Part 13

The invulnerable monster seated me carefully on the ground, leaned toward me, pulled my ear and said: "Why do you attempt the impossible, young man? I warned you that I had a head that was bullet-proof, and you know that I never lie. Were you not told that Ibrahim had seven Egyptians shoot at me and that he was unsuccessful? I hope that you do not pretend to be more powerful than seven Egyptians? But do you know that you have a nimble hand for a Northern man? Peste! if my mother, of whom you spoke lightly a few moments ago, had not endowed me with strength, I would now be a dead man. Another, in my place, would have died without having time to say, 'Thank you!' As for me, such things rejuvenate me. It recalls my best days. At your age, I exposed my life four times a day, and I only digested the better for it. Come, I will pardon you your hasty action. But as all my subjects are not proof against bullets, and that you may commit no new imprudence, I shall apply to your hands the same treatment as your feet received. Nothing prevents us from punishing you immediately; I will wait, however, until to-morrow, in the interests of your health. You see the stick is a blunt weapon which kills no one; you have yourself proved that one bastinadoed man is worth two. To-morrow's ceremony will occupy you. Prisoners do not know how to pass the time. It was idleness which gave you bad counsels. Rest easy, moreover; as soon as your ransom arrives, I will cure your wounds. I still have some of Ludgi-Bey's balm. There will be no signs of them at the end of two days, and you can dance at the ball at the Palace, without telling your partners that they are leaning on the arm of a cavalier who has been beaten."

I am not a Greek, and the insults wounded me as grievously as the blows. I shook my fist in the old rascal's face, and cried out with all my strength:

"No, wretch! my ransom will never be paid! No! I have not asked anyone for the money! Thou wilt get from me only my head, which will serve thee nothing. Take it quickly if it seems good to thee. It will do me a favor and thyself also. Thou wilt spare me two weeks of torture, and the disgust of looking at thee, which is the most of all. Thou wilt save my board for fifteen days. Do not miss it, it is the only benefit that thou wilt reap from me!"

He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and replied: "Ta! ta! ta! ta! Thus it is with young people! Extremists in everything! They throw the helve after the hatchet. If I listened to you, I would regret it before eight hours had passed, and so would you. The Englishwomen will pay, I am sure of it. I know women yet, although I have lived in retirement for a long time. What would be said if I killed you to-day, and your ransom arrived to-morrow? The story would go out that I had broken my word, and my prisoners would allow themselves to be killed like sheep, without asking a centime of their parents. It would spoil the trade."

"Ah! thou believest that the Englishwomen will pay thee, my clever fellow? Yes, they will pay thee as thou meritest!"

"You are very good."

"Their ransom will cost thee 80,000 francs, dost thou hear? Eighty thousand francs out of thy pocket!"

"Do not say such things. One would think that the blows of the stick had turned your brain."

"I tell thee the truth. Dost thou recall the name of thy prisoners?"

"No, but I have it in writing."

"I will jog thy memory. The lady called herself Mrs. Simons."

"Well!"

"Partner of the firm of Barley in London."

"My banker?"

"Precisely."

"How doest thou know my banker's name?"

"Because thou didst dictate before me."

"What matter, after all? They cannot escape; they are not Greeks, they are English; the courts--I will make complaint!"

"And thou wouldst lose. They have a receipt!"

"That is so. But by what mischance did I give them a receipt?"

"Because I advised thee to do it, poor man!"

"Wretch! dog wrongly baptized! heretic of hell! thou hast ruined me! thou hast betrayed me! Thou hast robbed me! eighty thousand francs! I am responsible! If they were the bankers of the company, I would lose only my share. But they hold only my capital; I shall lose it all. Art thou very sure that she is a partner of the firm of Barley?"

"As I am sure of dying to-day."

"No! thou shalt not die till to-morrow. Thou hast not suffered enough. We will make thee pay for those 80,000 francs. What punishment can we invent? Eighty thousand francs! Eighty thousand deaths would be little. What have I done to this traitor who has robbed me! Peuh! Child's play, a pleasantry! He has not howled two hours! I must invent something better. But may be there are two firms of the same name?"

