morning, worthy
+Merchant, the guilty parties shall pay for it with their lives.  My
+father, I am sure, will agree that you should deal with them according to
+your pleasure, and our leech Philippus, in spite of his youth, is a
+perfect Hippocrates I can assure you!  He will patch up the fine fellow--
+your head-man I mean, and as to any question of compensation, my father
+--well, you know he is no haggler."
+
+"I beg you not to add insult to the injury that I have suffered under
+your roof," interrupted Haschim.  "No amount of money can buy off my
+wrath over the spilt blood of a friend--and Rustem was my friend--a free
+and valiant youth.  As to the punishment of the guilty: on that I insist.
+Blood cries for blood.  That is our creed; and though yours, to be sure,
+enjoins the contrary, so far as I know you act by the same rule as we.
+All honor to your physician; but it goes to my heart, and raises my gall
+to see such things take place in the house of the man to whom the Khaliff
+has confided the weal or woe of Egyptian Christians.  Your boasted
+tolerance has led to the death of an honest though humble man in a time
+of perfect peace--or at least maimed him for life.  As to your honesty,
+it would seem.  .  ."
+
+"Who dares impugn it?"  cried Orion.
+
+"I, young man," replied the merchant with the calm dignity of age.
+"I, who sold this piece of work last evening, and find it this morning
+robbed of its most precious ornament."
+
+"The great emerald has been cut from the hanging during the night."  Dame
+Neforis explained.  "You yourself went with the man who carried it to the
+tablinum and saw it laid there."
+
+"And in the very cloth in which your people had wrapped it," added Orion.
+"Our good old Sebek there was with me.  Who fetched away the bale this
+morning; who brought it here and opened it?"
+
+"Happily for us," said the Arab, "it was your lady mother herself, with
+that man--your steward if I mistake not--and your own slaves."
+
+"Why was it not left where it was?"  asked Orion, giving vent to the
+annoyance which at this moment he really felt.
+
+"Because I had assured your father, and with good reason, that the beauty
+of this splendid work and of the gems that decorate it show to much
+greater advantage by daylight and in the sunshine than under the lamps
+and torches."
+
+"And besides, your father wished to see his new purchase once more,"
+Neforis broke in, "and to ask the merchant how the gems might be removed
+without injury to the work itself.  So I went to the tablinum myself with
+Sebek."
+
+"But I had the key!"  cried Orion putting his hand into the breast of his
+robe.
+
+"That I had forgotten," replied his mother.  "But unfortunately we did
+not need it.  The tablinum was open."
+
+"I locked it yesterday;  you saw me do it, Sebek.  .  ."
+
+"So I told the mistress," replied the steward.  "I perfectly recollect
+hearing the snap of the strong lock."
+
+Orion shrugged his shoulders, and his mother went on:
+
+But the bronze doors must have been opened during the night with a false
+key, or by some other means; for part of the hanging had been pulled out
+of the wrapper, and when we looked closely we saw that the large emerald
+had been wrenched out of the setting."
+
+"Shameful!"  exclaimed Orion.
+
+"Disgraceful!"  added the governor, vehemently starting up.  He had
+fallen a prey to fearful unrest and horror: he thought that his Lord and
+Saviour, to whom he had dedicated the precious jewel, regarded him as so
+sinful and worthless that He would not accept the gift at his hands.
+But perhaps it was only Satan striving to hinder him from approaching the
+Most High with so noble an offering.  At any rate, human cunning had been
+at work, so he said with stern resolution:
+
+"The matter shall be enquired into, and in the name of Jesus Christ, to
+whom the stone already belongs, I will never rest nor cease till the
+criminal is in my hands."
+
+"And in the name of Allah and the Prophet," added the Arab, "I will aid
+thee, if I have to appeal for help to the great chief Amru, the Khaliff's
+representative in this country.--A word was spoken here just now that I
+cannot and will not forget.  And the tone you have chosen to adopt, young
+man, seems to spring from the same fount: the old fox, you think, put a
+false gem of impossible size into the hanging, and has had it stolen that
+his fraud may not be detected when a jeweller examines the work by
+daylight.  This is too much!  I am an honest man, Sirs, and I am fain to
+add a rich one; and the man who tries to cast a stain on the character I
+have borne through a long life shall learn, to his ruing, that old
+Haschim has greater and more powerful friends to back him than you may
+care to meet!"
