Medina I was told it had run its course,” the host remarked.
“True, O Hadji, but it has returned, and with greater violence. The stragglers were its victims; now it attacks indiscriminately. Yesterday the guard I keep in the rear came to a pilgrim of rank. His litter was deserted, and he was lying in it dead.”
“The man may have been murdered.”
“Nay,” said the Emir, “gold in large amount was found on his person.”
“But he had other property doubtless?”
“Of great value.”
“What disposition was made of it?”
“It was brought to me, and is now with other stores in my tent; a law of ancient institution vesting it in the Emir El Hajj.”
The countenance of the Jew became serious.
“The ownership was not in my thought,” he said, waving his hand. “I knew the law; but this scourge of Allah has its laws also, and by one of them we are enjoined to burn or bury whatever is found with the body.”
The Emir, seeing the kindly concern of his host, smiled as he answered:
“But there is a higher law, O Hadji.”
“I spoke without thinking danger of any kind could disturb thee.”
The host drew forward the date basket, and the Emir, fancying he discerned something on his mind besides the fruit, waited his further speech.
“I am reminded of another matter, O brave Emir; but as it also is personal I hesitate. Indeed I will not speak of it except with permission.”
“As you will,” the other replied, “I will answer—May the Prophet help me!”
“Blessed be the Prophet!” said the Prince, reverently. “Thy confidence doeth me honor, and I thank thee; at the same time I would not presume upon it if thy tongue were less suggestive of a land whose name is music—Italy. It is in my knowledge, O Emir, that the Sultan, thy master—may Allah keep him in countenance!—hath in his service many excellent soldiers by birth of other countries than his own, broad as it is—Christians, who are none the less of the true faith. Wherefore, wilt thou tell me of thyself?”
The question did not embarrass the Emir.
“The answer must be brief,” he answered, without hesitation, “because there is little to tell. I do not know my native country. The peculiarity of accent you have mentioned has been observed by others; and as they agreed with you in assigning it to Italy, I am nothing loath to account myself an Italian. The few shreds of circumstance which came to me in course of time confirmed the opinion, and I availed myself of a favorable opportunity to acquire the tongue. In our further speech, O Hadji, you may prefer its use.”
“At thy pleasure,” the host replied; “though there is no danger of our being overheard. Nilo, the slave behind me, has been a mute from birth.”
Then, without the slightest interruption, the Emir changed his speech from Greek to Italian.
“My earliest remembrance is of being borne in a woman’s arms out of doors, under a blue sky, along a margin of white sand, an orchard on one hand, the sea on the other. The report of the waves breaking upon the shore lives distinctly in my memory; so does the color of the trees in the orchard which has since become familiar to me as the green of olives. Equally clear is the recollection that, returning in-doors, I was carried into a house of stone so large it must have been a castle. I speak of it, as of the orchard, and the sea, and the roar of the breakers, quite as much by reference to what I have subsequently seen as from trust in my memory.”
Here the host interrupted him to remark:
“Though an Eastern, I have been a traveller in the west, and the description reminds me of the eastern shore of Italy in the region of Brindisi.”
“My next recollection,” the Emir resumed, “is a child’s fright, occasioned by furious flames, and thick smoke, and noises familiar now as of battle. There was then a voyage on the sea during which I saw none but bearded men. The period of perfect knowledge so far as my history is concerned began when I found myself an object of the love and care of the wife of a renowned Pacha, governor of the city of Brousa. She called me Mirza. My childhood was spent in a harem, and I passed from it into a school to enter upon my training as a soldier. In good time I became a Janissary. An opportunity presented itself one day, and I distinguished myself. My master, the Sultan, rewarded me by promotion and transfer to the Silihdars12, the most ancient and favored corps of the Imperial army, it being the body-guard of the Padisha, and garrison of his palace. The yellow flag my ensign carries belongs to that corps. As a further token of his confidence, the Sultan appointed me Emir El Hajj. In these few words, O Hadji, you have my history.”
The listener was impressed with the simplicity of the narrative, and the speaker’s freedom from regret, sorrow, or passion of any kind.
“It is a sad story, O Emir,” he said, sympathetically, “and I cannot think it ended. Knowest thou not more?”
“Nothing of incident,” was the reply. “All that remains is inferential. The castle was attacked at night by Turks landed from their galleys.”
“And thy father and mother?”
“I never knew them.”
“There is another inference,” said the Prince, suggestively— “they were Christians.”
“Yes, but unbelievers.”
The suppression of natural affection betrayed by the remark still more astonished the host.
“But they believed in God,” he said.
“They should have believed Mahomet was his Prophet.”
“I fear I am giving you pain, O Emir.”
“Dismiss the fear, O Hadji.”
Again the Jew sought the choicest date in the basket. The indifference of his guest was quick fuel to the misgivings which we have already noticed as taking form about his purpose, and sapping and weakening it. To be arbiter in the religious disputes of men, the unique consummation called for by his scheme, the disputants must concede him room and hearing. Were all Mohammedans, from whom he hoped most, like this one born of Christians, then the two conditions would be sternly refused him. By the testimony of this witness, there was nothing in the heredity of faith; and it went to his soul incisively that, in stimulating the passions which made the crusades a recurrence of the centuries, he himself had contributed to the defeat now threatening his latest ambition. The sting went to his soul; yet, by force of will, always at command in the presence of strangers, he repressed his feeling, and said:
“Everything is as Allah wills. Let us rejoice that he is our keeper. The determination of our fate, in the sense of what shall happen to us, and what we shall be, and when and where the end shall overtake us, is no more to him than deciding the tint of the rose before the bud is formed. O Emir, I congratulate you on the resignation, with which you accept his judgment. I congratulate you upon the age in which he has cast your life. He who in a moment of uncertainty would inform himself of his future should not heed his intentions and hopes; by studying his present conditions, he will find himself an oracle unto himself. He should address his best mind to the question, ‘I am now in a road; if I keep it, where will I arrive?’ And wisdom will answer, ‘What are thy desires? For what art thou fitted? What are the opportunities of the time?’ Most fortunate, O Emir, if there be correspondence between the desire, the fitness, and the opportunity!”
The Emir did not comprehend, and seeing it, the host added with a directness approaching the abrupt:
“And now to make the reason of my congratulations clear, it is necessary that thou consent to my putting a seal upon thy lips. What sayest thou?”
“If I engage my silence, O Hadji, it is because I believe you are a good man.”
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