"Cavendish Square, No. 31."

"Yes, it is the same. Fool! why didst thou not warn me instead of betraying me? I would have asked double the sum. They would have paid it; they have the means. I would not have given the receipt; I will never give another. No! no! it is the last time! Received a hundred thousand francs of Mrs. Simons! What a foolish sentence! Was it really I who dictated that? But I reflect now; I did not sign it. Yes, but my seal is equal to a signature! There are twenty letters in my name. Why didst thou demand this receipt? What do you expect from those ladies? Fifteen thousand francs for thy ransom? Selfishness, everywhere! Thou shouldst have confided in me; I would have let thee go without the ransom; I would even have paid thee. If thou art poor, as thou sayest thou art, thou shouldst know how good money is. Thou thinkest only of a sum of 80,000 francs? Dost thou know what a heap that would make in a room? How many pieces of gold? How much money one could make in business with 80,000 francs? It is a calamity! Thou hast robbed me of a fortune! Thou hast robbed my daughter, the only being I love in the world. It is for her that I work. But, if thou knowest my affairs, thou knowest that I scour the mountains for a whole year to gain 40,000 francs. Thou hast plundered me of two years' income; it is as if I had slept for two years!"

I had then found the tender chord. The old Palikar was touched to the heart. I knew that there was a heavy score against me, and I expected no mercy, and moreover, I experienced an intense joy in seeing that impassable mask torn asunder and that stony face wrung with emotion. I rejoiced to see in his wrinkled face, the convulsive movements of passion, as the ship-wrecked boat lost in a raging sea, admires, afar off, the wave which is to engulf it. I was like the thinking reed, which the brutal universe crushes into a shapeless mass, and which consoles itself in dying with the lofty thought of its superiority. I said to myself, with pride: "I shall die by torture, but I am the master of my master, and the executioner of my execution!"

VII.

JOHN HARRIS.

The King contemplated his vengeance, as a man who has fasted three days contemplates a bountiful repast. He examined, one by one, all the dishes, I mean to say all the tortures; he licked his dry lips, but he knew not where to commence nor what to choose. One would have said that excess of hunger spoiled his appetite. He struck his head with his fist, as if he could force out some ideas, but they came so rapidly that it was not easy to seize one in its passage. "Speak!" he cried to his subjects. "Advise me! What good are you, if you are not able to give me advice? Shall I await the coming of the Corfuan, or until Vasile shall speak from the depths of his tomb? Find for me, beasts that you are, some torture for the loss of 80,000 francs."

The young pipe-bearer said to his master: "An idea strikes me. Thou hast one officer dead, another absent, and a third wounded. Put up their places for competition. Promise us that those who shall tell of the best way to avenge thee, shall succeed Sophocles, the Corfuan, and Vasile."

Hadgi-Stavros smiled complacently at this stratagem. He stroked the young boy's chin and said to him:

"Thou art ambitious, my little man! All in good time! Ambition is the result of courage. Agreed, for a competition! It is a modern idea, a European idea, that pleases me. To reward thee, thou shalt give thy advice, first; and if thou findest something very good, Vasile shall have no other heir but thee."

"I would," said the child, "pull out some of my lord's teeth, put a bit in his mouth, and make him run, bridled, till he dropped from fatigue."

"His feet are too sore; he would fall down at the first step. And you others? Tambouris, Moustakas, Coltzida, Milotia, speak, I am listening."

"I," said Coltzida, "I would break boiling hot eggs under his arm-pits. I tried it on a woman of Magara, and I had much fun."

"I," said Tambouris, "I would put him on the ground with a rock weighing five hundred pounds on his chest. It thrusts out one's tongue and makes one spit blood; it is fine!"

"I," said Milotia, "I would put vinegar in his nostrils, and drive thorns under every nail. One sneezes violently and one does not know what to do with one's hands."

Moustakas was one of the cooks of the band. He proposed to cook me in front of a small fire. The King's face expanded.