+
+As he uttered this threat the merchant's eyes glistened through tears; it
+grieved him to be unjustly suspected and to be forced to express himself
+so hardly to the Mukaukas for whom he felt both reverence and pity.  It
+was clear from the tone of his speech that he was in fact a determined
+and a powerful personage, and Orion interrupted him with the eager
+enquiry: "Who has dared to think so basely of you?"
+
+"Your own mother, I regret to say," replied the Moslem sadly, with an
+oriental shrug of distress and annoyance--his shoulders up to his ears.
+
+"Forget it, I beg of you," said the governor.  "God knows women have
+softer hearts than men, and yet they more readily incline to think evil
+of their fellow-creatures, and particularly of the enemies of their
+faith.  On the other hand they are more sensitive to kindness.  A woman's
+hair is long and her wits short, says the saw."
+
+"You have plenty to say against us women!"  retorted Neforis.  "But scold
+away--scold if it is a comfort to you!"  But she added, while she
+affectionately turned her husband's pillows and gave him another of his
+white pillules: "I will submit to the worst to-day for I am in the wrong.
+I have already asked your pardon, worthy Haschim, and I do so again, with
+all my heart."
+
+As she spoke, she went up to the Arab and held out her hand; he took it,
+but lightly, however, and quickly released it, saying:
+
+"I do not find it hard to forgive.  But I find it impossible, here or
+anywhere, to let so much as a grain of dust rest on my bright good name.
+I shall follow up this affair, turning neither to the right hand nor to
+the left.--And now, one question: Is the dog that guarded the tablinum a
+watchful, savage beast?"
+
+"How savage he is he unfortunately proved on the person of the poor
+Persian slave; and his watchfulness is known to all the household," cried
+Orion.
+
+"But I would beg you, worthy merchant," said Neforis, "and in the name
+of all present, to give us the help of your experience.  I myself--wait
+a little wait: in spite of her long hair and her short wits a woman often
+has a happy idea.  I, probably, was the first to come on the robber's
+track.  It is clear that he must belong to the household since the dog
+did not attack him.  Paula, who was so wonderfully quick in coming to the
+rescue of the Persian, is of course not to be thought of.  .  ."
+
+Here her husband interrupted her with an angry exclamation: "Leave the
+girl quite out of the question wife!"
+
+"As if I supposed her to be the thief!"  retorted Neforis indignantly,
+and she shrugged her shoulders as Orion, in mild reproach, also cried:
+"Mother!  consider.  .  .  ."  and the merchant asked:
+
+"Do you mean the young girl from whom I had to take such hard words last
+night?--Well, then, I will stake my whole fortune on her innocence.  That
+beautiful, passionate creature is incapable of any underhand dealings."
+
+"Passionate!"  Neforis smiled.  "Her heart is as cold and as hard as the
+lost emerald; we have proved that by experience."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Orion, "she is incapable of baseness."
+
+"How zealous men can be for a pair of fine eyes!"  interrupted his
+mother.  "But I have not the most remote suspicion of her; I have
+something quite different in my mind.  A pair of man's shoes were found
+lying by the wounded girl.  Did you do what my lord Orion ordered,
+Sebek?"
+
+"At once, Mistress," replied the steward, "and I have been expecting the
+captain of the watch for some time; for Psamtik. . . ."
+
+But here he was interrupted: the officer in question, who for more than
+twenty years had commanded the Mukaukas' guard of honor, was shown into
+the room; after answering a few preliminary enquiries he began his report
+in a voice so loud that it hurt the governor, and his wife was obliged to
+request the soldier to speak more gently.
+
+The bloodhounds and terriers had been let out after being allowed to
+smell at the shoes, and a couple of them had soon found their way to the
+side-door where Hiram had waited for Paula.  There they paused, sniffing
+about on all sides, and had then jumped up a few steps.
+
+"And those stairs lead to Paula's room," observed Neforis with a shrug.
+
+"But they were on a false scent," the officer eagerly added.  "The little
+toads might have thrown suspicion on an innocent person.  The curs
+immediately after rushed into the stables, and ran up and down like Satan
+after a lost soul.  The pack had soon pulled down the boy--the son of the
+freedman who came here from Damascus with the daughter of the great
+Thomas--and they went quite mad in his father's room: Heaven and earth!
+what a howling and barking and yelping.  They poked their noses into
+every old rag, and now we knew where the hole in the wine-skin was.--
+I am sorry for the man.  He stammered horribly, but as a trainer, and in
+all that has to do with horses, all honor to him!--The shoes are Hiram's
+as surely as my eyes are in my head; but we have not caught him yet.  He
+is across the river, for a boat is missing and where it had been lying
+the dogs began again.  Unless the unbelievers over there give him shelter
+we are certain to have him."
