French And Oriental Love In A Harem - French and Oriental Love in a Harem Part 2
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French and Oriental Love in a Harem Part 2

"May I be allowed to hope that your lordship is satisfied?"

"Satisfied, Your Excellency?" I exclaimed, affectionately grasping his hands; "why, I am delighted! You could not give me greater pleasure in this world than by treating me exactly as you treated my uncle."

"The young ladies, then, did not displease your lordship?"

"Your daughters? Why, they are adorable! My only fear is lest I should not find them reciprocate the sentiments which they inspire in me."

"Ah! Then it is not because your lordship is displeased that you will not remain here to-night?" added he, with an anxious look.

"That I will not remain here?" I replied. "What do you mean?"

"Why, Your Excellency has not expressed his will to any of them."

"My will! What will, then, could I express to them?"

"Considering that they belong to your lordship," he continued.

"They belong to me? Who?"

"Why, Kondje-Gul, Zouhra, Hadidje, Nazli."

"They belong to me?" replied I, overcome with stupefaction.

"Certainly," said Mahommed, looking as astonished as I did. "His Excellency, Barbassou-Pasha, your uncle, whose eunuch I had the honour of being, commanded me to purchase four maidens for his harem. Since he is dead, and your lordship takes his place as master--I had supposed--"

"Ah!!!"

I won't attempt to render for you the full force of the exclamation to which I gave vent. You may guess the feelings conveyed in it. In very truth I thought I should go out of my senses this time. The dream of "The Thousand and One Nights" was being realised in my waking hours!

This extraordinary and sumptuous palace was a harem, and this harem was mine! These four Scheherazades, whose glorious youthfulness and fascinating charms had scorched me like fire, they were my slaves, and only awaited a sign or token of my desire!

Mohammed, incapable of conceiving my agitation, regarded me with a pitiful, confused look, as if he anticipated some disgrace. At this moment the old Greek woman brought him the keys: there were four. He handed them to me.

"Thank you," I said; "now you may leave me."

He obeyed, saluted me without a word, and went out.

As soon as I found myself alone, not intending to restrain my feelings any more, I began to march about the drawing-room like a madman, and gave free vent to the outburst of a joy which overwhelmed me. I picked up from the carpet a ribbon dropped there by Kondje-Gul, I pressed it to my lips with avidity; next some scattered flowers, with which Hadidje and Zouhra had played.

Louis, I hope you do not expect me to analyse for your benefit all the extraordinary sensations which I experienced at that moment. The events which befel me verged upon the supernatural--the supernatural cannot be described--and I know not any legend, romance, or novel, relating to this world, which has ever treated such an astounding situation as that of which I was the hero. Those severe middle-class parents who give their daughters, for New Year's presents, M. Galland's "Arabian Nights,"

with illustrations of the amorous adventures of the Caliph of Bagdad, would find such a romance as mine quite too "strong," simply because the scene is not laid in Persia, or at Samarcand. Nevertheless, my story is identical in character, and the most modest young lady might read it without a frown, if only my name were Hassan instead of Andre.

Would you like to know everything that can agitate the mind of a mortal in such a position as mine? Listen, then.

When I had succeeded in reducing to some extent my exaltation of spirit, when I had at last persuaded myself of the reality of this splendid fairyland, I sat down with my elbows on the window-sill--I felt the need of a little fresh air. It was just striking midnight. What were _they_ doing? Were they thinking of me, I wondered, as much as I was thinking of them? I began to examine the four keys which Mohammed had left me.

Each key had a tiny label, with a letter and a name on it--Nazli, Zouhra, Hadidje, or Kondje-Gul. My eyes were still filled with their beauty. Although far from artless, I felt embarrassed in spite of myself, I might almost say shy. After the fascinations of this evening, I knew that I was in love; I loved with a strange passion suddenly developed; I loved to overflowing these beautiful beings, without being able to separate one from another. So completely were they mingled in my fancy, they might have possessed but one soul between them. By reason of my certitude of equal possession, Kondje-Gul, Hadidje, Nazli, and Zouhra constituted in my imagination a single existence, exhaling its unrivalled perfume of youth, beauty, and love.

All this may appear absurd to you. I daresay you are right, but I am only analysing for you an enchantment which still influences me like a dream. While longing for the virginal delights which awaited me, my tumultuous senses were plunged into certain apprehensions at once anxious and sweet. How am I to explain it to you? Sultan though I have been in my life, never before have I come in for such a delightful windfall of pleasures, my heart having been generally occupied, as you know, with much less worthy objects. All at once I was overwhelmed by the idea that they had doubtless misunderstood the reserve which I had affected in their company. According to their harem traditions, customs, and laws, I was their legitimate master and husband: was it not quite likely, then, that they believed me indifferent or even disdainful of their charms? Troubled at this reflection, I was seized with a dreadful pang of conscience. What could they suppose? Good heavens! Ought I to wait till the next day to dissipate their doubts, and justify myself for such strange coldness--coldness which may have seemed like indifference? I had no sooner conceived this thought than my desire concentrated itself upon one object, to see Kondje-Gul again.

I knew all the domestic arrangements of El Nouzha. In the centre of the edifice is a vast circular hall, to which the daylight is admitted by a cupola of ground glass, supported by pillars of white marble. Lamps hanging between the pillars give out a mysterious light. Once arrived there, I listened. All was silent. I found Kondje-Gul's chamber, and went close up to it. I listened again, with my ear to the door. An indistinct rustling which I heard, apprized me that she was not yet in bed. With key in hand, I still hesitated before opening. At last I made up my mind.

Picture to yourself a sweetly perfumed room, both rich and coquettish in its arrangements, lined with Indian silk hangings of gay colours, and illumined by the soft light of a small chandelier of three branches. In front of a large glass Kondje-Gul was seated, her long hair reaching down to the floor. With her bare arms uplifted, and her head turned backwards, she held in her hand a golden comb. Seeing me, she uttered a little cry, got up with a bound, and blushing all the while, and fixing upon me her great frightened eyes, she rested motionless and almost in a tremble. Her agitation communicated itself to me.

"Did I frighten you?" I commenced, trying to speak with a firm voice; "and will you pardon me for coming in like this?"

She did not answer a word, but lowered her eyes, a smile glanced furtively over her lips, and then, with her hand on her bosom, she bowed to me.

"Kondje-Gul! Dear Kondje-Gul!" I exclaimed, touched to the depths of my soul by this act of submission.

And springing towards her, I took her in my arms to chase away her fears; I kissed her brow, which she offered to me, pressing her face against my bosom, with a lovely bashful look of alarm.

"You have come, then!" she whispered.

"Did you imagine I did not love you?" said I, as truly affected as she was.

At this question she raised her head with an inexpressible languor and smiled again, looking into my eyes, and so close that our lips met.

Louis, is it true that the ideal embraces the infinite, and that the human soul soars into regions so sublime that the blisses of this world below cannot satisfy it?... I did not want to quit the harem without having also seen Hadidje, Zouhra, and Nazli. Poor little dears, no doubt they already fancied themselves disdained! I must dry up their tears.

You will understand by this time the complications in my uncle's will which have prevented me, these four months past, from finding a minute to write to you.

I will relate to you the incidents of this remarkable situation, of this quadruple passion by which I am possessed to such an extent that I am sincere in all my professions. You may tell me, if you like, from the commonplace standpoint of your own limited experiences, that it is all madness. I love, I adore, after the manner of a poet or a pagan--as you like, in fact--but what does it all amount to? My uncle, who was a Mussulman, leaves me his harem; what could I do?

If it should happen that your work leaves you a little leisure, _don't_ come to Ferouzat; you understand? That's what we sultans are like! The girls are dying to see Paris; very likely I shall turn up there one of these days.

I need hardly impress upon you, I suppose, the advisability of keeping this letter most carefully from the eyes of your wife.

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CHAPTER II.

Madam, let me be very candid; I have a warm temperament, certainly--more so, perhaps, than an ordinary Provencal. I will confess to even more than this, if your grace so wills it, and I will not blush for it; but pray condescend to believe that I am also a respecter of conventional proprieties, and that I should feel most keenly the loss of your esteem in this regard. Now, from a few words of satirical wit, concealed like small serpents under the flowery condolences of your malicious letter, I concluded that this miserable fellow Louis, abandoning all considerations of delicacy, and at the risk of ruining my reputation, had played me a most abominable trick, by reading out to you all the nonsense which I wrote to him last week. You need not deny it! He confesses it to-day, unblushingly, in the budget of news which he sends me, adding that you "laughed over it." Good gracious! what can you have thought of me? After such a story, I certainly could never again look you in the face, but that I can clear myself by assuring you at once that all this tale was nothing but a mystification, invented as a return for some of his impertinent chaff regarding my uncle Barbassou's will.

Louis fell into the trap like any booby. But for him to have drawn you with him, is enough to make me die of shame.

Madam, I prefer now to make my confession. I am not the hero of a romance of the Harem. I am a good young man, an advocate of morality and propriety, notwithstanding the fact that you have often honoured me with the title of "a regular original." Be so good as to believe, then, that the most I have been guilty of is a too artless simplicity of character.

I did not suppose that Louis would show you this eccentric letter, for I had expressly enjoined him to keep it from you. My only crime therefore in all this matter has been that I forgot that a woman of your intelligence would read everything, when she had the mind to do so, and a husband like yours.

In fact, madam, I hardly know why I have taken the trouble to excuse myself with so much deliberation. I perceive that by such apologies I run the risk of aggravating my mistake. What did I write, after all, but a very commonplace specimen of those Arabian stories which girls such as you have read continually in the winter evenings, under the eyes of their delighted mothers? When I consider it, I begin to understand that your laughter, if you did laugh, must have been at the feebleness of my imagination--you compared it with the Palace of gold and the thousand wives of the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid.--But please remember, once more, that I am a poor Provencal and not a Sultan.

"My tastes are those of a simple bachelor."

Observe moreover that, out of regard for probability, no less than from respect for local colouring, I was obliged to decide upon a somewhat simple harem, and to confine it within the strictly necessary limits.

Like a school-boy, falling in love with the heroine he has put into his story, I found myself so charmed with my fancy, that in order to further enjoy my pleasures of illusion, I determined not to overstep the limits of a perfectly realisable adventure.