The monk assisted at the conference, and let them talk without giving his advice. He, however, took pity on me, according to the measure of his sensibility, and helped me as far as his intelligence permitted. "Moustakas," he said, "is too wicked. One can torture milord finely without burning him alive. If you will give him salt meat without allowing him to drink he will live a long time, he will suffer a great deal, and the King will satisfy his vengeance without interfering with God's vengeance. It is my disinterested advice which I give you; I shall make nothing by it; but I wish everyone to be pleased, since the monastery has received its tithe."

"Halt, there!" interrupted the coffee-bearer. "Good old man, I have an idea which is better than thine. I condemn milord to die of hunger. The others will do any evil to him which pleases them; I will not hinder them. But I would place a sentinel before his mouth, and I would take care that he had neither a drop of water nor a crumb of bread. Weakness would redouble his hunger; his wounds would increase his thirst, and the tortures of the others would finally finish him to my profit. What dost thou say, Sire? Is it not well reasoned and will it not give me Vasile's place?"

"Go to the devil, all of you!" cried the King. "You would reason less calmly if the wretch had plundered you of 80,000 francs! Carry him away to the camp and take your pleasure out of him. But unhappy the one who kills him by any imprudence! This man must die only by my hand. I intend that he shall reimburse me, in pleasure, for all that he has taken from me in money. He shall shed his blood drop by drop, as a bad debtor who pays sou by sou."

You would not believe, Monsieur, with what struggles the most wretched man will cling to life. Truly, I longed to die; and the happiest thing which could happen to me would be to end it all with one blow. Something, however, rejoiced me at Hadgi-Stavros' threat. I blessed the extension of my time. Hope sprang up in my heart. If a charitable friend had offered to blow out my brains I would have looked twice at him.

Four brigands took me by the shoulders and legs and carried me, a shrieking mass, to the King's cabinet. My voice awakened Sophocles on his pallet. He called his companions and made them tell him the news, and asked to look at me closely. It was the caprice of a sick person. They threw me down by his side.

"Milord," he said to me, "we are both very weak, but the odds are that I shall get well sooner than you do. It appears that they are already talking of my successor. How unjust men are! My place is up for competition. Oh, well! I wish to compete and to put myself in the race. You will bear witness in my favor and your groans will testify that Sophocles is not yet dead. You shall be bound, and I take upon myself the pleasure of tormenting you with one hand, as spiritedly as the strongest of the band."

In order to please the unfortunate fellow they bound me. He turned over towards me and began to pull out hairs, one by one, with the patience and the regularity of a professional hair remover. When I saw what this new punishment was to be, I believed that the wounded man, touched by my misery, and sympathizing with me because of his own sufferings, wished to shield me from his comrades, and give me an hour's respite. The extraction of one hair is not so painful, by a good deal, as the prick of a pin. The first twenty came out, one after the other, without any discomfiture. But soon I changed my tune. The scalp, irritated by a multitude of imperceptible lesions, became inflamed. A dull itching began on my head; it became a little livelier; and at last it was intolerable. I would like to have raised my hands to my head; I understood with what intuition the wretch had had me bound. Impatience but aggravated the trouble; all the blood in my body rushed to my head. Every time Sophocles approached his hand to my scalp, a woful shivering seized my whole body. A thousand inexplicable stingings tormented my arms and legs. The nervous system, irritated at every point, enveloped me in a network more exasperating than Dejanire's tunic. I rolled over on the ground, I groaned, I cried for mercy, I regretted the bastinado. The executioner had pity on me only when he had completely exhausted himself. When he felt his eyes become dim, his head heavy, and his arm weary, he made a last effort, plunged his hand into my hair, seized a fist full, and fell over on his pallet, drawing from me a despairing cry.

"Come with me," said Moustakas. "Thou shalt decide, in a corner by the fire, if I can compete with Sophocles, and whether I merit a lieutenancy."

He raised me like a feather and carried me to the camp, in front of a heap of resinous wood and piled up brushwood. He took off the bonds, he stripped me of my clothes, leaving me only my trousers. "Thou shalt be my under-cook," he said. "We will make the fire and we will prepare the King's dinner, together."