+
+"Then we know who is the criminal!"  cried Orion, with a sigh as deep as
+though some great burden were lifted from his soul.  Then he went on in a
+commanding tone--and his voice rang so fiercely that the color which had
+mounted to his cheeks could hardly be due to satisfaction at this last
+good news....
+
+"As it is not yet two hours after noon, send all your men out to search
+for him and deliver him up.  My father will give you a warrant, and the
+Arabs on the other shore will assist you.  Perhaps the thief may fall
+into our hands even sooner and with him the emerald, unless the rogue has
+succeeded in hiding it or selling it."  Then his voice sank, and he added
+in a tone of regret.  It is a pity as concerns the man, we had not one in
+our stables who knew more about horses!  Fresh proof of your maxim,
+mother: if you want to be well served you must buy rascals!"
+
+"Strictly speaking," said Neforis meditatively, "Hiram is not one of our
+people.  He was a freedman of Thomas' and came here with his daughter.
+Every one speaks highly of his skill in the stable; but for this robbery
+we might have kept him for the rest of his life still, if the girl had
+ever taken it into her head to leave us and to take him with her, we
+could not have detained him.--You may say what you will, and abuse me and
+mock me; I have none of what you call imagination; I see things simply as
+they are: but there must be some understanding between that girl and the
+thief."
+
+"You are not to say another word of such monstrous nonsense!"  exclaimed
+her husband; and he would have said more, but that at that moment the
+groom of the chambers announced that Gamaliel, the Jewish goldsmith,
+begged an audience.  The man had come to give information with regard to
+the fate of the lost emerald.
+
+At this statement Orion changed color, and he turned away from the
+merchant as the slave admitted the same Israelite who had been sitting
+over the fire with the head-servants.  He at once plunged into his story,
+telling it in his peculiar light-hearted style.  He was so rich that the
+loss he might suffer did not trouble him enough to spoil his good-humor,
+and so honest that it was a pleasure to him to restore the stolen
+property to its rightful owner.  Early that morning, so he told them,
+Hiram the groom had been to him to offer him a wonderfully large and
+splendid emerald for sale.  The freedman had assured him that the stone
+was part of the property left by the famous Thomas, his former master.
+It had decorated the head-stall of the horse which the hero of Damascus
+had last ridden, and it had come to him with the steed.
+
+"I offered him what I thought fair," the Jew went on, "and paid him two
+thousand drachmae on account; the remainder he begged me to take charge
+of for the present.  To this I agreed, but ere long a fly began to hum
+suspicion in my ear.  Then the police rushed through the town with the
+bloodhounds.  Good Heavens, what a barking!  The creatures yelped as if
+they would bark my poor house down, like the trumpets round the walls of
+Jericho--you know.  'What is the matter now,' I asked of the dog-keepers,
+and behold!  my suspicions about the emerald were justified; so here, my
+lord Governor, I have brought you the stone, and as every suckling in
+Memphis hears from its nurse--unless it is deaf--what a just man Mukaukas
+George is, you will no doubt make good to me what I advanced to that
+stammering scoundrel.  And you will have the best of the bargain, noble
+Sir; for I make no demand for interest or even maintenance for the two
+hours during which it was mine."
+
+"Give me the stone !"  interrupted the Arab, who was annoyed by the Jew's
+jesting tone; he snatched the emerald from him, weighed it in his hand,
+put it close to his eyes, held it far off, tapped it with a small hammer
+that he took out of his breast-pocket, slipped it into its place in the
+work, examining it keenly, suspiciously, and at last with satisfaction.
+During all this, Orion had more than once turned pale, and the sweat
+broke out on his handsome, pale face.  Had a miracle been wrought here?
+How could this gem, which was surely on its way to Alexandria, have found
+its way into the Jew's hands?  Or could Chusar have opened the little
+packet and have sold the emerald to Hiram, and through him to the
+jeweller?  He must get to the bottom of it, and while the Arab was
+examining the gem he went up to Gamaliel and asked him: "Are you
+positively certain--it is a matter of freedom or the dungeon--certain
+that you had this stone from Hiram the Syrian and from no one else?
+I mean, is the man so well-known to you that no mistake is possible?"
+
+"God preserve us!"  exclaimed the Jew drawing back a step from Orion,
+who was gazing at him with a sinister light in his eyes.  "How can my
+lord doubt it?  Your respected father has known me these thirty years,
+and do you suppose that I--I do not know the Syrian?  Why, who in Memphis
+can stammer to compare with him?  And has he not killed half my children
+with your wild young horses?--Half killed every one of my children I mean
+--half killed them, I say, with fright.  They are all still alive and
+well, God preserve them, but none the better for your horsebreaker; for
+fresh air is good for children and my little Rebecca would stop indoors
+till he was at home again for fear of his terrifying pranks."
+
+"Well, well!"  Orion broke in.  "And at what hour did he bring you the
+emerald for sale?  Exactly.  Now, recollect: when was it?  You surely
+must remember."
+
+"Adonai!  How should I?"  said the Jew.  "But wait, Sir, perhaps I may be
+able to tell you.  In this hot weather we are up before sunrise; then we
+said our prayers and had our morning broth; then.  .  .  ."
+
+"Senseless chatter!"  urged Orion.  But Gamaliel went on without allowing
+himself to be checked.  "Then little Ruth jumped into my lap to pull out
+the white hairs that will grow under my nose and, just as the child was
+doing it and I cried out:  'Oh, you hurt me!' the sun fell upon the earth
+bank on which I was sitting."
+
+"And at what time does it reach the bank?"  cried the young man.
+
+"Exactly two hours after sunrise," replied the Jew, "at this time of
+year.  Do me the honor of a visit tomorrow morning; you will not regret
+it, for I can show you some beautiful, exquisite things--and you can
+watch the shadow yourself."
+
+"Two hours after sunrise," murmured Orion to himself, and then with fresh
+qualms he reflected that it was fully four hours later when he had given
+the packet to Chusar.  It was impossible to doubt the Jew's statement.
+The man was rich, honest and content: he did not lie.  The jewel Orion
+had sent away and that purchased from Hiram could not in any case be
+identical.  But how could all this be explained?  It was enough to turn
+his brain.  And not to dare to speak when mere silence was falsehood--
+falsehood to his father and mother!--If only the hapless stammerer might
+escape!  If he were caught;  then--then  merciful Heaven!  But no; it was
+not to be thought of.--On, then, on; and if it came to the worst the
+honor of a hundred stablemen could not outweigh that of one Orion;
+horrible as it was, the man must be sacrificed.  He would see that his
+life was spared and that he was soon set at liberty!
+
+The Arab meanwhile had concluded his examination; still he was not
+perfectly satisfied.  Orion longed to interpose; for if the merchant
+expressed no doubts and acknowledged the recovered gem to be the stolen
+one, much would be gained; so he turned to him again and said: "May I ask
+you to show me the emerald once more?  It is quite impossible, do you
+think, that a second should be found to match it?"
+
+"That is too much to assert,"  said  the  Arab gravely.  "This stone
+resembles that on the hanging to a hair; and yet it has a little
+inequality which I do not remember noticing on it.  It is true I had
+never seen it out of the setting, and this little boss may have been
+turned towards the stuff, and yet, and yet.--Tell me, goldsmith, did the
+thief give you the emerald bare--unset?"
+
+"As bare as Adam and Eve before they ate the apple," said the Jew.
+
+"That is a pity--a great pity!--And still I fancy that the stone in
+the work was a trifle longer.  In such a case it is almost folly and
+perversity to doubt, and yet I feel--and yet I ask myself: Is this really
+the stone that formed that bud?"
+
+"But Heaven bless us!"  cried Orion, "the twin of such an unique gem
+would surely not drop from the skies and at the same moment into one and
+the same house.  Let us be glad that the lost sheep has come back to us.
+Now, I will lock it into this iron casket, Father, and as soon as the
+robber is caught you send for me: do you understand, Psamtik?"  He nodded
+to his parents, offered his hand to the Arab, and that in a way which
+could not fail to satisfy any one, so that even the old man was won over;
+and then he left the room.
+
+The merchant's honor was saved; still his conscientious soul was
+disturbed by a doubt that he could not away with.  He was about to take
+leave but the Mukaukas was so buried in pillows, and kept his eyes so
+closely shut, that no one could detect whether he were sleeping or
+waking; so the Arab, not wishing to disturb him, withdrew without
+speaking.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Ancient custom, to have her ears cut off
+Caught the infection and had to laugh whether she would or no
+Gave them a claim on your person and also on your sorrows
+How could they find so much pleasure in such folly
+Of two evils it is wise to choose the lesser
+Prepared for the worst; then you are armed against failure
+Who can hope to win love that gives none
+Who can take pleasure in always seeing a gloomy face?
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRIDE OF THE NILE, BY EBERS, V2 ***
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