He lighted the stack of wood and laid me out on my back, about two feet from the mountain of flames. The wood crackled, the red cinders fell like hail around me. The heat became unbearable. I hitched along with my hands a little distance, but he came with a frying-pan in his hand, and pushed me back with his foot to the place where he had first laid me.

"Look well, and profit by my lessons. Here are the heart, liver, and kidneys from three sheep; there is enough to feed twenty men. The King will choose the most delicate morsels; he will distribute the remainder to his men. Thou wilt have none of it for the present, and if thou tastest my cooking, it will be with the eyes only."

I soon heard the bubbling in the sauce pan, and it reminded me that I had been fasting since the evening before. My hunger added one more torment. Moustakas held the pan under my eyes and made me look at the appetizing color of the meat. He thrust it under my nose and I smelled the steam of the food. Suddenly he perceived that he had forgotten the seasoning, and he hurried away to find the salt and pepper, leaving the sauce pan to my care. The first idea which came to me was to steal a piece of the meat, but the brigands were only ten feet away; they would stop me at once. "If I only had my package of arsenic," I thought. What could I have done with it? I had not put it back in my box. I thrust my hands into my pockets. I drew out a soiled paper and a handful of that beneficent powder, which would save me, perhaps, or at least avenge me.

Moustakas returned at the instant when I was holding my open hand above the sauce pan. He seized me by the arm, looked me straight in the eye, and said in a menacing tone: "I know what thou hast done."

I dropped my arm discouraged. The cook added:

"Yes, thou hast thrown something over the King's dinner."

"What?"

"A spell. But no matter. Believe me, my poor milord, Hadgi-Stavros is a greater sorcerer than thou art. I am going to serve his dinner. I will have my part of it, but thou shalt not taste it."

"Great good may it do thee!"

He left me before the fire, placing me in the care of a dozen brigands who were crunching black bread and bitter olives. These Spartans kept me company for an hour or two. They attended to my fire with the watchfulness of sick nurses. If, at times, I attempted to drag myself a little further away from my torture they cried out: "Take care, thou wilt freeze!" And they pushed me toward the flames with heavy blows of the burning brushwood. My back was covered with red spots, my skin was raised in blisters, my eye-lashes had succumbed to the heat of the fire, my hair exhaled an odor of burning horn, and yet I rubbed my hands in glee at the thought of the King eating my cooking and that something startling would happen upon Parnassus before night.

Very soon Hadgi-Stavros' men re-appeared in the camp, stomachs filled, eyes shining, faces smiling. "Go on!" I thought, "your joy and your health will soon fall like a mask, and you will curse each mouthful of the feast which I seasoned for you!" The celebrated poisoner, Locuste, must have passed some very pleasant moments during her life. When one has reason to hate men, it is pleasure enough to see a vigorous being who goes, who comes, who laughs, who sings, while carrying in his intestines a seed of death which will spring up and devour him. It is a little like the same joy a good doctor experiences at the sight of a dying man whom he is able to bring back to life. Locuste used medicine inversely, as I did.

My malevolent reflections were interrupted by a singular tumult. The dogs barked in chorus, and a messenger, out of breath, appeared on the plateau with the whole pack at his heels. It was Dimitri, the son of Christodule. Some stones thrown by the bandits freed him from his escort. He shouted at the top of his lungs: "The King! I must speak to the King!" When he was about twenty steps from us, I called to him in a doleful tone. He was terrified at the state in which he found me, and he cried out: "The fools! Poor girl!"

"My good Dimitri!" I said to him, "where dost thou come from? Will my ransom be paid?"

"The ransom is well at stake, but fear nothing, I bring good news. Good for you, bad for me, for him, for her, for everybody! I must see Hadgi-Stavros. There is not a moment to lose. Until I come back, suffer no one to do you any harm; she would die for it! You hear, you wretches; do not touch milord. For your life. The King would cut you in pieces. Conduct me to the King!"

The world is such that a man who speaks as a master is almost sure of being obeyed. There was so much authority in the voice of this servant, and his passion expressed itself in a tone so imperious that my guards, astonished and stupefied, forgot to keep me near the fire. I crept some distance away, and deliciously reposed upon the cold rock, until Hadgi-Stavros' arrival. He appeared not less agitated than Dimitri. He took me in his arms like a sick child, and carried me, without stopping, to that fatal chamber where Vasile was buried. He laid me on his own carpet with maternal solicitude; he stepped back and looked at me with a curious mixture of hate and pity. He said to Dimitri: "My child, this is the first time that I have left such a crime unpunished. He killed Vasile, that was nothing. He would have assassinated me, I pardoned him. But he robbed me, the scamp! Eighty thousand francs less in Photini's dowry! I sought for a punishment equal to his crime. Oh, rest easy! I should have found it. Unhappy that I am! Why did I not restrain my anger? I have treated him harshly. And she will bear the penalty. If she receives two blows of the stick upon her little feet I shall never see her again. Men do not die of it, but a woman, a child of fifteen!"

He cleared the place of all the men who were crowding around us. He gently unwound the bloody bandages which enveloped my wounds. He sent his pipe-bearer for the balm of Ludgi-Bey. He seated himself on the damp grass in front of me, he took my feet in his hands and looked at the wounds. An almost incredible thing to tell! There were tears in his eyes!

"Poor child!" he said, "you have suffered cruelly. Pardon me. I am an old brute, a wolf of the mountain, a Palikar. I was trained in ferocity from twenty years of age. But you see that my heart is good, since I regret what I have done. I am more unhappy than you, because your eyes are dry and I weep. I shall set you at liberty without a moment's delay, or rather, no, you cannot go away thus. I will cure you first. The balm is a sovereign remedy. I will care for you as for a son. Health shall return quickly. You must be able to walk to-morrow. She must not remain a day longer in your friend's hands. In the name of Heaven tell no one of our quarrel to-day! You know that I do not hate you! I have said so often. I sympathized with you and I gave you my confidence. I told you my most sacred secrets. Do you not remember that we were friends until Vasile's death? An instant's anger must not make you forget twelve days of good treatment. You would not wish to break a father's heart. You are an honest young man; your friend ought to be good like you."

"But who, then?"

"Who? That cursed Harris! that devilish American! that execrable pirate! that kidnapper of children! that assassin of young girls! that wretch whom I wish I held with you so that I could crush you in my hands, grind you together, and scatter your dust to the winds of my mountains! You are all the same, Europeans, a race of traitors, who dare not attack men, and who have courage to fight only against children. Read what he has written me and tell me if there are tortures cruel enough to chastise a crime like his!"

He savagely hurled a crumpled letter at me. I instantly recognized the writing, and I read:

"Sunday, May 11, on board The Fancy, Bay of Salamis.

"Hadgi-Stavros:

"Photini is on board under guard of four American cannons. I shall hold her as hostage as long as Hermann Schultz is prisoner. As thou treatest my friend, so shall I treat thy daughter. She shall pay hair for hair, tooth for tooth, head for head. Reply to me without delay, otherwise I shall come to see thee!

"John Harris."

On reading this letter I could not restrain my joy. "The good Harris!" I shouted, "I who accused him! But explain, Dimitri, why he has not rescued me sooner?"

"He has been away, Mr. Hermann; he was chasing pirates. He returned yesterday morning, unfortunately for us. Why did he not remain away!"

"Excellent Harris! He has not lost a single day. But where did he kidnap the daughter of this old scamp?"

"At our house, M. Hermann. You know her, Photini. You have dined more than once with her."

The Daughter of the King of the Mountains was then that boarding-school miss with the flat nose, who sighed for John Harris.

I concluded from this that the abduction had been accomplished without violence.

The pipe-bearer now came up with a package of linen and a bottle filled with yellow pomade. The King dressed my feet with practiced touch, and I experienced within an hour a certain relief. Hadgi-Stavros was, at this moment, a fine subject for the study of psychology. He had as much brutality in his eyes as delicacy in his touch. He unwound the bandages from my instep so gently that I scarcely felt it; but his glance said: "If I could only strangle thee!" He took out the pins as adroitly as a woman; but with what pleasure would he have thrust his cangiar into me.

When he had adjusted the bandages, he stretched out his clenched fists and savagely roared: