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Title: Don Sebastian
or, The house of the Braganza; vol. 3
Author: Anna Maria Porter
Release date: November 30, 2023 [eBook #72264]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809
Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DON SEBASTIAN ***
DON SEBASTIAN;
OR,
THE HOUSE OF BRAGANZA.
J. M‘CREERY, Printer, Black-Horse-Court, Fleet-Street, London.
DON SEBASTIAN;
OR,
THE HOUSE OF BRAGANZA.
AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE.
IN FOUR VOLUMES.
BY MISS ANNA MARIA PORTER.
AUTHOR OF THE HUNGARIAN BROTHERS.
Take Physic, Pomp!
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
So shall thou shake the superflux to them,
And shew the Heavens more just.
KING LEAR.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, AND ORME,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
1809.
DON SEBASTIAN,
OR
THE HOUSE OF BRAGANZA.
CHAP. I.
During Sebastian’s absence, Abensallah had informed Tefza of the
numerous calvacade, belonging to the Turkish Basha, which was proceeding
nearly in the direction of the yearly caravans to Mecca, and with which
if he hastened, he might fall in, and reach Syria safely, whence it
would be easy to pass into Arabia: on the contrary, if he let this
escape him, he must wait several months for the setting out of the
annual one from Fez; and so unnecessarily protract the period either of
his slave’s freedom or conversion.
This information had determined Tefza to proceed without delay in search
of this private caravan, while he dispatched one of his servants to a
kinsman at Riffa, with directions for the management of his affairs
during his absence, and an order for him to return the slave, (with such
money as the journey required) in the track of the caravan.
This arrangement was most welcome to Sebastian, who retired to rest on a
heap of dried mosses, with a lightened and grateful spirit.
On the morrow they departed: tears fell from the venerable Abensallah,
as he gave a parting blessing to the fugitive King: Sebastian in return
kissed his hands repeatedly, with much emotion. The great age of
Abensallah forbade him to believe that they should meet again, till they
met in the kingdom of Heaven: but sorrow was checked by the thought,
that Abensallah had long divorced every selfish care, and considered
death only as an angel that was to open for him the gates of Paradise.
His unblemished and benevolent life warranted such an expectation.
Many were the exhortations against rashness, which the good dervise had
given Sebastian before Tefza awoke; he now whispered them afresh: the
King listened submissively; his last injunctions to Abensallah were to
cherish Babec, for Kara Aziek’s sake.
Babec indeed shared his regret, although he saw her joyfully nestling
over her young ones in a cage of oziers, which Ismael had slung under
the shade of a plane tree, near the cave;--without knowing where she was
put, Tefza heard that she was given to Abensallah; and as doves in
Barbary are considered the especial bird of God, he looked on such a
present as a favorable omen.
The travellers came up with the caravan, formed by the Basha’s people,
after a journey of two days.
With what tumult of heart did Sebastian behold the close litter of Kara
Aziek! he dared not approach too near, lest the sound of her voice might
reach him, and hurry him into a transport that must betray their
attachment.
Slowly traversing the desart of Zala, he and his pious companion shared
in the advantages of the armed guard, and passed securely on through
hordes of wandering people: at night he would draw near the tent where
Aziek slept; his soul had no disquiet save for her safety; and for her
he sometimes feared, when the indolent soldiers lay scattered about,
offering an easy conquest to the robbers of those wilds.
In one of these nights, when all the party were sunk to rest, Sebastian
left the sleeping Tefza, and affecting to seek rest also, lay down
before the women’s tent with Barémel at his side. As he lay, his ear
caught the sound of a light tread; he drew back; some one advanced to
the opening of the tent, as if to breathe fresher air; the person
sighed,--ah! that soft but profound sigh, it could proceed from no other
heart than Kara Aziek’s.
Trembling with joy and apprehension, he now drew near again, and
applying his face close to the tent, said in a low voice, “I am with
thee, Aziek!”
For a moment all was still; the next instant the drapery of the tent was
drawn aside, and Kara Aziek herself appeared her face was lighted up
with joy; she shrunk back, yet stretched out her arms towards him; he
flew forward, he prest her to his heart, and then hastily relinquished
her: she retreated quickly and dropt the curtain, while he threw himself
again upon the ground.
All this was done with such rapidity and in such silence, that he
doubted whether he had or had not embraced the living Aziek; but
transient was the doubt; sweet and consoling recollections succeeded.
The throbbing of the faithful heart that had panted against his, yet
seemed to say in every beat, “I am re-united to thee again--I will never
belong to another!”
Every thing appears possible to chaste and requited love: Sebastian now
fondly believed that they were indeed re-united for ever; he dared
presume that saints and angels, pleased with the sight of two hearts so
purely attached, would plead for them in Heaven, and obtain their
happiness of the Most High.
Like all other lovers he fancied that no one loved like him; like all
other lovers he believed that _his_ passion must be crowned with
success. Erring Sebastian! perhaps the very reason upon which thou didst
ground this presumptuous certainty, should have been the awakener of thy
fears! Happiness is not for mortality; and would not happiness uniformly
result from the enjoyment of a virtuous affection exactly returned?--
He now calculated the number of days in which the caravan would arrive
on the confines of Egypt, they must then separate: by the most sacred
promise he was bound to accompany Tefza in his progress to the tomb of
Mahomet, after which he would be free; but in the meantime what would
become of Kara Aziek? would the laws of Moorish mourning protect her
from the coarse passion of Ibrahim? She had assured him that they
would.--
Satisfied with this assurance, (satisfied because his hopes were changed
into confidence,) he revolved in his mind a multitude of visionary
projects for her escape from the Basha, which alternately seized and
abandoned, employed all his faculties so entirely, that he did not
perceive himself deserted by Barémel.--The overjoyed animal had sprung
into the tent after Kara Aziek, and now re-appeared; his master
instantly felt the use that might be made of him, and extending an eager
hand to his collar, found what he expected, a piece of writing beneath
it. As he crushed the precious vellum in his hand, he darted round a
glance of apprehension; no one had observed, for all were only beginning
to rouse themselves from sleep.--
It was not till he had removed to a distance, and knew himself concealed
by a cluster of palm-trees, that he opened and read these brief
sentences.
“We must not trust ourselves to behold each other again, while
surrounded by the Basha’s people;--I know thou art near to me, and that
must be sufficient--convey thy plans to me--rely on the eternity of my
love--I will live and die, only thine.”--
Transported with a prospect of correspondence, yet determining to use it
with prudence, Sebastian hid the letter in his breast, and hastened to
rejoin his companions, who were by this time preparing to strike their
tents and re-load their camels.
As they rode slowly together in the track of the caravan, the
persevering Hadgé resumed his old theme; both his eloquence and his
pertinacity seeming to increase as he drew nearer the native country of
Mahomet. Sebastian had no longer thoughts for so futile a subject:
neither arguments nor bursts of scorn interrupted Tefza, and charmed
with this fancied attention, the good man believed himself on the point
of saving a soul from perdition.--
At night they halted again; and then, while Tefza slept, the anxious
lover briefly sketched to Kara Aziek his situation and his views:
Barémel once more played the part of Babec, but it was not till the
succeeding day, that Sebastian learnt the effect of his letter.--Kara
Aziek determined to visit the tomb of the prophet ere she went into
Syria: she announced this intention to the captain of her guard, who
dared not disobey the commands of his master’s bride, when those
commands were associated with a pious object.
Orders were then issued for the caravan to direct its course to the
western bank of the Red Sea, instead of proceeding through Egypt. Tefza
extolled the youthful devotee, and called on his slave to let so
memorable an example influence his prejudices.
It was only from these new movements that Sebastian joyfully gathered
the intentions of Aziek: fearful of discovery, she would not trust their
mute messenger too often, but contented herself with caressing him in
her tent, soothed by the mere consciousness of his belonging to
Sebastian.
By slow stages the travellers had traversed the desarts of Zala and
Nubia, skirted the kingdom of Sennaar, and proceeding along the western
coast of the Red Sea, were preparing to cross it into Arabia: it was at
this period that Aziek hazarded another letter to her lover.
She informed him, that if on their arrival at Mecca, he would assume the
disguise of a female merchant of perfumes, and present himself at her
door, she would incur the risk of receiving him, as then they might
concert together the means of escape.
Impatient for this blissful moment, time seemed stationary to Sebastian,
while the caravan proceeded along the varied land of Arabia towards the
city of Mecca: at length they entered it, the different persons were
dispersed, and Kara Aziek took up her abode in a habitation without the
walls of the town.
Inclination would have hurried the impatient Sebastian immediately to
the feet of his beloved, but he sought to enjoy that felicity unalloyed,
and he could not do so while he knew himself a slave: to shake off his
servitude by fulfilling the conditions upon which freedom had been
promised him, was his first determination. He reminded Tefza of their
compact, he recapitulated the words of Abensallah, and declaring himself
eager to witness the ceremonies that were expected to work his
conversion, called on the old man to lead him quickly to the mosque.
The admission of Christians into their holy city or their mosques is
prohibited to the Mahometans, but this law is sometimes waved in
singular cases; so that Tefza had procured a warrant from his spiritual
superior, authorizing him to lodge his slave in the suburbs of Mecca,
and to edify him by a view of the Mahometan worship.
It was to eyes blinded and ears deafened by intent attention to one
precious object, that all the frivolous pomp of Mahometan ceremony was
now directed: Sebastian endured it, but he could not bring his mind to
observe and investigate its absurdities.
Tefza with grief beheld him enter the mosque, apparently look at, and
listen to all that passed, yet never once did an air of abstraction quit
his features, nor would he for an instant join in the slightest
appearance of worship.
The third day closed; his probation was at an end.
As they returned together from evening prayers to their lodgings near
the city, profound silence subsisted between them; but there was no
silence in their hearts: Tefza’s intreating eyes spoke only too audibly,
as they perpetually turned and fixed themselves upon the face of
Sebastian.
The regards of the King were cast down; his head was inclined, his step
slow; but this downcast look, this regulated pace, the burning glow that
increased every moment upon his cheek, plainly developed the struggles
of a man, the expression of whose gladness, decency and gratitude united
to control.
Tefza could with difficulty restrain his tears; when he entered his
lodgings they burst forth: he turned abruptly round, and throwing
himself upon the neck of Sebastian, exclaimed in a broken voice:--
“You will leave me then, my Son?--my desolate old age--my love for
thee--will nothing plead?”
Interrupted by sobs he proceeded no further. This affecting resignation,
this mild remonstrance, this fidelity to the promise given at Riffa,
melted Sebastian; he ran his eyes eagerly over the amiable figure of the
old man: his grey hairs and gentle countenance, the supplicating look
with which he regarded him, pierced him with regret.
“Alas! my father,” he cried, falling at his feet, “I leave you with a
sorrow which my conduct may seem to contradict:--O may you one day know
my heart! may all whom I loved, or who have served me in Africa, know
the imperious destiny that has controled my actions! I am not what I
appear, Tefza: that God whom we equally adore, ordained me to a far
different lot from that to which you have seen me condemned; I must
endeavour to regain it. I leave you only for the fulfilment of duties,
and in the hope of obtaining happiness. Ah! Why has fate thrown me
amongst so many excellent persons whom I can never hope to behold
again!”
“And am I never to see thee again, my son!” cried Tefza; as he spoke,
the blood forsook his cheeks, and he sunk down overpowered with
affliction: Sebastian prest his lips upon that trembling hand in
agitated silence.
The Hadgé wept audibly: “O Fabian!” he cried at last, “my sand is nearly
run, might I but hope to meet thee in another existence, that hope
alone”--
“Father!” interrupted the young King, with a steadier voice, “I feel
that another world will re-unite us: I love you, I owe you infinite
gratitude, my soul thirsts to pay its debt, but here it cannot be; our
different creeds, and different fates, sever us decisively. It is for
this necessity you blame me; you are good and just according to your
judgment, yet you wrong me, and it is only in another existence, that
learning my motives, you will cease to condemn my actions. O my father!
time, suffering, and reflection, have assured me, (me, who once
persecuted unto death) that all who sincerely love their God, and his
creatures; all who strive conscientiously to fulfil what they believe to
be his law; whether they be Jew or Gentile, whether disciples of Christ
or of Mahomet, will, at the last great day, be accepted into his
heavenly kingdom.”
Tefza gazed at him as he would have eyed the opening Heavens, then
catching him in his arms, he cried in an ardent tone, “I _will_ think
so, my son, I _will_ think so; it is impossible that such a soul as
thine should be devoted to perdition.”
The Christian and the Mahometan wept in each others arms: that fierce
and indignant Sebastian, whom the slightest shew of authority inflamed
to madness, was in a single moment softened to woman’s tenderness, and
wrought to regret the necessity which severed him from one whom so
lately he had opposed and upbraided.
“When we have been separated one year,” said he, as he rose from the
neck of the good Hadgé, “ask of Abensallah my story; he will tell it
you, for I have instructed him in it. You will then pity and pardon me
perhaps--at least you will own that only the strongest affections, and
the most powerful duties, tear me from you.”
Sebastian hastily embraced him while speaking, and was going to break
away, when Tefza put into his hands one of those beautiful shawls which
the Moors call Haegs, requesting him to accept and wear it for his sake.
“Think of my paternal love when thou dost first unfold it,” he said
faintly, “may the great prophet forgive thy blindness, and bless thee
wherever thou goest. Alas! Fabian! thou didst make life dear to me, what
will it be soon?”
Pierced, penetrated with honorable regret, Sebastian turned again to
embrace him, exclaiming--“You rive my heart, Tefza, for God’s sake
cease.--how it would console me to think that you and Abensallah spent
your days together.”
At this suggestion the countenance of the Hadgé suddenly brightened, he
grasped his young companion’s hand, saying in a more animated tone,
“Would it console thee? then I promise it,--that pious man will not
refuse my wish to share his peaceful abode--my wealth shall become in
his hand the property of others:--together will we talk of thee my
son--together will we pray for thee: then wilt thou think of us
together?”
Sebastian joyfully promised to do so, and once more embracing Tefza,
tore himself away.
As Tefza supposed him going to seek an immediate conveyance to Cairo,
whence he might embark for some Christian port in Europe, it was prudent
to avoid the chance of a future rencontre with him; Sebastian therefore
repaired to the remotest suburb of the city, inhabited mostly by Jews,
who being accustomed to trade with the Portuguese settlers at Ormuz,
were able to understand their language.
He procured lodgings at one of their houses, and retiring to the chamber
allotted him, threw himself on a mattrass, not to rest, but to revolve
the scheme of his conduct.
It was his intention to attempt seeing Kara Aziek early on the morrow;
for this purpose he must procure some merchandise and some disguise. At
this necessity he started as from sleep; how were these to be acquired,
utterly destitute as he was of the means to purchase them! never before
had the exiled monarch felt the grasp of penury: while in slavery money
would have been useless, and therefore it was an unfelt want; Aziek’s
tender precaution had enriched him when he returned to Portugal, and
since his second captivity, though that treasure had been swallowed by
the ocean, its loss had been unmarked, since Sebastian could have no use
for gold, except to relieve the wretchedness of others, and for that
purpose the hand of Tefza was always open.
Paralized with this blow, which threatened destruction to every plan his
heated fancy had been forming, he started up, and stood rooted to one
spot, anxiously seeking some other resource; the gift of Tefza then came
to his recollection. It was a Haeg of such transparent fineness, and so
curiously flowered with gold, that it might well afford a specious
excuse for traffic; he decided therefore to present it for sale at
Aziek’s gate, and as the garments he wore were of silk stuff, it would
not be difficult to obtain in exchange for them a Jew’s black gown.
These ideas no sooner arose in his mind than he took out the shawl, and
hastened towards a window to examine it more attentively; while
unfolding it he heard something fall on the ground, which lifting, he
found to be a purse stuffed with gold coin: the last words of Tefza
then recurred to him--“Think of my paternal love.”--
He did think of that love, he did gratefully acknowledge it. Enhanced by
his late perplexity, this considerate benefaction excited no common
emotion of gladness and gratitude: it was from the hand of Tefza then,
that he was receiving the means of happiness; without this present every
effort must have been feeble and confined, and now he might command all
that money could purchase towards its attainment.
He looked at the purse with moistened eyes, for he thought of the
generous old man’s cheerless age and pitiable character. Tefza’s was not
one of those vigorous minds which are sufficient for themselves: he
needed objects to enliven and to interest him; without these he sunk
into sadness. Piety however offered such a character consolation, and
Sebastian comforted himself by hoping, that in the mildly-cheerful
society of Abensallah, his weaker spirit would find a stay and a charm.
On the morrow, after sunrise, when half the inhabitants of Mecca were
hastening to the shrine of their prophet, and the remainder were opening
their shops, arranging their merchandize, &c. Sebastian enquired of his
host where perfumes were to be purchased; the Jew hastened to produce
some scented handkerchiefs, and having just received a small portion of
the flowers of the keura, (an Arabian tree, the blossoms of which retain
their celestial fragrance even when dried,) he soon disposed of them to
one who caught eagerly at any thing which might prove a passport to
Aziek.
The Jew was well paid and incurious; so he neither openly nor secretly
commented upon the stranger’s additional purchase of a woman’s black
gaberdine and large hat. Having made these useful acquisitions,
Sebastian went to one of those public places where coffee is sold, and
having obtained some, he retired to a back apartment, and there stained
his face and hands, already darkened by many a burning sun and scorching
wind: he threw the gaberdine over his other clothes, and watching an
opportunity when all the men in the coffee-house were gathered round one
of those story-tellers, that in the east make a trade of amusing
strangers, he glided into the street, and was soon lost amongst the
crowd.
By the least frequented ways, he reached the abode of Kara Aziek: it was
the hour of morning prayers, and every man was at the mosque; all but a
few soldiers who relieved each other as guards at her door. Sebastian
eyed them well, to observe if they were men he had ever conversed with
during their journey over the desarts: he did not remember their faces,
and trusting to a similar forgetfulness on their side, he approached and
asked, in a stifled jargon, whether they would look at his merchandize.
The soldiers, who were Turks, did not understand, and roughly repulsed
him; he unfolded his shawl, and the delicious scent of the keura flowers
instantly perfuming the whole air around them, induced one of the guards
to call out an old negro, whose office it was to convey the commands of
Kara Aziek from her women to the Basha’s officer: by this negro the
soldiers had been instructed not to turn away any vender of perfumes.--
The unsuspecting slave now beckoned for Sebastian to enter, and led him
through a suite of apartments to a chamber adjoining that of Kara Aziek;
the negro left him for a moment, then re-appearing, said something in
his own language, and went out the way they had come.
Left alone, eager and apprehensive, Sebastian knew not whether to follow
or to proceed; while he hesitated, the door of the inner chamber softly
opened;--he bent forward--a female figure came forth--she put aside her
veil, and shewed him an unknown but engaging countenance, fair, pale,
and mildly sad.
Past the prime of life, and evidently wasted by sickness, the lady
looked like some interesting phantom; she smiled and courteously bowed
as she passed slowly to the opposite door, which she bolted, then
re-approaching, took him by the hand and led him to the entrance of the
other chamber.
This unknown European, his incertitude, his grief, his fears, all were
forgot, when in the retired chamber to which she pointed, he beheld Kara
Aziek alone, unveiled, trembling with love and expectation: he flew
forward, he locked her in his arms, he held her to his heart in silence;
but that heaving heart, his quick and disturbed breathing, his trembling
convulsive grasp, spoke more eloquently than words the extent and the
intensity of his joy.
The softer and fainter spirit of Aziek seemed to sink under the weight
of happiness: she lay on his bosom nearly insensible; her eyes closed,
and her feeble hand incapable of returning the frequent pressure of his.
At length Sebastian spoke, and the sound of that beloved voice, like
some strain of music, suddenly dissolved the spell; a few relieving
tears trickled from beneath the eyelids of Aziek.
It was but a moment of happiness; those joyful tears which the devoted
lover gently kissed away, were soon replaced by mists of fond
apprehension: they must part again! their fate was yet darkened by
menacing clouds, which might burst in destruction over their hapless
heads.
In answer to Aziek’s expression of these fears, Sebastian eagerly
besought her to say whether she had learned where she was destined to
remain in Syria: Aziek informed him that she heard the Basha had given
orders for her to follow his camp, which some Syrian merchants at
Mecca, had described as being in the interior of Persia; part of which
kingdom he had already traversed as a conqueror.
“It is in this hurry of war, and triumph of success, that I hope for
awhile to be forgotten;” she said, “and perhaps the confusion of such
scenes may render escape less difficult: at any rate I trust to this
altered person for abating that strange passion of the Basha’s, which a
picture (drawn in my days of peace,) had created.--When he sees me,
surely--I know not how to explain my meaning, Sebastian--but it is not
love he feels for me--and nothing less than love can be satisfied with
Aziek as she is now.”
She spoke this blushing and looking down; and Sebastian felt such
delightful tenderness as he gazed on her, that it was some moments ere
he perceived the justice of her suggestion.
His beloved was changed: it has been remarked that “folly and
insensibility season beauty;” they preserve it indeed, from that
alteration which reflection and extreme tenderness, inevitably produce.
Aziek’s gentle form was constructed too finely for duration under
violent emotions of any kind: her grief at his supposed death, and her
joy at finding that grief unfounded, had wasted her visibly; it had
exhausted her strength, and gradually dried up the rosy spring that used
to colour her cheeks. The brightness of her beauty indeed was clouded,
but no disease had fixed on her constitution, no languor pervaded her
countenance; and when Sebastian first saw her again after their long
separation, he felt not the absence of perfection while his senses were
un-shocked by an appearance of absolute decay.
The devoted lover ardently kissed the hand which Aziek had extended to
him; “I complain of nothing, sweetest Aziek, if I may but retain
_yourself_--your heart--your soul!--Live for me, continue to love
me--and time, which hastens to wear away such passions as those
inspired by mere beauty, will only bind _our_ affections in closer
union.--Yes Aziek, it was reserved for your precious character to teach
me the nature and the value of real love; of that love which the _Great
Being_ beholds with complacency, and will bless hereafter:--till I knew
you, I was ignorant how much that sentiment can exalt as well as
delight.--We must not part, Aziek!--I cannot--cannot quit you.”--
The tone in which he pronounced the last words, penetrated Kara Aziek;
she lifted her dark eyes, and fixed them on his, with the look of one
whose heart is overflowing with some feeling they long to express, and
share with a beloved object; tears of strong emotion gushed from them, a
vivid colour spread over her face, and she threw herself suddenly into
his arms, exclaiming--“we are divided now perhaps, by Heaven’s will,
only that we may meet again for eternal re-union.”
The expression given by her touching voice to the word _eternal_, struck
Sebastian forcibly: he recalled the European woman that had conducted
him; he looked intently at Aziek:--resolved to believe what he wished,
and without giving utterance to his thoughts, he pressed her against his
heart with an emotion only to be conceived by one who has felt the same.
“That Christian lady whom thou hast just seen,” said Aziek, as she
disengaged herself from his arms after a short pause, “is my friend; she
was a slave in my uncle’s house, and I bought her to give her liberty,
and convey her to a countryman now residing at the Persian court. She
was taken in a vessel returning from Venice to England (of which country
she is a native,) and having lost her husband during the engagement of
the ships, cared too little for life to lament her captivity. I love
her, and confide in her: I have told her our story, (but concealing thy
rank,) and it is with her I hope to fly to the court of Persia.”
“And what is her countryman, Aziek?”
“The queen of England’s ambassador, Sir Anthony Shirley; a sage and
worthy gentleman; one, she says, that will protect me, and would aid
thee, if--”
A sudden light shone over the face of Sebastian--“Tell me Aziek,” he
said, “have you heard the grounds of this war? which are the aggressors,
the Turks, or the Persians?”
Ignorant of her lover’s motive for this inquiry, Kara Aziek proceeded to
detail what had been casually communicated to her by the old negro, and
by the captain of her guard; from their accounts it was evident that the
Persians had been forced into hostilities. A most atrocious act had been
committed on their frontiers in the time of peace by a Turkish grandee
whom the Sultan refused to punish; this insult had been followed by a
train of enormities which obliged the sufferers to take up arms, and
the merciless Ottomans had already traversed part of Persia, with
desolation and cruelty as their attendants. It was a war of justice on
the part of Persia;--not a barbarous contest for supremacy.
“Once more then in the broad field of honour--once more in open day and
fearless truth, will I press onward to my wishes!”--this exclamation
burst from the heart of Sebastian: as he spoke, his hand habitually
sought the place where his sword formerly hung; joy smoothed his noble
brow, his whole being seemed to dilate.
“What meanest thou, Sebastian?”--faintly articulated Kara Aziek.
“To gain you like a King and a soldier!--Tremble not my beloved; think
you that the God we serve, will not bless me more in the open path of
sincerity, than when shrinking from scrutiny, planning, deceiving, and
over-reaching?--my soul abhors artifice, Aziek,--’tis a yoke that galls
me worse than servitude or chains.--I will abandon this disguise, trust
your dear safety to angels like yourself, hasten to Persia, enroll
myself in her list of champions, and with my sword clear out the way to
thee.--I will win thee----I will deserve thee Aziek!”
In an ecstacy of hope, the young and ardent monarch fell at the feet of
Kara Aziek; he was restored to himself, he was Sebastian of Portugal
again! never had she beheld him thus.
What new charm did this proud fire spread over his countenance! his
figure was concealed by its loose black drapery, but his uncovered head
breathed indeed both the King and the soldier.
Aziek regarded him more fondly, more admiringly, more devotedly than
ever: “Ah why must I love thee thus (she exclaimed) with an increasing
passion?” her blushing face hid itself on the shoulder of her lover.
Soothing, grateful and tender, Sebastian checked his enthusiasm to raise
the drooping spirits of Aziek: while endearing vows, and chaste
caresses, assured her of his attachment, she forgot every apprehension,
and whispered only this sentiment of regret, “Life is too short to love
thee in.” But when he spoke again of his intention to join the forces of
Persia and win her by deeds of arms; her fears returned, and her tears
flowed.
It was long ere Sebastian could convince her that his life would be more
secure, and their prospect of union more certain, were he to incur the
chances of open warfare, than if he should follow her disguised into
Syria, and there loiter near her, subject to suspicion and to discovery.
War, tremendous war! how did it shock the tender soul of Aziek! but the
dignity and integrity of Sebastian was too precious in her eyes for her
to urge any conduct by which they might be compromised. “Go then,” she
said, at length, “Go! beloved of my soul! delight of my eyes! treasure
of my days! obey the dictates of thy brave and upright spirit! I will
believe that the God thou dost worship, that God who did create and make
thee what thou art, the most excellent, most dear,--ah! foolish Aziek,
say what thou wilt, to this thou recurrest at last!” again she leaned
her glowing face on his breast, and smiling through crouding tears,
ceased to speak.
“Was man ever loved thus?”--exclaimed Sebastian, half-wild with an
emotion too exquisite for mortality to sustain. “Angelic Aziek! this
moment is cheaply bought by all my past sufferings. Take every thing,
high Heaven! so you leave me but her.”
The silence that followed, was interrupted only by soft and delightful
sighs, which alternately seemed to waft to their different bosoms, the
souls of each: every painful fear had faded from their minds, all was
forgotten.
In the midst of this sweet oblivion, the Englishwoman appeared; her
looks and gesture expressed haste and alarm; Sebastian started from the
arms of Aziek, he hastened to the door: then turning to look on her once
more, saw her pale, trembling, her arms yet extended, and her touching
eyes fixed upon him: he hastened back, folded her to his breast, and
without speaking or being spoken to, tore himself away.
While he hurried after his directress, she whispered in imperfect
French, “Be under the eastern side of this house at prayer time to
night.” She then unlocked the door of the apartment, and leading him
forward, called the negro, who soon appeared and conducted him out.
The crowds hurrying home from the mosques, proved to Sebastian that
Aziek’s friend had not been too careful; a moment’s stay might have
exposed him to the scrutiny of her whole household, and suspicion must
have followed, from his female habit so ill-suited with his
countenance. He returned to his lodging, where he shut himself up with
Barémel till the hour of evening prayer.
How hope-inspiring were the reveries with which he delighted his
naturally-blissful spirit, during this interval!
“Too sure the passion that his soul misled,
Was checked, not conquered; buried, but not dead!”
The activity of camps and armies, “the pomp and circumstance of war,”
the exercise of bodily power and mental energy, the chivalric glow of
perilous enterprize, still had charms for this unquenchable spirit: in
renouncing their attractions at the command of principle, his heart had
yet yearned after them; he had bidden them adieu with such fond regret
as the lover feels who tears himself away from a faithless mistress,
exclaiming, “Ah why are so many charms united with so much frailty!”
Now his soul sprung back with impetuous force, for now he should at
once fight for an oppressed people and a beloved object: he rose, he
traversed his apartment with disordered steps; his burning cheek and
kindling eye were full of noble purposes: again his limbs seemed to feel
the gallant clasp of mailed armour; the knightly helm again seemed to
press his brow; and once more his manly arm wielded the tremendous
faulchion.
Who that had seen Sebastian at this moment, would have failed to
discover in him that enthusiastic, rash heroic King of Portugal, who had
once risked and lost every thing for the sake of glory?--he was no
longer the same Sebastian that had so lately been stricken to the dust
by despair and misanthropy.
How often does the spirit of man die and revive! in the season of youth
grief may destroy, but hope will renew it. Like the hardy eagle which
poets have fabled immortal, the soul decays, sheds her plumes, sinks
into transient death, then suddenly glows again with life, rises
new-winged from dust, and soars to Heaven!
Into the mind of Sebastian no visions entered, except such as were
bright and blissful: an instant of time, an atom only of distance,
seemed to divide him from the possession of all he panted for. In the
vigour of youth, and the full zenith of ardour, he felt an inward
strength, which assured him that his destiny was yet in his own hands.
“I shall acquire thee, Aziek!” he said exultingly, “I shall regain my
crown, my people’s hearts, my friends, and my own respect!”
Yet erring Sebastian!--didst thou weakly think that a throne and a name
were necessary to make thee great? thou wast more worthy thy own respect
when performing the meanest tasks for thy fellow-slaves in the cassavee
of El Hader, than when issuing commands to crowds of obedient
courtiers, from thy palace of Ribera.
Sebastian’s proud nature was yet but imperfectly amended; he had to
suffer and to learn still more.
At the hour appointed, he repaired to the place marked out by Aziek’s
friend: it was a spot calculated for concealment, being surrounded by
decayed buildings and thick clusters of sycamores: he looked up at the
sound of an opening blind, which was put aside by Kara Aziek herself,
who regarding him tenderly, took a small packet from her bosom, and
pressing it to her lips with a smile that seemed to say “I send this
kiss to thee,” threw down the packet, motioned him away, and withdrew
immediately.
The King seized his prize and hurried home to examine it.
The contents were a letter from Aziek’s friend to her countryman in
Persia, and one from Aziek to Sebastian: she conjured him to hasten to
Ispahan, where the Sophi held his court, there to seek Sir Anthony
Shirley. Perhaps the zeal of that Englishman for a highly-allied
countrywoman, would quicken his exertions for the man beloved by her
protectress; and by his advice, or through his means, some safe plan for
their flight from Syria might be devised.--At all events, she conjured
him to couple prudence with enterprise, and to remember, that if her
freedom was to be purchased by his death, the blessing would change into
a curse.
The instructions for his conduct contained in this letter, were so full
and satisfactory, that Sebastian lost not a moment in fulfilling them:
he calculated justly, that Kara Aziek would scarcely have reached the
Basha’s camp, ere he should have entered Ispahan, procured permission to
join the Sophi’s army, and perhaps carried that formidable camp sword in
hand.
He hastened to seek his Jewish host, and having engaged him to procure a
trusty Arab as a guide, enjoining him to be ready early on the morrow,
he returned to his chamber, where he threw himself on the ground to
renovate his strength with sleep, ere he commenced his journey.
CHAP. II.
The morning sun shone cheeringly over the city, and the long line of
varied coast which runs southward towards the straits of Babelmandel:
from the groves of citron and the surrounding coffee-grounds, ascended a
rich odour which the sea-breezes softened and refreshed. Sebastian
paused a moment ere he mounted his horse; he looked back upon the city
which contained Kara Aziek and the good Tefza. “Poor old man!” he
exclaimed, “you will never see me more.”
A tear started in his eye as he spoke, he thought of all Tefza’s past
kindness, and his heart melted: but soon recovering, he laid his hand on
the horse’s neck, vaulted into his seat, and galloped off after the
Arabian guide.
The new and fertile country through which they travelled, perpetually
awakened the most lively emotions in the breast of a man, amiably
susceptible to every charm of nature: its hills, covered with that
enchanting jessamine which grows there so profusely, and perfumes the
air almost insufferably; its vallies, embalmed with the gentler perfume
of the sea-daffodil; the noble verdure which shaded these, composed of
cedars, sycamores, and palms; that exquisite union of fruits, flowers,
and living green, which the dews bathe and the sun embellishes; the song
of birds and the hum of bees, all conspired to touch Sebastian’s heart,
and to ravish his senses.
His mind, animated by hope, had acquired fresh vigour for the enjoyment
of delightful objects: the sentiment of happy love diffused its own
sweetness over every sense, and had he not _found_ them beautiful, that
sentiment would have made them so.
During his rapid journey, the idea of Gaspar perpetually followed that
of Kara Aziek: till this period that dear friend’s image had been almost
effaced by intense anxiety for the fate of Aziek, and by ineffectual
attempts at regaining her: now, that he had beheld and conversed with
his beloved, and was hastening to fields of contest for her sake, he
felt proudly secure, and turned with tender solicitude to the
remembrance of his distant friend.
The nights in Arabia are bright as noon; yet their tranquillity, their
freshness, their crystal clearness, are so celestially unlike the
relentless fire of their days, that the traveller stretches himself out
on the terrace of the house which lodges him, not to sleep, but to gaze
on the resplendent Heavens.
Those enchanting nights elevate man’s nature; they refresh his body,
they purify his soul: their serene influence appears to render sleep
unnecessary, and a sublime calm, like that repose which imagination
attributes to God’s, pervades his whole being, and alone regenerates his
powers.
Under such impressions, Sebastian lay thinking of Gaspar: the sacred
sentiment of friendship was worthy of the scene.
Departing from the luxuriant neighbourhood of Mecca, Sebastian passed
over the mountains of Gabel el Ared, toiled through the Arabian desart,
crossed the date-shaded Euphrates, and entered Persia: shortly
afterwards he knew himself to be approaching Ispahan, by the
far-stretching fields of roses, amongst which that famed city was in
those days embosomed.
Soon its high walls and lofty domes were seen along the horizon, forming
but a comparatively diminutive line at the feet of the gigantic
mountains of Taurus. How little, how atom-like are all the labours of
art, when contrasted with the vast and eternal productions of nature!
He approached the town; troops of warriors were pouring from different
gates: the trampling of their white steeds, was mixed with the sound of
martial music; banners and spears rose above their thick lines, and
their leaders clad in magnificent habits, superbly mounted, and
completely armed, rode onward with an air of troubled haste.
Every thing announced alarm and precipitation; the fate of Persia was
then hanging in the balance; a day longer, and she might cease to exist
among nations!
At the sound of the trumpet, the war-horse long dismissed to pasture,
starts, flashes his fiery eyes, tosses his proud neck aloft, strains
every sinew, and rushes upon the shock of battle: Sebastian’s limbs
shook like his, with a powerful emotion excited by the troops of the
Sophi: his heart beat high; it swelled with a sentiment of fraternity
towards every soldier before him. His eyes long pursued their hurried
march, till distance lessened them, and then turning into one of the
gates, he sought impatiently some house where he might obtain
information of Sir Anthony Shirley.
The expressive countenance of Sebastian, and his own quickness of
perception, supplied the place of language between him and the Persians:
after some difficulty, he procured a bath, refreshment, and then a
conductor to the mansion of the ambassador.
Having thrown off his Moorish habit, and put on a suit of old armour,
which he had collected from different shops at Mecca, he prepared to
issue forth. Ill-assorted and imperfect as this armour was, it yet
clouded not the manly graces of the wearer: his gallant looks ennobled a
homely cuirass, and might have made the harness of trimmer knights
appear but the trapping of military idleness. Brightened by a variety of
animating feelings, his countenance formed a strong contrast to the
sombre hue of his iron mail.
The man who acted as guide led him through streets intersected with
gardens and canals, to a wide square, in which stood the palace of the
Sophi, and the residence of the ambassador: there he left him.
Among the domestics of the Englishman, fortunately there was an Italian,
to whom Sebastian addressed himself, “Tell your master,” he said, “that
a stranger, a Christian knight, asks to converse with him alone.”
The Italian eyed him with surprize, but the air of the stranger awed
curiosity into silence, and he respectfully withdrew.
Sir Anthony Shirley,[A] (to whom is that name unknown?) had lived in
the memorable court of Queen Elizabeth, he had breathed the same air
with Raleigh, Cecil, and Sidney; he had listened with admiration to the
immortal Shakespeare; he was now come to represent his sovereign at the
distant court of Persia, giving there a wondrous example of perfect
goodness and profound wisdom unalloyed by one visible failing.
[A] To lessen the number of agents necessary for the plan of this
romance, the author has ventured occasional violations of chronology:
in the above instance, she has antedated the birth and mission of Sir
Anthony Shirley, who did not really reside at the magnificent capital
of Schah Abbas, till several years later.
The title of stranger was an immediate passport to his courtesy, but
when coupled with that of a Christian knight, courtesy changed into
kindness.
On the entrance of Sebastian, he rose and embraced him: “in this
country,” he said, “Christians should indeed think themselves
brethren,--far from our homes and our altars the heart eagerly throws
off the restraint of ceremony, and finds relationship in opinions and
principles.”
Sir Anthony spoke in his own language, of which Sebastian was ignorant;
he shook his head with a thanking smile, that shewed he felt the
meaning of those words merely from the tone in which they were uttered,
and recollecting himself an instant, replied in Portuguese, and then in
Latin: Shirley looked at him with pleased surprize while opening the
letter which he presented.
The serene dignity of Sir Anthony now gave way to a variety of emotions:
perplexity and concern were painted on his face while he successively
read a description of his countrywoman’s widowed state, her sickness,
her slavery, and lastly, her hope of reaching Persia only to die under a
Christian roof. Tears gathered in his eyes, which he turned aside to
conceal.
After some moments’ silence he addressed the King. “By what name am I to
address the noble gentleman of whom this unfortunate lady writes so
impressively?”
“By what name!” repeated the young monarch, regarding him with the
estranged air of a man whom that question had swiftly hurried to other
thoughts:--an interval of abstraction was followed by one of extreme
agitation.
Sebastian evidently felt an impulse to confide in the Englishman; he saw
in him the representative of a sovereign, and his imperious spirit
revolted from the supposition of inferiority: stepping back with an air
of dignity, he was about to pronounce the words “Sebastian of Portugal,”
when recollecting himself, and remembering the prudent resolution he had
formerly taken, as well as the difficulties into which Sir Anthony’s
political views might plunge him, he smiled, shook his head, and replied
only by a bright flush of emotion.
The courteous ambassador did not repeat his question; he remained
thoughtfully silent: Sebastian spoke at length.
“Let my name be forgotten in that of Knight of the Cross; I have
suffered much for that title, have forsaken much to deserve it: let me
then be known only as a Christian soldier.--You behold in me, Sir
Anthony, a Portuguese nobly born, not destined to the profession of
arms, but embracing it from inclination. I was one in the
fatally-memorable expedition of Don Sebastian!--After many hardships,
and more sorrows, I am come hither to offer my services to the Sophi; a
Christian knight _may_ war by the side of infidels when their cause is
just, for then, he sees in them only men and brethren.--Have you
confidence enough in this countenance to believe me what I profess
myself? dare you pledge your faith for my integrity while presenting me
to the Persian?”
The young monarch advanced as he spoke, and putting aside the hair which
darkened his forehead, fixed his eyes on Sir Anthony with a look that
courted scrutiny.
Shirley regarded him attentively; for Shirley was past that age in which
men’s hearts wait not for the sanction of their judgments: he still
looked steadily at him; at last stretching out his hand with an aspect
changed from consideration to confidence, he exclaimed, “I _will_ pledge
myself for your worthiness.”
It was not the aim of Sebastian to conceal more than was necessary;
though evidently delighted in making mystery indispensible to him, it
was abhorrent to a soul that loved to walk unveiled before men and
angels.
He now candidly confessed to his courteous entertainer, that gratitude
and love united, formed the strongest motives to the action he
meditated: he sought to be entrusted with some command, chiefly that it
might bring him into contact with the Basha, and afford him an
opportunity of winning rather than stealing Kara Aziek.
Shirley’s character was too grave and philosophic for perfect sympathy
with the feelings of an impassioned lover: he smiled at the importance
which a sentiment he had never felt, could bestow upon women; but he
forbore uttering his thoughts: he tasked himself to consider how it
would be best to procure from the Sophi that trust the stranger sought.
A review of the Persian levies was to take place on the morrow; Sir
Anthony settled that they should repair thither together, when the
knight would be enabled to demonstrate his military knowledge in a scene
calculated to call it forth, and the Sophi might investigate his
observations through the medium of an interpreter:--meanwhile Sebastian
was requested to consider the Englishman’s house as that of an ancient
friend; to reside in it, and to command there.
Shirley now made many anxious inquiries about the precise state of his
countrywoman, which Sebastian could only answer by assuring him that she
was in the hands of the tenderest and most generous of women:--he then
besought some particulars of the battle of Alcazar.
Eager to seize this opportunity of dissipating the error into which he
perceived all the European courts had fallen (an error which attributed
the failure of Portugal to unskilfulness, and not treachery,) Sebastian
willingly called back the sufferings of that painful period: he gave a
distinct account of the Portuguese operations from the moment in which
the army touched African ground, till that period in which Muley Hamet
caused its overthrow.
His animated descriptions--alternately prosperous and pathetic, rivetted
the attention of Shirley; he followed the speaker’s glowing language
with answering enthusiasm, yet did he retain sufficient coolness to note
as he went along, every expression which might develope the great
commander or disclose the mere novice.
With surprize and gratification he witnessed the emotion with which
Sebastian made the eulogium of his countryman: the gallant deeds of
Stukeley lived again in the hurried eloquence of a brother in arms: his
fall was but mentioned, not dwelt on, for at that part, the lips of the
orator quivered, and his voice was choaked in its passage.
Pleased with this sensibility, and satisfied with the observations which
had grown out of their interesting discourse, Shirley assumed a more
confidential tone, and hazarded a conjecture about the fate of the King
and his surviving adherents: Sebastian rose in disorder.
“We will speak on this subject no more;” he said abruptly, “it is
painful to me.--the destiny of Don Sebastian is in the hands of
God;--who may venture to determine it?--If he live, Providence assuredly
will restore him a sceptre which he wished to wield worthily: his
misfortunes will have been his instructors; and Europe may perhaps find
with astonishment an example for Kings, in him who has tasted the
bitterness of every situation, and thus learned--but enough of this--I
divine not his fate.”
The broken voice, flushed and averted cheek, together with the
severely-noble air of Sebastian, startled Sir Anthony; a vague suspicion
crossed his mind: it was the suspicion of a moment: for to a man of
quiet feelings, untinctured with romance, no sufficient motive for
Sebastian’s concealment and errantry presented itself to his fancy. He
regarded him curiously once more, then said,--
“I mistake much, Sir Knight, if you were not a confidential companion of
Don Sebastian’s; but I ask not whom: suffice it to me, that you are a
Christian, a soldier, and a gentleman.”
Sebastian bowed without speaking, and retired abruptly.
Early on the morrow, the ambassador and his unknown guest appeared at
the review of the Persian troops; soon after the Sophi’s son arrived,
surrounded by nobles sumptuously attired, on milk-white horses, whose
chanfraines sparkled with precious stones. When Shirley approached with
one whose plain armour (ill-suited and unbrightened) formed a contrast
to the gold and polish of theirs, all the young Persians regarded him
with surprize; they exchanged glances of contempt together: but how
quickly was that contempt changed into a sentiment of awe, when the
stranger, uncovering himself with an air of command and submission
mingled, displayed a countenance on which were stamped majesty,
intrepidity, self-respect, and the sweetest benignity.
Deeply read in courts, Sir Anthony Shirley noted the address of his
companion: he beheld him meet the gaze of the Persian Prince and his
suite, not only without embarrassment, but with looks of growing
nobleness. Who was he then? and what high station had he held near the
throne of Portugal? Shirley’s thoughts could not determine these
questions, but they answered one more important; they assured him he
might rely on the ability and the faith of the man he scrutinized.
Having previously explained to Prince Abbas, that the stranger sought
permission to take the field in his cause, he had now only occasion to
present his gallant friend, and to interpret for him during the day.
The Prince reviewed his army, visited some works of defence that were
constructing round Ispahan, examined his magazines, in short, devoted
the whole day to an inspection of his military resources: while doing
so, he developed the genius of his new officer.
The questions, remarks, and details of Sebastian, were faithfully
translated to him by Shirley, and these convinced the young Persian that
in this stranger he was acquiring an able knight, one to whom war was
familiar.
The plans of their meditated operations were then displayed and
discussed in the royal tent; it was here that the pre-eminence of
European skill was peculiarly visible; it was here that Sebastian’s fire
blazed out again. He examined every map, and weighed every calculation
with the profoundest attention; he balanced their advantages and
disadvantages; he detected their defects; he explained the justness of
some, and the error of others; he then frankly proposed such alterations
as his sounder experience dictated, and in elucidating these, gave loose
to all the impetuous energy of his character.
Sebastian was now on the theme which long habit had too much endeared;
and as the track of glory opened and brightened before his mental eye,
the prospect it held forth kindled new ardour and awoke new powers. His
rusted cuirass and ill-fashioned greaves were forgotten by the young
courtiers, as they circled round the foreign knight and listened to his
interpreted discourse: Sebastian himself forgot that he was not
dictating to his own war-council; on his brow sat the authority of a
King, on his lips the convincing eloquence of a great commander.
“What manner of man is this?” exclaimed the Sophi’s son, with
astonishment--“Has he not headed armies in his own country?”
Shirley replied in a low voice, unwilling to be heard by others, “I have
signified to your highness’s sublime father, that he wishes his name and
rank to be forgotten; he would be known only as Knight of the Cross. His
illustrious master Don Sebastian King of Portugal perished in an
unsuccessful expedition against the Moors, and since then I understand
this faithful subject has devoted himself to serve religion and
humanity, by combating only in their separate or united causes. I pledge
myself for this stranger; and I predict that Persia will find no reason
to repent of the confidence with which she reposes on my pledge.”
Prince Abbas bowing graciously to Sir Anthony turned towards Sebastian;
“Christian! he said, I accept your services; this day enrolls you in my
royal father’s list of warriors: see that you do not dishonour our
trust. Ask what you wish; the armory, the treasury, the magazine of
horses, all are open to you; I feel assured that you will not make an
indiscreet use of this generosity.”
As the interpreter repeated this speech, the Christian King lifted up
his eyes, and fixed them proudly for an instant on the haughtier face of
the young Prince; his nice honour was somewhat shocked by the oblique
repetition of an exhortation to act worthily: recollecting however, that
perfect amenity of heart is not to be expected where the religion of the
Lamb is not practised, he smoothed his feelings, and replied gravely;
“Success is in the hand of Heaven, but truth and action are dependent on
our own wills: I may fail and fall, but I cannot live and be unworthy.
Prince! you must pardon my refusing to accept any other mark of your
goodness than that of being permitted to share in the warfare of your
troops; as however, the knowledge of your language is important in such
a situation, I beg you will order one of your ablest teachers to
instruct me in it.”
This request was immediately granted, after which Prince Abbas invited
the two Christians to return with him to Ispahan.
A sumptuous banquet awaited them in the palace of the Sophi, but the
aged Xatama himself, did not appear: during the repast music and
perfumes flowed around, and at its conclusion the guests were
alternately delighted by the recitation of Persian poetry, and the
graces of dancing girls.
The severe taste of Sebastian received no gratification from the studied
and voluptuous attitudes of the latter, but he listened eagerly to the
chaster compositions of their poets, whose tender lays were chiefly
devoted to eulogise the nightingales, the roses, and the moonlight by
which they were surrounded.
Having been seated next to the Sophi’s son, he perceived that the noble
Persian, though at that age when man’s senses are most awake, did not
vouchsafe a glance to the dancers, nor appear to heed the seducing music
which custom led him to command: he sat coldly abstracted, evidently
revolving matters of great importance.
Pleased with the character this dignified seriousness announced,
Sebastian won him into conversation; they conversed much together, and
although their interpreter did not preserve all the shades of their
discourse, it was yet sufficiently charming to delight each other.
Prince Abbas gallantly challenged his new friend to a trial of skill the
ensuing day, when he meant to draw forth in a sprightly joust the
military address of his associates.
On the morrow, three hours after sunrise, an equerry entered the court
of Sir Anthony Shirley’s habitation, leading a beautiful horse
caparisoned with gold and gems: it came from the Abbas, with these words
wrought in pearls on a roll of Indian silk.
“Accomplished stranger! accept this present from the son of the
Sophi:--it is not the Prince but the friend who offers it.”
So courteous an act completely effaced from Sebastian’s mind all memory
of Abbas’s first reception: he replied with grace, and adjusting his
plain armour, proceeded to the field of combat.
The lists were crouded with Persian nobles, the stand filled with female
beauty: in every manly exercise, the superior skill and natural grace of
Sebastian was pre-eminent; in the contest of the sword, in the
management of their steeds, in vaulting, hurling the quoit, darting the
spear, elancing the arrow, his happier star destined him to excel. One
by one, the effeminate Persians yielded to his ascendancy, and even
Prince Abbas himself willingly ceded to a Christian knight the
magnificent prize of the day, a suit of gold armour.
This prize was awarded by the Sophi, who from a window of his palace had
witnessed the amicable contest: he received his new officer with much
graciousness, but feeble from age and sickness, shunned further
discourse, and broke up a short levée by referring all things to Prince
Abbas.
That discerning Prince, thoroughly satisfied with the display of
Sebastian’s personal accomplishments, now appointed him to a
distinguished situation on the frontier, where a large force was
immediately going in order to check the bold movements of Ibrahim.
Should he continue advancing, this force was to take and occupy all the
forts in his rear lying along the line of Armenia; this step would
enable them to oppose a formidable barrier to his retreat, while Prince
Abbas marched to meet him between Ispahan and the Tigris.
As the Basha Ibrahim had recently received a check from a Persian
general, he had fallen back, and lay inactive for the present in a
strong position, waiting for reinforcements.
This inaction afforded Sebastian time to acquire a tolerable knowledge
of the language now so necessary to him; he devoted himself to it with
ardour and application: his natural facility thus assisted by an intense
desire, soon enabled him to vanquish its difficulties, and in less than
three weeks he knew sufficient to require only occasionally the aid of
Shirley’s interpreter.
During this period, military details, the study of Persian tactics,
(which it was requisite for him to understand, in order to guard against
their errors) the study of the Persian soldiery, occupied all his days:
his evenings were devoted to the gallant court of Prince Abbas, where
the young nobles were accustomed to entertain their ladies by martial
shews and feats of dexterity. In these oriental tournaments Sebastian
wore the costly gift of the Sophi, but no sooner did the war-cry call
him into serious action, than he threw aside his glittering attire, and
resumed that of knight of the cross.
With what impatience had he waited for this moment! the destiny of
Aziek, so long unknown, would now be unfolded to him; but a little
while, and he hoped to march at the head of victorious troops to set her
free: yet sometimes his blood chilled, when apprehension suddenly seized
him, and he dwelt for an instant upon the possibility of Aziek’s having
been forced to yield to the despotic will of Ibrahim.
So much doubt, so much fear, was mixed up with his present success, that
he tasted only a troubled joy when he saw himself thus miraculously
placed in a post of honour and trust, by a Prince whom policy would
have justified in very different conduct.
The implicit confidence of Sir Anthony Shirley excited in him emotions
of another kind; and hoping one day to give him gratifying proofs of
gratitude from the throne of Portugal, he consoled himself for present
inability by this remote prospect.
Prince Abbas, without betraying the slightest suspicion, acted like a
man of sound judgment: he surrounded the stranger by such officers as he
himself relied on the most; he took every precaution against treachery,
while at the same time he left open to him the path of honourable
action.
This conduct did not escape the sensitive feelings of Sebastian: at
first he was stung with indignation; (for it was not always that
Sebastian could recollect man is not omniscient, and that unless he can
read the hearts of others, he is justified in ceding to the force of
suspicious appearance; and mystery is invariably suspicious) he gave
way for a while to a perfect transport of anger: but by degrees the
propriety of Abbas’s precautions became visible to him, and remembering
that the Prince, being entrusted by his father with the protection of
their empire, owed the duty of prudence not only to the Sophi but to the
people, his unjust resentment changed into respect.
It was only to Sir Anthony Shirley that Sebastian had disclosed the
prime motive of his appearance at Ispahan; the name of her he loved was
too sacred for lighter ears: and besides, the impression made even by a
description of beauty on these sons of sensual pleasure, was sufficient
to deter him from mentioning her charms to others; Abbas’s apparent
insensibility to beauty, and the prejudices of his religion, were
motives too strong for Sebastian uselessly to break through.
In the luxury of solitude alone, or when caressing Barémel, he permitted
his whole soul to diffuse itself over her dear idea: then, past hours
of virtuous endearment, of tenderness and heart-felt happiness unallayed
by one jealous pang, rose to remembrance; then arms, and fame, and proud
distinction lost their pre-eminence; then, the re-attainment of his
throne and his country ceased to excite turbulent emotion: nothing was
prized for its own sake, all things moved him only as they had reference
to her without whom no situation could bestow felicity.
When he recollected their last interview, and the sudden conjecture to
which it had given birth, a mixture of joy and alarm quickened the
pulses of his heart: Kara Aziek had surely indicated a change in her
religious sentiments; her female companion was then affecting that
conversion which her lover had vainly attempted. But what was the creed
of this Christian? if she were of the Reformed Church (the new religion
of England,) she was instilling “a damnable heresy,” instead of planting
the true faith.
In the ear of Sebastian the names of Luther and Calvin, sounded like
the voice of Satan: with the tremulous pertinacity of a son of Rome, he
had constantly refused even to hear their doctrines discussed, and now
that he apprehended Kara Aziek might be bewitched by their sophistry, he
gave himself up to temporary despair.
This transport of zeal aggravated his impatience for the hour which
should restore her to him, and made him quicken the preparations of that
part of the Persian army which he was destined to command in conjunction
with a native officer.
On the night preceding the march of these new levies, Sebastian was
surprised by an extraordinary visit. His courteous host had given up to
him a Kiosk in the gardens, which he occupied solely, and slept in,
without guard or attendants.
The tranquil beauty of a fine night detained him long from rest; he
leaned over an open trellis (through which the most luxuriant
honeysuckles and jessamine had interlaced themselves,) alternately
admiring the universal blush caused by the thickets of roses, and the
splendor of the Kiosk, whose alabaster sides reflected the brighter
moonlight.
Nightingales answering each other from different distances, some near,
some remote, blending their liquid notes together in sweet confusion,
now pausing, now proceeding, diffused enchantment over the scene. Those
melodious sobbings which seem the overflowings of love too exquisite,
too happy,--those melodious sobbings were echoed by the sighs of
Sebastian: his country, his friend Caspar, his beloved Aziek, seemed
speaking in every note; he felt them present to his heart, though absent
from his sight, and the most passionate melancholy, an emotion at once
painful and delicious, penetrated his whole being.
In this state of abstraction, the steps of two persons advancing to the
Kiosk were long unheard; at length the rustling of some shrubs through
which they pressed, made the King look towards the spot, and he beheld
with some surprize a female figure, and one in male attire, whose dress
bespoke him a servant. The lady motioned for the slave to remain
without, and entered the saloon.
Of what “fantastic stuff,” are the thoughts of a lover formed! Sebastian
lived only for Aziek, and without conceiving how she could have come
thither, he believed that it was her whom he now saw: he rose, rushed
towards her, and extending his arms to snatch her to him, found himself
modestly repulsed.
“I am mistaken in you, Christian!” said an unknown voice, “or you
mistake me for another: doubtless there are many in the court of Persia
who forget your religion and your country in your accomplishments; but
learn that I am not one of those.”
Sebastian drew respectfully back: reassured by this submission, the lady
sat down on one of the divans, and still concealing herself in her
veil, addressed him again.
“I come not here, Sir Knight! with either the hope or the wish of
charming you; my errand is of another kind. I come to ask a
boon.--Attracted by your seeming nobleness and gentleness, (for I have
seen you at the court festivities) convinced of your worthiness from
your friendship with Prince Abbas,” (here the lady faltered and sighed,
then added faintly,) “I venture to believe you will not deny me what I
would solicit.”
“Say not solicit, Madam!” replied Sebastian courteously, “a virtuous
woman commands everywhere. Speak your will and see me eager to obey it.”
The Persian lady moved her veil a little that she might read his looks;
in doing so she discovered a milk-white forehead, finely pencilled with
jet-black eyebrows; the eyes beneath them were brilliant, noble, and
pleasing, but they wanted the melting softness of Kara Aziek’s: she
fixed them an instant on Sebastian with a complacent smile, tears
gathered in them, and then she closed her veil abruptly.
“I must first inform you,” she said in a low trembling voice, “that in
me you see Maimuna, the daughter of one of the Sophi’s bravest generals:
six moons since my father fell on the field of battle. I alone remain to
keep his name in remembrance,--what do I say? his renown is his
monument.--Amongst my household there is an orphan youth, (the child of
a favorite relation) whose heart is smit with a passion for arms; he
wishes to serve against the Turks:--his years are so tender, my regard
for him is so great,--yet his desire is so ardent, that,”----again
Maimuna faltered, hesitated, and stopped.--
Sebastian eyed her doubtfully: it was evident that some strong emotion
agitated her; yet even now nothing that she had said appeared to justify
it. He approached respectfully, and regarding her with one of those
kindly smiles, which ever opened to him the hearts of others, he said.
“Dismiss apprehension, fair lady! behold in me one whose breast Love has
already sanctified and set apart: I am therefore incapable of yielding
to any impulse which might alarm your delicacy, or teach you to conclude
yourself vainly interpreted.--My faith is another’s, but my friendship
and my services are at the command of every virtuous or suffering woman.
This youth you speak of, is it to my care you would entrust him? or
would you that I try to obtain for him some honorable station near the
person of Prince Abbas?”
“O no!” exclaimed Maimuna hastily, “it is to you I would confide him for
safety and instruction. To cure his fatal passion for war, I consent to
let him witness one campaign; only to witness it: for this I have sought
you Christian. I entreat you to become his guardian; trusting to your
power of keeping him as far from personal danger as is possible in a
scene of warfare.”
Maimuna’s voice was so broken and varied while she uttered these
sentences, that Sebastian could not forbear suspecting her of too warm
an interest in the youth she recommended; but delicacy imposed silence,
and he replied solely by promising the protection she required.
His strange visitor then rose to depart: under the portico of the Kiosk
she paused again. “I need not ask you to be secret,” she said, “your own
thoughts, (perhaps somewhat injurious to me, and I call Heaven to
witness, unjustly!) will teach you what hard constructions may be put
upon my conduct.”
“I hazard no conjecture that is not honorable to your tenderness and
generosity;” returned Sebastian, gallantly kissing the hem of her veil,
“if this youth deserve so much rare solicitude, (and can I doubt that
he does?) what heart may censure you?”
Maimuna looked back at him with the air of one struck by an unexpected
remark; she repeated his last words in a livelier tone, then breaking
off with a sigh, asked at what hour, Zaphna, her protegée, should join
him on the morrow. Sebastian named the hour after sun-rise, and the lady
departed.
The reflections occasioned by this singular adventure, were interrupted
by the appearance of Prince Abbas: he came to inform the Portuguese
knight of some unexpected movement of the enemy, which rendered a change
in the Persian dispositions absolutely indispensible: after settling the
new plan, and having dispatched his page with orders to the different
officers, Prince Abbas said carelessly.
“I disturbed you in an evil hour: if I may judge from the charming
figure of the lady who had just quitted you, your mind was not in the
mood for severe considerations.”
Abbas paused, but Sebastian remained silent; the former fixed his eyes
somewhat austerely upon him, and added coldly, “suffer me to tell you
Christian! that in Persia we are careful not to give any scandal to
morals: if we cede sometimes to the force of beauty and of temperament,
we believe ourselves bound not to make a boast of our frailty, and we
avoid, if possible, dishonouring a noble house. I would have you take
care how you trifle with the protection afforded by the roof of an
ambassador.”
Sebastian regarded him with quick-raised indignation. “How Prince!” he
exclaimed, “do you believe me capable of abusing this
protection?--beware how you lightly wound the honour of a man, to whom
fortune has left no other possession.”
As Sebastian spoke he smote the hilt of his sword, while starting from
his seat Prince Abbas drew back with an air of self-recollection.
“Let us not break our bond of friendship for a woman!” he said, “for one
who may not deserve such a triumph: rather let us deal frankly with each
other. I will confess that the tone in which I first spoke of your
gallantry, had the harshness of a censor, not the kindness of a friend:
austerity is the fault of my nature; as such forgive me. Now tell me in
return, whether the lady I met in the gardens, and who fled away at
seeing me, has not passed the night here.--I would warn you for your own
safety not to encourage an amour which may end disastrously: the lady’s
mien bespoke her of high birth, and in Persia the irregularities of
women of quality are punished with death. Make me your confidant; if
your love is honorable, my sympathy at least,--dare you trust me with
her name?”--
Sebastian interrupted him, “You are not serious Prince in expecting me
to make a confidence of this kind!--do you think it possible for a man
of honour to betray the weakness even of a woman he contemned?--however,
be satisfied; I have no confidence of the sort to repose in you: it is
true the lady was here; I may not deny it; but on the faith of a
Portuguese, a soldier, and”----Sebastian hastily stopt, and confused by
the word which in his fervour he was about to use, he turned away,
glowing and disordered.
Prince Abbas, who saw in this embarrassment only the sign of
insincerity, exclaimed with an air of angry chagrin, “what a
contemptible passion is this love! or rather, what a degrading passion
when illicit, since it palsies the tongue of truth, and makes ingenuous
souls tread the path of falsehood! Say no more Sir Knight! I esteem you
still too much not to regret that in future I must not esteem you so
highly.”
By a violent effort which respect for Abbas’s principles alone produced,
the impetuous Sebastian reined in his vehement feelings, and said, in
the breathless tone of restrained wrath, “on the faith of a Portuguese,
a soldier, and a Christian, that lady visited me to night, for the
first, and I firmly believe, for the last time: she was with me only a
short period; her veil was but partly put aside for a single moment
during her discourse; and love had no share in it.”
“Love had no share in it!” repeated Prince Abbas, stopping hastily, as
he walked to and fro, “in the name of Heaven, then, what errand could
bring a Persian woman at the dead of night to the solitary lodging of a
stranger?”
“That is precisely the question I may not answer;” replied Sebastian,
“my honour is pledged to secrecy; and having assured you that your
suspicions are unjust, I exact this proof of your reliance: Prince, you
must not speak of my adventure.--The reputation of the lady is a sacred
deposit in my hands, and that wantonly attacked, will draw down my
vengeance.--Since appearances demanded them, I owed explanation and
asseverations to your friendship, and I have done violence to my nature
in order to give them; but in the former case my vengeance will be as
prompt as it will be justifiable.”
The stern air of the young monarch heightened the effect of his
commanding voice: Abbas looked at him with some admiration. “Be it so!”
he cried, offering his hand, “I pledge myself for discretion; nay more,
I must believe your strange assertion: but allow me, my friend, to
suspect the lady of less singular ideas; she will seek you again, depend
on it.--Whatever motive she may have feigned for so hazardous a step, be
certain that love alone could tempt a Persian woman to trust herself and
her character with a young warrior in this Kiosk at this hour.--I have
but one caution to give you: beware how you sully the purity of royal
blood! I have a virgin sister who has seen you at our tournaments;
should she, forsaken by modesty, forget what is due to her birth--should
she be this vieled unknown--I need not talk to you of the implacable
hatred of a dishonoured brother, and a betrayed friend.”
“As the lady told me her name and rank, I may at least assure you,”
returned Sebastian, “that she is not your sister.”
Prince Abbas turned hastily round, and eyed Sebastian again with an
earnest and anxious look: some new idea evidently shot through his mind,
for he changed colour repeatedly, and several times beginning to speak,
hesitated, and broke off. “It is no matter!” he said at last, “others
may resemble her also--Sir Knight I thank you for your moderation:
forget not what I have told you, that in Persia the dishonour of one
noble house, is the dishonour of all.--Farewel! when we meet again, two
hours hence, at the head of our troops, we meet only to think, and to
talk of war.”
The friendly smile which for an instant dispersed the unusual gloom of
Abbas’s countenance, could not deceive Sebastian: when he had left him,
he reflected on the events of the night with some uneasiness; it was
possible that Maimuna might have misled him by a false account of
herself and of her motive, and that in reality she might be the sister
of Abbas. It was possible, that pleased with his person, and curious to
know his character, she had either feigned this excuse to visit him, or
in fact purposed to send him her page, that such a trust might form some
bond between them.
The fear of either wounding the honour of Abbas, or of staining his own
by an appearance of baseness, made Sebastian for the first time in his
life easily accessible to the suspicion of a woman’s attachment, but how
was he to act?--it was impossible for him to recede from the promises
already given, which bound him to secrecy, and to receive the orphan
boy.
He waited the day-break with extreme solicitude.--At the appointed time
his protegée arrived; he came attended by the old slave of Maimuna, who
presenting him with a costly gift from his mistress, hastily
disappeared.
CHAP. III.
The boy, who was very young and very timid, stood looking down with an
air of gentleness which attracted kindness; his extreme youth
immediately destroyed the suspicion which Maimuna’s conversation had
first raised, since a passion for him was preposterous to suppose: at
this conviction Sebastian felt his embarrassment and apprehension
increase, but he approached the youth, and taking his hand, said to him,
“Is it still your wish, Zaphna, to leave the security of a gentle lady’s
house, for the vicissitudes of a camp?--Nature stamps us all with the
impress of her intentions; and _your_ delicate frame has not been
moulded from the clay she makes soldiers of,--let me then advise you to
read your fate better, and to desist from this wild desire.”
Zaphna withdrew his hand from that of the King, and without raising his
eyes from the ground, or moving his head, which was bashfully averted,
he replied in a low voice, “I thought, Sir Knight, that you had promised
my lady to receive me? do not injure my indulgent mistress by imagining
that even your persuasions can avail, where hers have failed. I am
resolved to accompany the army.”
The firm tone of his last words caused Sebastian to smile: “I see you
are unused to opposition;” he observed, “but my pretty friend, you must
remember that to serve a rough soldier will be a very different task
from that of living in the lap of a soft mistress, whom your boyish
petulancies may entertain. You must expect infinite hardships and
privations with me; however, count upon my affection for you, and my
zeal for your lady; and when I return you to her, tell her that for one
dear, absent woman’s sake, I am thus obedient to the wishes of another.”
The boy blushed for his lady, as if he felt what Sebastian meant to
convey; but he spoke not; his hands pressed on his heart, and his head
bent still lower, expressed obedience.
The King then described the few duties he would require of him; and
hearing the sound of the trumpets, hastened away to join Sir Anthony
Shirley, and to go with him to the field.
They rode together towards the troops; while Zaphna took charge of his
master’s war-equipage and Barémel; and seated beside them in a covered
sort of carriage, made one in a long line of baggage.
Abbas and Sebastian met now with brows cleared from every cloud; their
whole souls were given to action:--they beheld with animated looks the
numerous troops passing in review before them. As they filed off in
divisions and began their march, the oriental magnificence of their
white vestments, their pointed caps covered with gold, their decorated
arms and embroidered banners, their horses (covered with purple
housings,) tossing their manes like sea-foam lifted by winds, formed a
spectacle at once new and splendid.
An European warrior saw in this army little more than a gorgeous
preparation for some vast tournament, where the mockery of battle is
exhibited amidst pomp and gaiety: the light-robed Persians, with their
painted quivers and gilded bows, scattered and diffused in various
groups, could not excite such an emotion as the deadly sight of
phalanxed men ribbed in grim iron, armed with maces and battle-axes, and
steadily advancing as if by one movement and with one thought.
The King of Portugal at first saw the Persian troops with pleasure, as
he would have considered a lively picture, but his reflections soon
became graver, and estimating their feebleness, he followed their march
with concern: some vain regrets also intruded; past disasters rose to
remembrance; and on the boundless plain where the Persians had lately
stood, his troubled fancy saw the ghost of his own gallant army.
The sudden paleness of his cheek at this mental phantom, attracted the
attention of Sir Anthony Shirley, he rode up to him, and fixing his eyes
on his face, said, “you appear disturbed brave friend! perhaps your
noble mind conceives, that in thus beholding you entrusted with the
command my pledge has obtained, I am secretly agitated, and fear that I
may have gone too far: not so, I know that my honour, my safety, nay my
life, hang upon your fidelity to the Sophi, and it is from that reason I
confidently expect fidelity at your hands.”
“You might risk your salvation on me, after this!” exclaimed Sebastian,
ardently grasping Shirley’s hand in both his, and squeezing it within
them, “Generous Englishman! did a man meditate treachery, such heroic
reliance would damn him or make him true!--Yes!” he added, after a
pause, “I will save Persia, or lose myself! your nobleness renders the
recovery of her I love, but a secondary object.”
In the bright suffusion that spread over Sebastian’s elevated
countenance, in the enthusiasm of his voice, Shirley read the worth he
sought to ascertain: a slighter but less pleasing glow, (for it was the
blush of shame,) tinted _his_ face; his reliance had been transiently
staggered, and the speech Sebastian had understood literally, was meant
delicately to convey a renewed exhortation.
Shirley had lived, alas! too long in courts, not to be justified in this
apprehensiveness. Struck with amiable remorse, he was going to drew a
valuable gem from his finger and proffer it to the Christian Knight, as
a type of friendship, when he was checked by perceiving no ring on his
hand which he might give him in exchange: awed by that sensitive
delicacy which had appeared in all the stranger’s actions, Shirley
relinquished the intention.
Tefza’s parting gift had enabled the King to preserve himself
independent of every pecuniary obligation; and though he accepted a
lodging from the hospitality of Sir Anthony, that gentleman’s domestics
had tasted liberally of his bounty: no one indeed served him without
being recompensed beyond the value of their services.
Never could Sebastian forget that he was a King: happily fortune had not
yet reminded him that even a monarch must shape his largesses to his
means. In the quality of a commander it was necessary for him to use the
Sophi’s treasures, but it was only for the purposes of that situation,
and for public service, that he destined to employ them; his own fund
was, or he determined it should be, sufficient for his own personal
wants.
By the new plan of the night, the two generals, instead of marching
forward together, as if the whole army meant to attack the Basha, deemed
it best to wave the use of a faint intended merely to mislead; for time
pressed, and the able conduct of their enemy required a counterpoise in
promptitude.
The troops divided on the field, and their commanders exchanged adieus:
they were on the point of separating, when Prince Abbas said in a low
voice, and with a troubled air which he tried to render gay, “There are
some bright eyes in Ispahan at this moment dim with tears for you I
conjecture.”
Sebastian smiled, shook his head, then bowing to Sir Anthony Shirley,
rode up to head his division.
It was not till after the troops had attained their place of destination
by rapid marches, and that Sebastian had reconnoitred the ground and
made the requisite dispositions, that he sent for Zaphna into his tent
at night to converse with him, and give repose to his mind by
recitations of Persian poetry.
The King was lying along a mattrass when the boy entered. As only a
single light burned in the tent, he could not distinctly observe his
lineaments, but he was charmed with the beautiful simplicity of his
figure, with which a Persian dress of delicate-coloured silk
delightfully harmonized: a turban of the same taffeta heightened the
graceful air of his head and throat, which still averted, and a little
inclined, indicated a timid and gentle temper.
“Come hither, Zaphna,” he said, in a tender accent, for the boy’s age
and figure reminded him of young Diego: “come hither! you must not look
thus apprehensive. In me you see a master who will indulge you in every
thing, except what would make your lady unhappy--cheer up--tell me how
you have travelled? if you have had all your little wants attended to?
is there any wish of yours that I can gratify.”
Zaphna, thanked him, and expressing himself perfectly content, continued
still to stand at a distance.
“Why do you not come nearer?” asked Sebastian as he kindly held out his
hand, while saying this, the bashful youth was obliged to approach and
give him his: Sebastian felt that it trembled. “Ah my little friend,” he
gaily exclaimed, “this hand was never formed to draw the warrior’s bow.”
For the first time, Zaphna hastily turned round and fixed a disturbed
look upon his master; the glance of his eyes caused the King to start
up. “I have met that glance before!” he was just going to exclaim, but
checking himself, he let the hand of his page drop, and continued gazing
on him.
A face finely-composed, whiter than ivory, unmixed with any shade,
except that formed by the arch of two jet-black brows, now remained
motionless before him: Sebastian eagerly perused it, with a mixture of
admiration, regret, and alarm. After a long silence he took his
determination, and said with a serious air.
“Perhaps you are surprized, Zaphna, that I do not question you about
your mistress, and try to discover some circumstance flattering to my
vanity, but I must teach you your master. He would willingly walk for
ever in the path of sincerity himself, and therefore he makes it a rule
to believe the same of every other person: Your fair lady told me her
name and rank, she assured me that in seeking my protection for you, she
was doing it for your sake alone, I shall therefore religiously confide
on this assurance. Let me, however, take one painful precaution, which
is this, to tell you a conversation that passed between me and the
Prince of Persia, on the night of the lady Maimuna’s visit; perhaps it
may be of consequence for her to know.”
The colours of the rose now diffused themselves even to the ivory
forehead of Zaphna: the name of Abbas evidently caused this alteration.
Faltering and confused, he repeated, “The Prince of Persia!--what then,
Sir Knight, have you no reserves from your friend? my lady thought not
so, when she confided her reputation and perhaps her life in your
honour. Ah me! unhappy wretch that I am,--my mad resolution!”--tears
gushed from his eyes as he broke off, and he concealed his face in his
drapery.
Again the opinion of Sebastian varied, and requiring the boy to calm
himself, he succinctly related the interview between him and Prince
Abbas: By this detail Zaphna learned that Abbas in reality knew nothing
that could endanger the character or safety of his protectress, and this
conviction quieted him: the honourable frankness of Sebastian
heightened his esteem for the master he served, and wiping his tears,
he said firmly, “I may not answer any question implied by this recital,
but I venture to protest Sir Knight, that my lady is incapable of giving
warrant to the Prince of Persia’s suspicions. A chaste woman believes
herself safe everywhere, and she ventured therefore to visit a young
warrior alone, in the dead of night. Think better of her than Prince
Abbas does.”--Here Zaphna’s firmness forsook him, and he broke off with
a deep sigh.
There was something in the boy’s manner which perplexed Sebastian: this
alternate appearance of timidity and of courage, this extreme
sensibility to the cause of his mistress, nay more, the visible trouble
excited in him by the name of Abbas, forced him to recur again to that
suspicion which his friend had infused: he almost believed that he
beheld in Zaphna the young Princess of Persia herself.
At this idea, did “no thought infirm alter his cheek?”--did no throb of
vanity or passion transiently disorder the movement of that heart, which
ought never to have beaten but for Kara Aziek?--not one!--all the
sensibilities of his age and nature glowed solely for her; in her was
summed up to him everything that is tender, trusting, faithful, and
delightful: he needed not the aid of principle to assist him in
remaining true to one who loved him so devotedly.--The constancy and
intensity of her love, had sealed his for eternity.
“We will dismiss this subject;” said he, after a long and serious pause,
“Suffice it that you tell your lady what we have discoursed on, lest any
mischance should happen from the Prince’s rigorous attention to Persian
customs: I would have nothing to reproach myself with. The Prince and I
are now separated by our different duties; we command in different
provinces; perhaps we may never meet again; one or both of us may fall
in battle: should it be my fate, I charge you preserve his esteem to my
memory.” This sad image excited such excessive emotion in Zaphna, that
pale, trembling, and tearful, he spoke almost without consciousness,
faltering out, “The Prince does not join you then--one of you may
fall!--your injunction shall be obeyed--but O never may”----the
incoherent sentence was lost in sighs.
Grieved to have thus pained him, Sebastian indulgently bade him retire,
Zaphna prest his hands on his bosom and disappeared.
Satisfied with having acted sincerely, although still troubled with
suspicions of Zaphna’s sex, Sebastian wrested his thoughts from this
comparatively inconsiderable subject, and fixed them solely on the
important plan of the campaign.--The morning sun awoke him to activity
and to care.
As the war-council had discovered Ibrahim’s army to be advancing
towards the capital, it was Prince Abbas’s task to meet and to give them
battle, while the Christian knight was to cut off their retreat, by
possessing himself of all the forts and passes on the line of Armenia.
This distribution evidently awarded to Abbas the most brilliant, and at
the same time the least difficult duty; but Sebastian, who considered
their two commands with a soldier’s judgment, thought himself
distinguished by the grant of the most hazardous.
During the short period of his abode at Ispahan, he had devoted himself
not to the vain attempt of altering the manœuvres of the troops
committed to him, but to a deep consideration of how he could best
employ a machine so ill-constructed: he now reaped the benefit of such
reflections; and found that in the hands of an able commander, bravery
and docility are nearly all-sufficient.
Behold him now, attacking, storming, carrying sword in hand every
stronghold of the Turks; sometimes marching under the insufferable noon
day sun, or in the darkness of a stormy night, to surprize and to
overcome the enemy! see him pass with the velocity of a sweeping wind,
from one extremity of the frontier to another, restoring wandering
outcasts to their houses, rescuing children and women from dishonour and
slavery, followed everywhere by rejoicing and benedictions!
But wherever he went, his heart sought only Aziek: these quick-gathered
laurels filled his grasp with worthless leaves, while she was
unattained. His interrogatories to the Turkish prisoners were productive
of no satisfaction; they were all ignorant whether she had or had not
reached Syria.
This uncertainty, though it had not power to detach his mind during the
day from his momentous duties, dominated over him at that season when
others tasted the refreshing sweets of repose: on his pillow he thought
but of her. Zaphna alone shared his confidence, for Zaphna had now
banished some of his timidity, and by the kindest attentions won on his
master’s heart.
Sebastian had long ceased to fancy that the Princess of Persia shared
his fatigues disguised: how could the mere sight of any man have excited
such a mad passion as that which should lead a Persian Princess into the
situation of Zaphna? and would not her disappearance have spread dismay
through the kingdom long ere this? doubtless Maimuna was really what she
appeared, she had spoken truth, and the boy’s resemblance to her was the
natural consequence of relationship.
While Sebastian discoursed of his love, and lightly touched on the
sufferings which had given birth to, and nursed it, his youthful
confident shed tears, and seemed to feel but too faithful a sympathy
with his feelings: was it possible for one so young to have felt the
master passion? it might be so: perhaps his longing after war, was only
the desire of banishing from his mind some cherished image: this fancy
increased Sebastian’s partiality, and half their nights were spent
together in melancholy discourse.
At this period the news of Prince Abbas’s defeat fell like a thunderbolt
on the victorious camp of Sebastian: a courier brought the intelligence
in the middle of the night; he was charged with this billet from the
Prince himself.
“I have lost a battle--the enemy will be at the gates of Ispahan perhaps
ere you receive this.--Come brave stranger and retrieve my errors.”
Tears of admiration and regret started in the eyes of Sebastian while he
ran over this noble submission of a great soul: doubly roused to save
Persia, he threw the silk on which the letter was written to Zaphna,
while he hastily mentioned its purport, and bade him prepare for
immediate departure.
The dreadful danger which menaced the capital, in which probably was
involved the safety of the person he loved, took so powerful an effect
upon the delicate boy, that unable to speak, he motioned for his master
not to follow him, and tottering to the door of their tent, hastened to
get air.
After some minutes’ absence, he returned with his eyes swollen, but his
manner less agitated: “I have dear friends in Ispahan, you know Sir, he
said timidly, I tremble for them--O let us hasten thither.”
“You cannot support the fatigue of advancing as I shall do, replied his
master, I must be at Ispahan ere sun set to-morrow, compose
yourself--you shall follow me as safely and as swiftly as possible. My
poor boy! I would not have you the prize of Ibrahim.”
The King stopped not for a more particular farewel, he did not even wait
for Zaphna’s answer, but hurried out to rouse his soldiers, to issue
orders, to draw supplies from the different garrisons, and to march for
Ispahan.
On the road he encountered several fugitives from the broken army of
Abbas: from them he learned that Abbas had thrown himself into the
capital with a handful of men, and that doubtless ere this he must have
surrendered to the Basha.
At a short distance from the capital Sebastian ordered his troops to
halt, in a situation which concealed them from the view of the town; he
then dispatched scouts to gain information: their return confirmed his
fears; Ispahan was taken; the city was filled with Turks and Syrians,
and a division of their army lay encamped on the plain to the eastward.
A moment decided him, he divided his force into two unequal parts; with
the smaller he hoped to deceive the enemy into giving him battle, while
with the other, and at the same time, he attacked the town itself.
Every thing would depend on the courage and steadiness of his
comparatively small band.
Having detailed his plan to the officers, and when stamped by their
concurrence, explained it to his men, he made them a short exhortation:
with the strong motive of fighting for their houses, their liberties,
rights, and dearest connexions; he mingled so warm an eulogium upon the
Prince, and painted the anguish of his brave heart in such lively
colours, that all the soldiers, as if animated by one soul, exclaimed,
“they would efface his misfortune or die!”
“On then, my gallant friends!” exclaimed the transported Sebastian,
waving his bright sword and pointing to Ispahan. “On then, for God and
your Prince!”
May we doubt that such honourable enthusiasm prevailed? no; credulous of
the stratagem employed, Ibrahim sent orders to his encamped army to give
the Persians battle. It was late in the evening when the two parties
encountered; the Persian general had instructions to fight
Parthian-like, retreating at every stroke, thus drawing his adversary by
quick degrees from Ispahan. Meanwhile Sebastian waited impatiently under
cover of the mountain behind the city, for the hour of darkness: every
one in the town went to repose, except only a few Turkish sentinels;
everything was still; the clashing of the contending troops came no
longer from the distant echoes. A shadowy moon favoured stratagem: by
its uncertain light some thickets of myrtles (then covered with white
blossoms) among which his men were planted, appeared like so many more
divisions of phalanxed soldiers.
Again he divided his force, and attacked at the same instant two
quarters of the city: the walls were scaled, the gates forced, the
streets crowded with exulting Persians; the noise of tumult, of hope, of
fury, of victory! resounded through all the squares: Sebastian was
everywhere; like some warring angel sent to succour a cause favoured by
Heaven, he was seen in every quarter of Ispahan.
The Turks, half asleep, and scarcely-roused from the stupefaction of
opium, ran about in aimless confusion: from one of these, whom he had
taken prisoner, Sebastian learned the destiny of the Prince; at that
moment the Basha’s person might have been secured, but it was possible
that while securing him Abbas might be sacrificed. Sebastian hesitated
scarce a moment, selfish wishes were subdued, he flew to his friend, and
had the delight of restoring him to liberty: they hastily embraced.
“Go Prince,” exclaimed Sebastian, interrupting his thanks, “shew
yourself to the people--the sight of you will repay them for all their
fatigues,” so saying, they separated.
Abbas flew to head a party of Persians that were yet disputing the gate
of the palace, Sebastian hastened out of the city to recall the
pursuing part of the army, lest success might carry them too far.
Ibrahim with a remnant of followers had succeeded in gaining that
division of his force which followed the retreating part of Sebastian’s;
his troops now outnumbered those they pursued, but ignorant of the
strength in Ispahan, he made no other use of this advantage than that of
effecting his retreat to a pass where he encamped himself strongly.
To attempt forcing his camp would have been to risk the superiority
already gained; the Persians were exhausted by a rapid march and
incessant fighting; Sebastian therefore called them back, and re-entered
the town, where they were rejoined before day-break by the other
division, which having left Ibrahim entrenching himself amongst the
mountains, had wheeled round through a defile, and trod back their
steps.
The knight of the cross had now fulfilled his vow to Sir Anthony
Shirley, he had saved Persia: nay more, while there remained a chance of
victory inclining to the adversary, he had done violence to his heart’s
wish of seeking for Kara Aziek.
The contest over, he ran to the palace, the late quarter of the Basha:
almost assured of finding her he sought, he hastily interrogated the
guards to learn if the Turkish women had been respected; he was answered
that there were no foreign women in the city; none had accompanied the
Basha’s army.
Struck and afflicted, Sebastian was some moments ere he could reply, or
interrogate anew, different soldiers and Syrian prisoners: one of the
latter assured him that there were women in the Basha’s camp near
Bagdad, and that he knew a Moorish lady had arrived there. At this
intelligence the hopes of Sebastian revived; “I will speak with that man
again;” he said to the Persian who had interpreted between them, “see
that you bring him to me when I require him,” the appearance of Prince
Abbas interrupted his speech.
In expressive silence the Prince took and squeezed his hand, and held it
to his heart; his silence was even more eloquent than his countenance:
that semblance of coldness which was natural to him, or rather, was the
effect of a violent repression of violent sensibility, gave way before
the magnitude of his obligations to Sebastian.
“You have indeed retrieved my error!” he said at last, “you have saved
my father and the kingdom; you have preserved me from dying of grief and
shame! what is the recompence we are to give you?--the only valuable
recompence in our power you have already wrested from us by a noble
force--you have won our eternal gratitude and admiration.--Is there any
thing else in Persia we may offer?--command it.”--
“One thing more;” replied Sebastian, sweetly smiling, “I would have the
Persians respect Christians for my sake:--should such ever fall into
their hands or settle amongst them, I pray you bid them remember that it
was a Christian Knight who loved their Prince, and combatted in their
defence.”
“And is that all?” exclaimed Abbas, pleasure sparkling in his fine
countenance--“have those bright eyes I warned you against, taught your
heart no tenderer desire?--were you to claim the rarest beauty in
Ispahan, nay even my sister Zelide, it is not the friend whose life,
liberty, and honour you have saved, that dare deny the boon.”
“Be under no apprehension Prince,” replied Sebastian, “the image of one,
amiable as lovely, has long sealed both my heart and eyes against other
impressions: no Persian lady can efface it.”
The smile with which Sebastian concluded, was reflected by one from the
young Persian, he then led the way to the state apartments, where the
Sophi and Sir Anthony Shirley waited to greet their deliverer.
A glow of modest pleasure sat on the face of Sebastian as he bent to the
repeated thanks and eulogiums of Shirley: enfeebled by age and emotion,
the Sophi wept like a child, while he embraced his son; after which he
unclasped from his throat a massy collar of diamonds, and essayed to
fasten it round that of Sebastian: but his shaking hands refused to obey
his will, and Abbas hastened to supply his place.
There was something so sacred in the feelings of an old man and a
father, that the King of Portugal would not pain them by refusing this
magnificent offering; he suffered Abbas to clasp the collar, then full
of her who alone agitated his secret thoughts, proposed to the Sophi,
that after the repose of a night, the troops should make a vigorous
assault upon the camp of the Basha, and terminate the war at once, by
crushing the whole Turkish force in Persia.
Timid from misfortune, the Sophi adopted this counsel only in part: he
insisted on the necessity of his soldiers having a longer period to
recruit their strength, lest the Basha, re-inforced by a body of
reserve, which it was believed he had stationed behind him in the
country of Armenia, should prove eventually too strong for their
diminished numbers.
To the plausibility of this argument Sebastian opposed every reason
which could be judiciously urged in support of the adverse opinion; the
Sophi was absolute; and Prince Abbas, brave as a lion, but without a
genius for war, inclined to his father’s judgment, Sebastian bowed
gravely, and resigned himself to the decision.
Abbas now eyed his friend with the unsteady and disturbed look of a man
who fears the effect of what he is going to say; his cheeks by turns
crimsoned and grew pale: at length coming close to Sebastian, he said
in a low embarrassed voice, “imagine yourself in my place, what would be
your desire at this moment?”
Sebastian turned round and looked at him earnestly; “I comprehend you
Prince!” he said, turning pale also, “you would have me resign my
command;--you would strike this last and most important blow
yourself.--I cannot blame such laudable ambition--I honour it--but I
fear--that is--the soldiers used to my method of”--he stopt in extreme
confusion, and pained to bitterness; no selfish avarice of distinction
or power, mixed with the dread of a second misfortune to Abbas; he saw
the limits of his friend’s military capacity, and he trembled at once
for Kara Aziek and for Persia.
His resolution however was taken; he determined to speak frankly to
Abbas on his evident inexperience, and then represent to him the fatal
consequences which must ensue, should the Persians be routed. “Retire
with me into this anti-chamber,” he said softly; the Prince followed him
in silent dissatisfaction.
There, an explanation ensued, and though Sebastian failed of dissuading
Abbas from his rash resolution, he had the consolation of observing that
this obstinacy grew out of nobleness; no envy discovered itself; nothing
but the laudable, though ill-judged longing for an opportunity of
regaining what he thought he had forfeited, a title to the throne and
people which he had shewn himself unable to protect.
Fearful of appearing to prize command for its own sake, Sebastian had
nothing left but to request permission to serve as a volunteer under his
friend, this request was granted; the compact was ratified by the Sophi,
and again vainly combated by Sir Anthony Shirley, after which the
warrior friends issued from the palace, that they might inspect the
arsenals, concert measures together, and provide as far as possible
against future disaster.
These employments detained Sebastian till after day break, when he
sought his Kiosk in the garden of the ambassador: he now met his page
for the first time since their late parting; the boy had but just
arrived, and learnt the news of the royal family’s safety, and the
consequent security of Ispahan.
On seeing their deliverer, he fell at his feet, and bathing his hand
with tears, as he timidly kissed it, repeated in a broken voice, “This,
this for my country.”--Touched by his sensibility, Sebastian raised him,
and anticipating his questions, briefly detailed the incidents of the
night. “You have doubtless enquired after the lady Maimuna?” he asked:
Zaphna answered, that she had escaped outrage.
“Will you return to her?” said the King, “or, must I allow you to see
the end of this campaign? is it your wish to join me in my expedition
with the Prince?”
A thousand changing colours painted the face of Zaphna at the last
expression--he looked down, but answered firmly “It is.”--
Again Sebastian endeavoured to dissuade him, and again the youth
resisted. Wearied in body and spirit, the King required repose, and
charging his page to bring him in the morning the Turkish prisoner, whom
he sought to interrogate, he dismissed him, and laid down to sleep.
At the hour of rising, Zaphna re-appeared with the Turk; Sebastian then
learnt that the Moorish lady had been seen only once by the Basha, that
he had expressed himself anxious to preserve her from the enemy, and had
inclosed her, with her women, in a strong fortress among the mountains
of Taurus: if she remained there still, this fellow, having once kept
guard at her door, undertook to lead Sebastian thither, and to obtain
his entrance.
At this proposal, the imprudent lover lost every idea of personal
danger: too certain that the evil genius of Abbas would give victory to
his enemy, and that consequently the loss of Kara Aziek would follow the
loss of Persia, he believed there was no longer time to hesitate; he
must endeavour to save her, since no longer permitted to save the
country. Again, therefore, he must use the aid of artifice: O hateful
necessity! to which so many upright souls are forcibly made to bend!--
After a few moments of deep thought, he accepted the offer of Jusuf (the
Turkish soldier,) it was settled that they should go privately out of
the city together at night, where two trusty Italian servants whom Sir
Anthony Shirley had transferred to his service, were to be in waiting,
with horses and arms: these men were to accompany them to the fortress,
and concealing themselves amongst the hills, wait at a certain point of
rendezvous for the return of Sebastian with his prize.
To gain admittance into the tower, it would be only needful to state
that Sebastian was a messenger from the foreign knight, who disgusted
with some affront given him by Prince Abbas, was willing to revenge
himself, by betraying the Sophi and the city he was left to guard: that
to avoid the suspicion which would ensue, did he go to the Basha’s camp,
towards which Abbas was marching, he had chosen this plan of sending an
emissary to the Basha’s wife, requiring her promise in Ibrahim’s name of
acquiescence with the demands of the foreigner.
In state matters alone, the Turks sometimes relaxed their strict rules
with respect to women; it was more than probable therefore, that in this
instance, tempted by the signal advantage held out, of ending the war by
a decisive blow, they would fall into the snare: once admitted, Jusuf
undertook from his knowledge of the place, and by a path down the height
on which the fortress was situated, to secure the flight of the lovers.
A door opened from the women’s apartments upon this very path, which
being a fissure overhung by extremely thick shrubs, and terminating in a
wood, might be depended on for concealing their course; could they once
gain the horses, their retreat would be certain.
Sebastian did not hesitate to embrace this plausible plan: the
countenance of Jusuf bore the stamp of integrity; and compassion for the
Moorish lady, (whose unceasing sighs he had often heard during the whole
night of his watch at her door,) appeared to have infused into him an
unfeigned zeal for her service. Trusting to his sincerity, Sebastian
gave him some gold, and promising him a richer reward hereafter, left
him in the Kiosk.
The enthusiasm inspired by Sebastian’s late intrepid and able conduct,
and still more by the sweet graciousness of his manner, did not allow
the two Italians to debate a moment about risking themselves for his
sake, and for that of the ladies he wished to succour: they promised to
meet him in a grove of plane trees, behind the city, at the hour of
twilight.
It was not Sebastian’s intention to encumber himself with his page, and
to avoid the boy’s importunity he resolved not to speak to him of the
enterprize until they were beyond the city walls; there he should
disclose his intention, and leave him in charge to reveal the motive of
his apparent flight to Sir Anthony Shirley, should fate destine him to
perish or be detained in the fortress.
Desperate indeed was the throw he was about to hazard: every thing
rested on the faith of one man who might betray and ruin him; but if,
withheld by caution, he should let this perilous opportunity escape,
Kara Aziek might be lost to him for ever; once possessed by the Basha,
death only would offer her refuge.--This thought determined him.
Having arranged his own dearest concern, he hastened to visit such parts
of the city as required particular attention to their defence: he
examined, instructed, superintended, directed a thousand details in the
fortification; he repeated the most important orders again and again,
that Ispahan might not feel his absence should he not return ere the
departure of Prince Abbas: he then returned to his Kiosk, warned by the
sun, whose softening light was already sinking behind clouds.
CHAP. IV.
Sebastian had scarce entered, when Prince Abbas appeared; he came to
inform him that, having received intelligence by a deserter from the
enemy, of a new movement of the Basha, which it was important for him to
frustrate, he should revert to his friend’s advice, and march at
nightfall.
At this intelligence, Sebastian’s complexion suddenly altered: “why does
your colour change?” asked Abbas, with surprize.
“The information troubles me,” replied his friend, “for I do not feel
qualified to march so soon--I am not myself yet--indisposed--disturbed I
know not how in my mind.”
“You do not forgive me, I fear,” returned Abbas, “for selfishly checking
you in the career of glory;--knight, you wrong me, if you do not honour
my motive; if you do not believe that I lament the necessity which
forces me to attempt that, which your abler arm need only extend itself
to seize.--Let me but redeem my fame, or lose a worthless, slighted
life, a life that has now no charms,--since”--the Prince broke off
abruptly, smothered a succession of sorrowful sighs, and turning aside
his face, moved some steps away.
Sebastian guessed ill at his emotion, when concluding it to arise solely
from a warrior’s disappointment, he warmly replied, “What fantastic
stain does my Prince attach to himself? valour, judgment, numbers, what
are they in war, but uncertain and deceiving things? victory after all
is in the hand of Heaven; and when a commander has faithfully employed
every faculty of his soul for the success of his army, he may stand
acquitted not only to his conscience, but to his countrymen.--Go,
however, brave Abbas, I envy not the laurels you are about to gather:
your feelings _are_ respected by one who has felt the pang of deserved
self-reproach. It was my sad destiny to lose a memorable battle, to
cause the deaths of thousands by a mixture of credulity and obstinacy.
Yes!” Sebastian added, fixing his eyes upon the symbol of the cross he
wore on his shield, “for the blood that flowed in torrents on that fatal
day, I have no hope of pardon but from the sacred blood that was shed
here.”
A ray of consolation shone on the face of Abbas at this avowal of the
invincible stranger; “You must detail this disastrous story when we meet
again,” he said, “now I must hasten away--believing that you were to
accompany me, I have confided the care of Ispahan to Peri Nadir.--I see
by your looks that a night’s repose is absolutely needful to you--join
me when you are refreshed.”
Sebastian smiled assent: he looked at his friend, irresolute whether he
should not confide to him the project for the night; but an instant’s
reflection decided him to remain silent. Abbas might not see the
necessity for such haste, and if so, Sebastian could not urge his
weightiest reason, which was founded on an apprehension of the Prince’s
failure; believing it imprudent to risk opposition, he exchanged a
cordial embrace with him, and they parted.
As Abbas passed the portico of the Kiosk, he encountered Sebastian’s
page: the boy slowly ascending the entrance steps, with his head bent
down, saw not the Prince, who struck by his air and figure suddenly
stopped: finding his way obstructed, Zaphna raised his eyes;--those
eyes--that ivory throat--that complexion untinted by the faintest red,
threw Abbas’s senses into tumults,--did he, or did he not see before
him the woman for whom his soul languished?
The eagerness and astonishment of his countenance as he hastily bent
forward and attempted to catch the arm of Zaphna, alarmed the object of
his scrutiny; Zaphna’s heart died within him, he was on the point of
sinking to the earth with grief and shame, when desperately rousing
himself, he sprung past the Prince and gained the hall of the Kiosk.
Abbas’s first impulse was to follow; but recalling his scattered senses,
and resolving not to accuse Sebastian till convinced beyond all
sophistry to disprove, he tore himself from the scene, and ran with a
madman’s haste to the abode of Maimuna.
He questioned her slaves and her women--he insisted upon being admitted
to her presence--of conversing with her, at least a moment, from her
window; he was told that Maimuna was sick and she could see no one. At
this information Abbas’s jealous suspicion increased to madness; he
commanded her favorite maid to be left alone with him, and giving the
reins to his natural violence of character, enjoined her to say on her
life whether her mistress were not with the foreign knight, disguised as
a boy.
His high authority, his imperious tone, and above all, the fear of his
vengeance, terrified the poor servant, she fell at his feet, confessing
the truth of his supposition; but of her mistress’s motives for such
imprudent conduct she was totally ignorant.
At this confirmation of his worst apprehension, fully as he had expected
to receive it, Abbas lost all consciousness, and for a moment his limbs
failed under him: it was but a moment of weakness; the anguish of a
virtuous passion blighted in its fondest hope, yielded to the phrenzy of
resentment: again the burning blood rushed to his cheek, again lightning
darted from his eyes, and thunder spoke in his voice.
“Stir not hence on your peril!” he exclaimed, “I go to unmask that
hypocrite who has betrayed Maimuna; guilty as she is, I will save her if
possible.”
He broke away as he concluded, and taking the road to the Kiosk, was
arrested by a woman meanly attired, who bending the knee to him,
intreated him to listen to her for an instant--“I cannot stay,
woman!--another time--carry your petition to the Sophi,--another time!”
The petitioner laid hold of his robe--“For the love of Ispahan, hear me
great Prince!--I have something strange to tell--treason and that
foreign knight.”
At these words Abbas was spell-bound--“What of that pernicious wretch!”
he exclaimed incautiously. The tone in which he spoke encouraged the
woman, and beckoning to a grove of trees that surrounded a fountain, he
followed her there impatiently.
The short detail he then listened to set the seal to Sebastian’s fate.
This woman, the wife of one of Sir Anthony Shirley’s Italians, had been
weakly entrusted by her husband with their projected enterprize:
terrified for her husband’s safety, which so hazardous a plan
endangered, she took the resolution of disclosing all to Prince Abbas.
Half-detailed by the Italian, therefore imperfectly re-delivered by her,
the story presented only a confused account of Sebastian’s intention to
fly that night to a fortress of the Basha’s, and that love for some lady
had occasioned him to take the step: occupied solely with the image of
Mainuma, Abbas filled up the dark sketch as his distracted imagination
prompted; he interrogated the woman afresh, and she with a weakness
common to informers who are not complete in their information, answered
as she saw most consonant with the train of his suspicions.
The Prince believed himself now in possession of a clue to his friend’s
sudden wish of absenting himself from the army; love and mortified
ambition had then sapped his virtues or displayed their hollowness; he
considered him with horror and with hatred: disgrace, public shame, and
an ignominious death, were the images which quickly rose to appease his
furious passions.
Abbas had no doubt, but that acquainted with all his military plans,
Sebastian meant to deliver him into the hands of the Basha; his whole
conduct therefore must have been a tissue of falsehood from the
commencement, and doubtless the throne or government of Persia, was to
be the price of his successful treachery.--In order to make vengeance
secure, he believed it right to let the traitor enter upon his base
project.
Having stood ruminating awhile, he gave the woman his purse, and bidding
her follow him, hastened to the palace.
The surprize of the Sophi exceeded that of his son; his indignation
could not pass beyond that of Abbas: an order was immediately issued for
several persons to watch the movements of Sebastian, and when he was
fairly entered on his plan, and out of the city with his companions, to
seize them all and cast them into a dungeon until the return of Prince
Abbas.
Forced by duty, Abbas was now obliged to join his troops and commence
his march: but his heart in tumults, his brain almost maddened by rage,
disappointed love, betrayed friendship, made him ill able to conduct the
army of Persia.
Meanwhile Sebastian’s soul respiring only the tenderest and most
generous emotions, was anxiously waiting the signal for joining his
associates: if his thoughts wandered from Aziek, they left her sweet
image only to seek the throne of Almighty Power and Almighty Goodness;
they did not leave her, since it was for her he prayed.
Night now had cast her sudden shadow over the city of Ispahan: armed
with authority, and permitted to go whither he would, and at whatever
hour, the Christian knight called his page, and accompanied by the
Turkish soldier, (with whom he appeared conversing about the resources
of Ibrahim) he traversed the streets, and passing one of the remotest
gates, quickly joined his Italians, who with four stout horses waited at
a short distance among some trees.
It was then that Sebastian, who had hitherto preserved a thoughtful
silence, which the agitated Zaphna did not appear inclined to break,
turned towards him, and giving him a written paper, which the boy took
and put into his breast, began to inform him of his destination: at this
juncture a band of armed men, headed by an officer of Prince Abbas’s,
rushed from behind a thicket, and sprung on the astonished party.
Seized before he could be aware of their approach, and ignorant of his
crime, Sebastian knew it would be fruitless to attempt resistance; his
calm undaunted air awed his captors; he listened with amazement to their
accusation of perfidy; but perceiving the force of appearances, he
simply requested to be taken either to the Sophi or to the English
Ambassador.
Neither of these requests were granted; he was hurried back to Ispahan,
brought to the state-prison, and there thrust into its vilest cell.
Zaphna, whose senses had forsaken him at these terrible words--“the
Prince of Persia denounces you as a traitor,” was also confined in a
dungeon, and left there to weep the consequence of a fatal abandonment
of woman’s law.
All these events passed with so much circumspection, secrecy, and
promptitude, that not even Sir Anthony Shirley heard the news till the
next day at noon: transfixed with horror, scarcely crediting his senses,
and incapable of lightly attributing such unexampled baseness to the
noble Portuguese, feeling too that not only his own honour was
implicated, but the interest of his sovereign endangered by her
ambassador’s indiscreet confidence, he lost no time in seeking an
audience of the Sophi.
The aged monarch’s faculties had received a stimulus from these
extraordinary circumstances, and he spoke with as much discrimination as
vehemence, while he refused to permit an interview between Shirley and
the foreigner, until the return of Prince Abbas.
Overwhelmed with regret and trouble, Sir Anthony retired, still
wandering in a maze of contradictory fears, conjectures, and hopes.
Meanwhile Sebastian remained in his dungeon the prey of agonizing
thoughts: his guards had informed him that he was accused of intending
to betray the Persians, that his guilt was proved by the evidence of the
Italians, who confessed that they were employed to attend him to the
Basha’s fortress; and that the pretence of going to release a favorite
lady, was rendered absurd by the circumstance of his being detected in
carrying off a Persian woman. That crime alone deserved death, more
especially since this woman was now known to be the object of Prince
Abbas’s concealed attachment.
At this detail Sebastian gave himself up for lost: innocent as he was,
circumstances had fatally conspired to give an air of falsehood to his
conduct, and from whatever motive Maimuna had sought his protection, it
was evident his life must pay the forfeit of her indiscretion. Not for
himself, he alternately supplicated Heaven’s assistance, or wildly
bewailed its hard decree; it was for Kara Aziek that he raved, for her
who only lived in the fond hope of obtaining liberty and happiness from
his hands.
One ray of consolatory expectation beamed on him; it proceeded from a
knowledge of Abbas’s naturally noble character: perhaps even outraged
love might not be powerful enough to harden so upright a heart against
the impression of truth. If Sebastian were frankly to relate the story
of his attachment, Abbas might eventually discover, that the friend in
whom he had confided, had neither betrayed his mistress nor his King.
This expectation was soon destroyed: the first day closed, the second
night was already far advanced, when tumultuous sounds were heard in the
streets of Ispahan; confusion, consternation, sorrow, evidently reigned
throughout the capital; murmurs and lamentations reached even to the
dungeon of Sebastian: half-starting from the ground on which he was
lying, he listened to catch some articulate sound, nothing was distinct;
all was hurry and distress.
Divining part of the truth, his agitation became intolerable: Abbas,
most likely, had been again defeated.--Mighty God! and Sebastian’s
avenging arm was chained down by iron bolts! at this thought, the groan
that burst from his great heart shook the wails of his cell: he pulled,
he tugged his heavy chain; he essayed to tear up the ponderous staple
by which it was rivetted to the stone pavement. Vain were all his
efforts; again the noise increased--it approached--it was in the prison!
At the echo of several hasty steps passing his door, he demanded loudly
what had happened? for a while no one attended to him; at length a
person answered sternly, “the Prince is taken, the Sophi is dead--the
people call aloud for your head!” the man moved away as he spoke,
leaving Sebastian transfixed with an emotion to which no name could be
given: it might be hope, it might be despair; Sebastian himself knew not
which it was.
While yet motionless, he heard his name repeated vehemently without, and
re-echoed through all the passages of the vaults; a moment after, the
door of his cell flew open.
Prepared to meet instant death, the brave and unfortunate King roused
himself to breast the torrent of popular fury; his whole soul was
collected in his eyes, as he drew back like one who stations himself,
and directed a steady look towards his murderers.
A croud rushed in; amongst these, he beheld Sir Anthony Shirley, and the
still-disguised Maimuna: sinking at his feet, while some soldiers
knocked off his fetters, she exclaimed, “you are free! hasten to rescue
the Prince!”
The dream-like amazement of Sebastian suspended utterance, he looked
round on the persons who filled the cell with an air which asked
explanation; Sir Anthony Shirley with less agitation but equal haste
briefly replied, that the paper found on Zaphna, added to her voluntary
confession, and the testimony of him who had acted as interpreter
between him and the Turkish prisoner, had cleared his reputation; that
the people no longer doubted his fidelity, but trusted to him for
succour in this their time of extremity.
Prince Abbas had been taken by a stratagem, with all his principal
officers, and overcome with such news, the aged Sophi had expired of
grief: the soldiers now called for their former general, and so far from
thirsting for his blood, they swore not to unsheath a sword unless at
his command.
On the wings of the wind, with a heart triumphing in the hope of again
rescuing his friend, Sebastian broke through the crowd, and joined the
diminished troops; a sword caught from the hand of a guard flamed in his
grasp; his eyes communicated electric fire to every desponding
individual: with one voice they hailed their war-genius, and marshalling
around him, called on him to lead them to victory.
This spontaneous acquittal touched him sensibly: these people then, were
better judges of his character than the man who believed himself his
friend; but these people compared his actions without prejudice, and
Abbas was blinded by jealousy.
Did Sebastian meditate what is called a _noble revenge_, when he
traversed with the velocity of light, the tract of country which divided
him from Abbas? no; his heart was only eager to prove its own integrity
and to save his friend.
Animated by his example, the troops respired confidence and conquest:
they ran rather than marched; and in a few hours came up with the Basha,
who, evading the remnant of Abbas’s army, had made a skilful turn, and
leaving a small force to amuse and keep them in check, was advancing
rapidly upon Ispahan.
Inequality of numbers was now an atom; where everything must be lost,
where everything is not risked, there remains no alternative. Sebastian
drew up his little army in an advantageous position, which from the
nature of the ground, rendered the enemy’s cavalry useless, and blocked
out part of his infantry; there he offered, and he gave battle.
Who may doubt the success of loyalty and enthusiasm? Sebastian poured
the tide of battle at will: his troops repulsed those of the Basha;
attacked in their turn, broke through the thick squadrons, dispersed,
drove, pursued, routed them!
The Basha himself fell by the hand of a Persian soldier: at this event
the Turks and Syrians laid down their arms and terminated the contest.
Sebastian flew to their camp; he enquired for the Prince of Persia and
was shewn a tent strictly guarded, where the soldiers delivered up their
swords and led him in. Seated on the ground in a posture of sullen
despair, he beheld Abbas; the Prince raised his eyes, the lightning that
flashed from them announced his error: “what, traitor? escaped?” he
started up as he spoke, and would have rushed upon his deliverer, but
Sebastian wrested his arm, exclaiming in a voice that made itself
obeyed, “hold Prince! there are some things which not even a friend may
pardon:--I _am_ your friend still.”
At this instant the tent was crouded with Persian officers and soldiers;
some fell at their beloved monarch’s feet, some pressed forward to kiss
his hand, while all expressed, in confused sentences, admiration of
Sebastian. Abbas eagerly inquired the meaning of these eulogiums.
His royal father’s chief equerry, who had been present during the
strange avowal of Maimuna, hastened to inform him, that one of the
officers who had assisted in seizing the Christian, recollected a paper
which, had been found on the page, and which though directed to Sir
Anthony Shirley, he carried to the Sophi: this paper contained
Sebastian’s narrative to the ambassador of his intended enterprize, and
its motives. The Sophi astonished and bewildered sent for Shirley, and
by his advice caused the man to be sought for, who had interpreted
between the knight and the Turk; this man’s evidence was in strict
conformity with the contents of the letter: nothing remained but to
elucidate the mystery of Sebastian’s female page.
Maimuna was sent for; it was then, that wild with despair at having
caused so much horror, the trembling girl sunk on her knees, and
confessed that a hopeless passion for the Prince had prompted her to
assume a disguise, and seek the protection of one with whom she thought
herself assured of seeing Abbas: she protested that her wishes had not
gone beyond that of ever being near him, and perhaps of succouring him
if wounded. His apparent unobservance of her, (for how often does love
thus painfully blind us to what we wish to see!) had persuaded her that
she might be seen by him under any form without being recognized; since
however he had discovered her, since it was Abbas who deemed her guilty
of an unpardonable crime, she was willing to expiate her fault, and end
her grief with her life.
This extraordinary recital was accompanied by an emotion too powerful
for art to assume; her tears and blushes while she spoke of Prince
Abbas, bore conviction to the Sophi, who pitying so excessive a passion,
and moved by the memory of her dead father’s services, granted her
forgiveness, and commanded all mention of her disguise to cease amongst
his attendants.
The other companions of Sebastian having been separately re-examined,
continued to bear the same testimony to the fidelity of their
master--they were therefore honourably discharged, and the Sophi was
just about to charge the impatient Shirley with an order for his gallant
friend’s release, when a messenger arrived with the news of Prince
Abbas’s capture.
At the first words spoken by this indiscreet person, the aged Sophi fell
into the arms of an attendant, deprived of sense: he breathed again, but
he spoke no more; his eyes were for awhile raised with anguish to
Heaven, then weighed down by the hand of death, closed for ever!
When the officer who narrated these events came to this part of his
recital, the young Sophi uttered a cry, and throwing himself on the
earth, covered his head with his mantle; no one ventured to disturb his
grief:--the tears of a virtuous son for a tender parent are precious in
the sight of men and angels.
After awhile he raised himself with a serious but desolated air, and
looked wishfully round for his friend; but he saw him not. Sebastian had
disappeared the moment his own justification began; he had gone in
search of Kara Aziek.
Trembling at every question he put to the Turks and Syrians, lest their
answers should inflict a deadly wound, he hurried from tent to tent: at
length one of the Basha’s officers confirmed the account given by Jusuf,
and assured Sebastian that the Moorish lady with her attendants were
still in the fortress of Ebhn Sait.--There was yet another question to
ask, and again the lover’s heart died within him; the inquiry rose to
his lips, and fell back.
After some efforts he was able to ask whether the Basha’s marriage had
yet been solemnized?--“No--the Moorish lady had at first pleaded the
rights of mourning; then followed the death of an European woman who
accompanied her; and that event, united to the warlike anxieties which
forcibly engrossed the Basha, had delayed his happiness; since that
period she had suddenly proclaimed herself a Christian, and swore to die
rather than unite her soul with that of an infidel.”
What became of Sebastian at this information?--a pang of joy (for it was
joy even to agony,) seized his passionate and pious heart; he caught the
arm of the man who spoke, and closing his eyes, exclaimed in a
suffocated voice, “stop--stop--I can bear no more!”
A few moments recovered him; he moved his hand from the Mussulman’s
arm, and rushing away, to a solitary spot, prostrated himself before
that Saviour whose divine mission Aziek had at length acknowledged.
He wept in the fullness of virtuous satisfaction: her conversion, her
safety, his late perilous situation, the triumph of his arms, the rescue
of Abbas, those tumultuous changes of his fate from disgrace to
exultation, from despair to transport, changes which had hurried and
exhausted his soul--all flowed in these relieving tears. It might be
said that this was the most delicious moment of Sebastian’s life.
Having indulged his emotion, he arose, and returned to find Prince
Abbas: they met seeking each other.--Abbas abashed at sight of a man to
whom he owed so much, and whom he had used so violently, stopped, drew
back, and averting his head with a look of shame, timidly stretched out
his arms: the generous Sebastian sprung forward and strained him to his
breast; that embrace supplied the place of speech.
They remained silent for some time; at length preventing the faltering
voice of the young Sophi, Sebastian exclaimed, “we part here, my friend,
for awhile--you doubtless hasten to re-animate Ispahan--I fly to secure
her, without whom I am nothing.--When thou seest her Abbas!--thou wilt
confess--but no--it is her soul thou shouldst see, to make a love like
mine lose its seeming madness.”
The Sophi answered by ordering his troops to follow at the command of
Sebastian; he would not pain his noble friend by obstinately recurring
to those thanks he wished to wave, but he grasped his hand while
speaking, with an agitation of eye and limb, which left no doubt of his
gratitude. The army then arranged themselves in the order of march, with
their prisoners and their spoil, and headed by their new sovereign, took
the road to Ispahan.
Sebastian selected a small band in case of resistance, and crossed the
country to the fortress of Ebhn Sait.
As he ascended the steep heights leading to this interesting place, his
heart alternately rushed forward and receded: how much did he still
fear! for how much he loved!
The oriental architecture of the building, and the romantic scenery
amongst which it stood, rendered its appearance rather beautiful than
threatening: a few pieces of Turkish ordnance mounted the walls; these
however were deserted; and as Sebastian approached, he beheld the gates
open and the courts unguarded.--His hopes withered at once; he halted an
instant, then recovering himself, gave some brief orders in case of
being allured by a stratagem; he then led part of his troops into the
interior.
No one was visible; they penetrated the passages and the chambers; all
were abandoned.--Struck with grief and dismay Sebastian pronounced in a
sorrowful tone the name of Kara Aziek; that well-known voice was
answered by a cry of joy: a door hitherto unseen, flew open, and the
object of all his hopes and fears springing from a couch on which she
had been sleeping, flew towards him, and threw herself into his arms.
His animated air, the dress of the soldiers by whom he was surrounded,
the very manner with which he held and embraced her, assured her that he
came as a conqueror and a deliverer: her spirit had been long racked
with various alarms; the dreadful scenes of war, and the more terrifying
contests with the Basha’s rude passion, had completely subdued her, and
she was no longer mistress of herself when she felt freedom and
happiness on the breast of him she loved.
Her joy took the character of delirium: she wept, and smiled, and
sobbed; repeated the same unconnected words again and again; held
Sebastian with wild strength, and gazed at him with such a fixed yet
troubled look, as a person might be supposed to give, who feared to
behold another vanish into air.
This strange transport perhaps mixed a salutary alloy with that of
Sebastian; he trembled for her delicately-constructed frame, and far
from giving loose to his own feelings, was only assiduous to soften, and
gently control hers.
By degrees her joy lost its fearfulness and its tumult, and settled into
delightful certainty: she ceased to speak; but she remained leaning on
the shoulder of her hero; at intervals raising his hand to her lips with
an expression of happiness and gratitude in her eyes, as she lifted them
towards heaven.
With what fulness of delight, with what tenderness, did Sebastian sit
contemplating her, as their hearts only spoke to each other! The
information of the Basha’s officer had taken away every sentiment of
regret or self-blame at indulging an attachment which his bigotted
tenets sometimes led him to condemn: it was now, that he felt privileged
to pour his whole soul into hers,--to mix, to unite, to confound them
indeed for ever.
While his arms encircled her, he thought no more of camps or of courts,
of the world and its vain pageants; nay, he ceased to think of the
beauteous body which enclosed the spirit he loved: he felt that spirit
only, and believed that an eternity of such sweet and pure emotions as
the present, would be an eternity of beatitude.
The Persian soldiers now re-entered, impatient for permission to sack
the fortress and to return home; Sebastian roused himself, and moving
with many a lingering look from Kara Aziek, hurried over the building to
discover whether any Turks were concealed.--It was evident that these
people had precipitately abandoned it on the news of their general’s
defeat, (without caring for the women, whom they left as completely
ignorant of their flight, as of the motive which prompted it) and had
fled homewards.
Having ascertained their absence, and booty, Sebastian prepared litters
for his beloved and her women, which they joyfully entered, and borne by
soldiers, set forward on their way to the capital.
CHAP. V.
It was night when the triumphant band entered Ispahan: they found the
streets and the gardens illuminated; every place was crowded with people
rending the air with acclamations, in which the names of the new Sophi
and his victorious friend were joined.
Sebastian’s heart throbbed with virtuous exultation: it was to him this
populous city was indebted for her deliverance and for her monarch!--His
steps were now impeded by frequent parties of the citizens forcibly
stopping him to crown his head with garlands, and to bless him for their
freedom: it was with difficulty he could reach the house of Sir Anthony
Shirley, where he assisted Kara Aziek to quit her litter, and led her
into the apartments of the ambassador.
Shirley welcomed back his guest with open arms, Sebastian returned his
embrace, and thanking him for the justice he had rendered to his
principles, presented the fair proof of his truth.
When the lovely Moor threw back her veil to answer the courteous
salutation of the Englishman, a modest glow animated her softly-speaking
eyes, but those eyes floated in tears, for the sight of Sir Anthony
Shirley brought back the memory of his countrywoman whom death had so
lately torn away. She spoke, she moved, and the grave statesman
delighted with the melody of her voice, and the grace and symmetry of
her shape, forgot that the hue of the olive was spread over those
exquisite limbs.
Sweet to the lover is the tributary admiration paid to the object of his
adoration! Sebastian read Shirley’s approval in his looks, and eager to
display the still lovelier part of his Aziek, won her into discourse.
Their theme was the story of Aziek’s friend; of her last illness, her
resignation, her saint-like piety, her death!--regret and affection made
Kara Aziek eloquent, and both her auditors hung on her accents with
intent pleasure. As she described the important scenes that had passed
between her and this superior woman, each listened attentively: Kara
Aziek was describing the progress of her own conversion. Sebastian was
only attentive to discover whether she really had deserted the standard
of the false prophet; Shirley anxiously hoped to hear that she had
become a convert to the new doctrine of Luther.
Both were satisfied;--Aziek was a Christian and a Lutheran: the
death-bed of Amelia had sealed her arguments.
“What a noble soul! what a rare judgment!” exclaimed Sir Anthony,
inwardly: “She has acknowledged Jesus!” said Sebastian to himself,
“that is the first step--and I should be satisfied with it. The false
creed of this Englishwoman will soon be displaced by our sublime
mysteries: my Aziek’s mind is capable of being darkened by the prejudice
of affection, but affection also may enlighten it again.”
With this soothing thought he yielded to his joy, and expressed it
rapturously: the entrance of the Sophi, whom not even his august dignity
could restrain from hastening to his preserver, interrupted the
conversation.
A blush of graceful shame again painted Abbas’s features: restored to
dominion and to happiness, he could no longer deny himself the
gratification of confessing his faults, expressing his gratitude, and
intreating forgiveness. “Jealous love,” he concluded, “is stronger than
friendship: I saw Maimuna with you, I believed you a seducer and a
dissembler; for I would not believe the woman I worshipped afar off like
some sacred star, whom I trembled to address till I could lay such
laurels at her feet as her father had been accustomed to gather--I could
not believe this woman capable of following into a camp the man who
either slighted or was ignorant of her passion. How could the timid mind
of the most timid of lovers divine, that it was to be near _him_ she
entered the service of another? swept away by a tempest of fury, I
forgot those virtues, those benefits”--
Sebastian interrupted this speech by a warm embrace; he conjured his
friend to bury all thought of the past, and presenting to him Kara
Aziek, (who had modestly retired, but now re-appeared at her hero’s
voice) he requested an apartment for her in the palace of the Princess
of Persia.
Overjoyed to have anything in his power to grant, Abbas immediately
ordered the royal litter, and had the Moorish lady conveyed to his
sister’s residence.
There Kara Aziek beheld herself once more in the society of women, whose
minds and hearts somewhat resembled her own: the interesting Maimuna,
and her young likeness Princess Zelide, by turns soothed and amused her.
Maimuna discoursed of Sebastian; (for she loved, and she knew therefore
the theme that would be most delightful) Zelide alternately painted the
late horrors, and the smiling prospects of futurity, and with her
April-like discourse, gave wings to the passing hours.
While these new associates reposed on their divans, the Christian knight
and the Sophi unwillingly left them for consultation on state affairs.
The new monarch sought the advice of a friend, whose opinions he
received as oracles, and considered like inspiration he knew not the
complicated machine of government, which had once been moved by that
powerful hand!
Having decided on means for concluding the war with the campaign, and
forcing the enemy into restitution, they discussed several abuses in the
Persian state, which only peace could enable the Sophi to reform: much
salutary change was suggested by Sebastian, and eagerly embraced by
Abbas, whose heart, nobly superior to his genius, required but the sight
of a benevolent scheme, to welcome and to employ it.
Prompted by gratitude and affection he now offered his friend the choice
of any rank or station throughout Persia, with the exercise of his own
religion, and the extraordinary permission of protecting Christians, and
building for them a place of worship: he drew a seducing picture of
their social happiness when united to the women they loved, forming one
family of affection.
Sebastian grieved that he must destroy this agreeable illusion: nothing
could exceed the distress of Abbas, when he heard that the friend by
whose great qualities he intended henceforth to model his own
character, was drawn by some strong though secret tie, to another
quarter of the globe.
Sebastian had requested an escort for himself and Kara Aziek to the port
of Cairo, from whence he meant to transport themselves to some maritime
town of Italy, whence they might embark in one of those vessels which
carried on a contraband trade with Brazil. Arguments were in vain to
combat a resolution which duty commanded him to keep inviolate:
Sebastian believed himself called on to seek the recovery of those
rights, with which Providence had originally invested him; and drawn by
a more powerful, because more grateful friendship for Gaspar, than that
which Abbas excited, reined in with difficulty an expression of his in
patience to be gone.
Finding persuasions and intreaties equally useless, and convinced by the
strong emotion of his deliverer, that no common motive impelled his
conduct, the Sophi yielded to necessity and promised him the
escort,--while reluctantly pronouncing this promise, he tried to console
himself by thinking that some little time must be allowed for the
preparation of suitable marks of the Persian empire’s esteem and regret:
the nuptials too of its sovereign ought to be graced by his friend’s
appearance; and if that friend meant to make Kara Aziek his own by the
forms of the Christian church, he must delay yet longer. The hope of
thus detaining him awhile, revived the Sophi, and dismissing his
saddened looks, he prepared to enjoy present happiness while it lasted.
From this period Good Fortune might be said to place her throne at
Ispahan. The Turks were driven out of Syria and forced to sue for peace,
which Abbas insured to his people, by granting on liberal terms to the
humbled enemy: success and cheerful obedience followed the acts of his
new government; his marriage was solemnized with every demonstration of
joy by his subjects: and the nuptials of Sebastian, though performed
almost secretly in the chapel of the ambassador, were so far from
displeasing the Persians, that they celebrated them with acclamations of
pleasure.
Alone and unconnected, far from her country, and voluntarily abandoning
it for ever, Kara Aziek saw in the husband to whom she gave herself, her
world, and her felicity! It was sweet to her tender heart to find no
object share it with him! Wanted she other affection? O no!--was it not
sufficient to concentrate upon one being, every sentiment which weakens
by diffusion?
When Sebastian received her into his arms as the ambassador’s chaplain
closed the book of prayer, when he held her against his heart that
throbbed with the conviction of their eternal union, what a sacred joy
stilled all those tumultuous feelings with which he had counted the
moments, and hurried on the ceremony!
The same soft and delightful emotion gently agitated each; they spoke
but in sighs, and with their tears. Eloquent silence! needed ye a
tongue?
Sebastian would not delay his departure; he hastened its preparations,
and at length reached the moment he wished.
Loaded with presents of treasure and costly attire, with which the
magnificent court of Persia endeavoured to express its gratitude, and
which Sebastian in vain attempted to refuse, the Christian knight and
his bride prepared to quit a country they could not hope to see again.
Kara Aziek had transferred all her women except one, to the Princess of
Persia; and Sebastian retained only the faithful Barémel as his
attendant to the new world.
The escort appointed to attend the travellers was more than sufficient
for security; but the Sophi willed it should distinguish his preserver
by its magnificence.
The palace resounded with lamentation when their last embraces were
exchanged, the Sophi rent his garments, and threw himself on the ground
in a passion of grief; he remained there without raising his head, till
the sound of his friend’s departing steps no longer reached him; he then
arose, and shut himself into a solitary chamber, where not even his
beloved Maimuna ventured to disturb his sorrow.
Equally moved, but long disciplined in self-controul, the King of
Portugal concealed as sad a heart under a calmer aspect; his gentle
Aziek wept uninterruptedly. In the hall of the palace they met Sir
Anthony Shirley, whom they were going to seek: his adieus were less
agitating, but as impressive as those of Abbas.
“You go, brave Portuguese!” he said, “and I dare not ask whither: what
destiny may that be which authorizes so much mystery; are the friends
your virtue acquires to remain for ever in this ignorance?--I ask not
where you go, but I would ask if you believe we shall ever meet again?”
“I hope it--nay I believe it,” replied Sebastian, brightening into
animation, “you will hear of me in Europe some day; and I charge you by
our friendship, to recal at that period what I owe to you now.--To you,
I owe my present happiness; to you, I owe what I may have regained then:
was it not to your generous reliance on my integrity that I am indebted
for having acquired the power to benefit Persia?--Forget not the Knight
of the Cross--forget not those lineaments by which you may remember him:
the hour may come when these lineaments will present themselves to your
eye under a very different garb, and when the wandering adventurer may
give you a signal proof of his gratitude.--Farewel!”
As he spoke, he exchanged rings with Shirley, who, cheered by this
assurance, yet bewildered by the conjectures to which it led, embraced
him in silence, and kissed the hand of Kara Aziek.
The travellers then mounted the commodious carriage which had been
constructed for them by order of the Sophi, and attended by a troop of
horsemen and loaded camels, departed from Ispahan.
CHAP. VI.
Let me pass lightly over the period in which the King of Portugal and
his Aziek journeyed from Ispahan to Cairo. They embarked there in a
vessel bound for Venice; sojourned at Venice only till they procured a
passage in a ship going to India; the captain of which engaged to stop
at Massignan, where Brazil-traders usually watered, and where he might
then transfer his passengers according to their wishes.
As the Venetian bark sailed between the shores of Spain and of Africa,
and leaving the smiling waves of the Mediterranean, entered upon the
stern Atlantic, emotions of awe, of apprehension, of gratitude,
springing from the memory of former days, grew upon the hearts of
Sebastian and Kara Aziek.
After so many vicissitudes, so many anxieties, they were united
inseparably;
“The world was all before them where to chuse
“Their place of rest; and Providence their guide!”
Buried in profound thought, they sat together with their eyes fixed on
the two coasts that recalled such various remembrances. Kara Aziek gazed
on Africa, thinking of her father and Abensallah: Sebastian regarded the
Spanish shore, gradually turning his reflections from remote events to
such as had been lately detailed to him at Venice.--He had learned there
several important facts, upon which he now ruminated in serious silence.
Since his departure from Portugal, and after sojourning in Persia, much
change had taken place. Cardinal Henry was dead, the succession to his
throne had been hotly contested by a croud of pretenders: Don Antonio
was proclaimed by one party, Philip II. by another; the streets of
Lisbon had been filled with assassination and tumults; her prisons
alternately thronged with the adherents of the Braganzas and the
d’Aveyros. Finally Spain prevailed: Antonio had escaped with difficulty
beyond sea, thrown himself on the protection of England, embarked in a
vain expedition, lost all hope again, and was now wandering through
France, mocking poverty with the title of King, which his rank and
vicious conduct rendered but a seal of infamy.
Seated on his throne of Spain, Philip made the neck of Portugal his
footstool: she felt her new sovereign only by the weight of his tyranny:
her nobles were torn from her, her court filled with the greedy
followers of a Castilian Regent; her treasures were wafted into Spanish
ports, and her halls of justice transported to the capital of her
oppressor.--Crushed with accumulating burthens, her people lost their
strength to resist; and terrified by the bloody vengeance which Philip
took on them for yielding to the delusion of two impostors who had
successively started up proclaiming themselves Don Sebastian, they
thought no more of their rights; they crouched under his iron sceptre,
appearing to believe themselves fortunate if but permitted to breathe.
With her towns garrisoned by foreign troops, her arms wrested from her
grasp, her treasury rifled, her fleet dismantled, what could wretched
Portugal do but sit sullenly in her chains, desperate of relief? Could
the hand of one man, even though the hand of her lawful King, hope to
break those bonds? The thought was madness.
Sebastian saw that to follow his heart’s impulse, and fly immediately to
the succour of his subjects, would be only to offer himself up an
useless victim; he would be only exciting fresh blood to flow, fresh
horrors to arise: unless acknowledged and assisted by other powers, and
that at some critical moment of Spanish weakness, he could not expect
to regain or to restore his people to liberty. There was no path for him
but that he was now in: he must seek the advice of Don Emanuel De
Castro, and try through him the temper of his trans-atlantic subjects.
The bitterness of his regret for having originally caused all this
suffering to Portugal, was like the anguish of a father who beholds his
only son plunged into crime and misery through his own faulty
indulgence.
Sebastian’s heart might be said to weep blood, while he enumerated the
enormities of Philip, and the wrongs of the Portuguese: the gloom of his
looks saddened Kara Aziek, and when tenderly inquiring his thoughts, she
learnt their painful nature, it cost her some effort to conquer her
sympathy, and exert herself to argue away his excess of self-reproach.
By gentle degrees she changed the current of his reflections, though
they turned into one not so smooth as the hand of wedded love would
willingly have made it.
Sebastian had frequently conversed with his wife on the subject of her
new religion; but in the hurry of land-travelling, those conversations
had been short and unsatisfactory: sufficient however to shew the
afflicted husband that the wife of his bosom nourished what he believed
a fatal system of error, denounced by the church, and abhorred of God.
It was in the leisure of a long voyage that he hoped to eradicate these
pernicious doctrines.
Having fortunately encountered a Brazil-trader at Massignan and procured
a passage in her to St. Salvador, he began now to make the attempt: Kara
Aziek met his scrutiny with frankness and confidence. All other opinions
she would have hoped and wished to find yield to his sounder reasoning;
but over this important point, the weakness of fond woman dared not
usurp any influence.
In converting her friend from Mahometanism to Christianity, Emilia had
gone back to the source whence alone man can expect to draw pure
doctrine: she had taught her from the sacred book itself, such as it
appears to an attentive, inquiring, and docile mind:--She had stripped
herself of every prejudice, even in favor of the great Reformer to whom
so many souls stand indebted for an example of mental courage; and
perhaps in dictating the creed which she thus formed out of the commands
of our Lord, and the exhortations of his apostles, she taught a purer
religion than Luther himself.
Emilia had then compared this scriptural Christianity with the monstrous
system of Popery: how simple, how beautiful, how divine, was the one!
how complicated, how contradictory, how merely human, the other!
Kara Aziek found her hesitation and doubts vanish with the fantastic
mysteries which had given them birth: her spirit prostrated itself with
tears of joy, of love, of adoration, at the feet of the meek and
spotless Jesus! she acknowledged her Redeemer and her divine Master, in
him who spoke to the understanding as well as to the heart; and building
her faith upon examination and conviction, she built it upon a rock.
The readiness with which she met inquiry, and the attention she gave to
argument, at first inspirited Sebastian, but he soon found that to some
of her interrogatories he was unable to reply, and that several of her
observations startled his own faith.
Shocked, alarmed, afflicted, his soul recoiled from the sight of that
precipice, to which he believed himself on the point of being hurried:
he precipitately abandoned his enterprize, and for some days their
conversation flowed solely upon other subjects.
Vain was the attempt to banish from his mind the remembrance of those
remarks which troubled him; as vain the hope of being content to see
Aziek’s soul divided from his own. Tormenting apprehensions for her, or
doubts for himself, by turns distracted him, poisoning the sweet hours
of love and of confidence.
Irresolute, fearful, virtuously fearful of sinning by presumption, he
trembled to proceed in an investigation, which threatened the
destruction of his long-nursed superstitions; but at length a naturally
courageous mind shook off its fetters, and decided him to go on.
The first advantage was gained by Aziek; Sebastian allowed the fairness
of taking scripture for a guide: when he granted this to her reasoning,
he knew not to what important concessions it would lead. From the
instant he abandoned the popish stronghold of traditionary doctrine,
Kara Aziek triumphed.
With the sacred volume in her hand, and every faculty roused to
comprehend and to explain its dubious passages, she continued to subdue
one by one all the errors of Sebastian: the mists of prejudice, the
denser fog of superstition, gradually cleared away before her bright and
steady reason: conviction waited on judgment, and the amazed zealot
found himself at last walking in broad day, regarding with astonishment
those monstrous chimeras, which rolling afar off, disappeared like dark
clouds at the uprise of the sun.
Behold him then a convert to truth!--elevated to the noble consciousness
of worshipping the living God with a willing heart and a free mind;
exercising the powers of that mind in the delightful and purifying act
of meditation on the divine nature; no longer agitated by a dread of
meditating too much or too closely!
Far from damping the ardour of his piety, this change in some of his
opinions served but to encrease it. Satisfaction exists but with
conviction, and to be satisfied with any principle is to love it.
Sebastian felt affection animate him in his new religion, and formerly
only a vehement sense of duty had impelled his actions; he could not
love what he dared not examine and trembled to understand; but he would
have devoted himself and half the world to death in obedience to its
commands, because he believed blind submission necessary to salvation:
now Judgment and Will went together.
If it were precious to feel this honorable freedom of soul, this
sentiment of self-respect, which so far from rendering Christians
presumptuous, exalts their notions of that august Being who will not
accept brute worship from man, but invites him to study and to love his
creator, how sweet was it to live in complete sympathy with the heart of
Kara Aziek! how sweet to look upon her as the source of this inestimable
blessing.
Their days, unbroken by a single dissonant sentiment, now flowed on in
one soft stream of tender and tranquil enjoyment: occupied with each
other, elevated from earth by their recent studies, they forgot the past
and thought not of the future; for awhile the present only, filled and
satisfied their souls.
But soon the land of Brazil rising from the vast Atlantic, called back
emotions of friendship and solicitude; Sebastian’s heart rushed towards
Gaspar. Kara Aziek with feminine eagerness anticipated the beautiful
novelties of this unknown country; and an agreeable distraction followed
the former concentration of their thoughts.
As their ship approached the new world, its majestic appearance roused
Sebastian into admiration: the magnificence, of its coasts, the towering
and brilliant verdure which crowned them; the gigantic scale of its
rivers and forests, the purity of its atmosphere, and the stately
elevation of St. Salvador, towards which they steered, stirred his
spirit and kindled some kingly exultation.
This wide and glorious land was his--this glowing Paradise, which
appeared created for the residence of Gods! While he contemplated it, a
proud glow mantled his cheek: Kara Aziek noted the flush, and divined
its meaning: she laid her hand gently upon his arm as he stood looking
from the deck upon the city. “With love, friendship, and competency, in
that enchanting region, shall we not be happy my Sebastian? Shall we not
_rest_?”
Sebastian turned his softened eyes on her with a look of tender regret:
“Would I had been born for thee only Aziek;--rest, alas! is not for a
man whom sacred duties bind to action; I belong to my suffering people.
But we _shall_ rest, sweetest! (he added soothingly, seeing tears gather
on her cheek) we _shall_ rest at least awhile.”
Only an eloquent smile replied to him; for now the vessel entered the
harbour of St. Salvador, and cast anchor amongst a wood of masts.
All was bustle and happy animation: the different voyagers hastened to
taste the pleasure of touching land and breathing the air of trees and
flowers. Sebastian conducted his Aziek and her attendant from the boat
to the quay; there he heard Portuguese tongues and saw Portuguese faces:
his heart yearned towards them. True to early impressions, his first
emotion at the sight of Monks and Convents, was an emotion of religious
gladness, he had to recollect that with their pageantry he had done for
ever. As he passed along, the grandeur of the city (then the capital of
Brazil) filled him with admiration, and while he contemplated its massy
edifices, he believed that he beheld the seat of his new empire.
Having inquired the name of the viceroy, and learned that De Castro
still held that powerful station, he led Aziek into a house provided
for travellers, where persuading her to repose herself on a couch, he
wrote to the viceroy: his letter contained these words.
“TO DON EMANUEL DE CASTRO,
“It is your King and your friend, Don Emanuel, who confides himself
to your honour; he comes to seek his country in Brazil: he reposes
his safety on your loyalty,--confident that neither the remembrance
of past injustice, nor the temptation to present revenge, can sway
a generous soul from its duty. Come hither privily, come and
counsel your fugitive prince.”
The interval which passed between the dispatch of this billet, and the
arrival of Don Emanuel’s reply, was one of great anxiety: Sebastian
thought less of his own reception than of Gaspar, of whom he hoped to
hear from De Castro. To see, to embrace that lowly but precious friend,
to demonstrate the constancy of his attachment, became the most lively
wish of his heart.
In a short time a letter was brought from the governor: an habitual
expectation of customary observances, made the proud monarch start when
he saw this paper.--What!--did De Castro also cease to consider him a
King!--should he not have hastened to evince his unabated respect, by
personally answering to his sovereign’s confidence?--Sebastian felt,
that between a complete abandonment of him, and that deeper devotedness
which generous pity inspires, there could be no medium:--he execrated
his own hasty reliance, and believing that it had betrayed him, he
opened the suspected billet.
How quickly did its contents dissipate this rash pre-judgment! they were
as follows:--
LETTER.
“SIRE!
“The first impulse of my heart is to fly to my sovereign’s feet,
there to entreat him to dispose of myself and of all that is mine,
but an important consideration checks me: it is this.--The
creatures of Philip surround us even here; if it were known that I,
the representative of that monarch, visited an unknown stranger,
suspicion would follow, and the august person of my King might be
endangered.
“I restrain, therefore, my impatience--I do violence to my duty and
my affection--I venture to risk his Majesty’s displeasure, by
supplicating him to accompany the bearer of this to my residence:
his loyalty, attested by months of zealous attention in Africa.”--
Sebastian dropt the letter at this sentence, and springing to the door
with a flush of joy, called out--“where, where is my friend?”
Gaspar was not far distant: he ran forward, and would have thrown
himself at the feet of his King, but Sebastian prevented him by falling
on his neck. What a sacred moment was that which re-united two friends
so variously endeared, and so long separated!--their hearts were big
with past events; they could not speak, but remained strained in each
other’s arms, without attempting to express any part of their feelings.
This silence was first broken by Sebastian: “Come, come Gaspar!” he
said, catching his hand and leading him towards an interior room--“here
is another joy for thee.”
At sight of Kara Aziek whom the tumultuous sounds of their meeting had
roused, Gaspar stood a moment, as if collecting his scattered and
delightfully-amazed senses, then rushing forward, he cast himself at her
feet;
“What do I see?” he exclaimed, “dearest lady! am I to believe that the
virgin has heard my prayers, and united two hearts equally
noble--equally gifted, to bless--to attach--O joy too, too much!”
Love and happiness replied in the thrilling look which Kara Aziek
directed towards Sebastian, and then turned upon Gaspar; her eloquent
eyes ever seemed to render speech useless: Gaspar understood their
language; his transport redoubled, and as he alternately kissed the
hands of two persons dearer to him than life, he forgot that the world
was not at his disposal, and that the master he adored, might yet have
to wander from clime to clime a fugitive and a beggar.
Some moments were now given to mutual inquiries and mutual details:
various emotions of sorrow, indignation, commiseration, and gratitude,
were called forth by these recitals.
After much suffering, Gaspar had reached Brazil, and was now in the
service of Don Emanuel.
When he heard of Philip’s usurpation over Portugal, De Castro would have
immediately refused obeying his commands, had not the arrival of Gaspar,
and the hope he held out of Don Sebastian’s appearance at Brazil,
determined him to retain the vice-royalty, since it might enable him
hereafter to restore his legitimate sovereign. Time, however, wore away,
and Sebastian appeared not; the expectations of Don Emanuel and of
Gaspar gradually died:--each of them in secret believed him dead, or
still captive among the Moors; and just at the period of his arrival,
they had entirely abandoned all hope of beholding their King at St.
Salvador.
During this time of anxiety, De Castro had never ceased interrogating
his Portuguese correspondents upon the events of their country, and it
was from one of these he learnt what afforded him some ray of hope.
It was reported throughout Lisbon that the lady Gonsalva had beheld and
conversed with Don Sebastian in the palace of Xabregas: she refused to
repeat the nature of their interview, but asserted the fact with the
most startling obstinacy.--Strict search had been made upon this
information, by Antonio of Crato, but as it proved unsuccessful, the
people believed she had seen his spirit; and by degrees the same
horrible idea took possession of her own mind.
Terror and perpetual alarm now pursued her wherever she went; alone or
in society, in the arms of her guilty lover, or by the cradles of her
children, maddened imagination would suddenly conjure up his
phantom--armed, not with mortal weapon, but with looks that seemed
empowered to damn her.
At these instants, her hasty shriek struck others with the same panic
that convulsed herself: by degrees her friends and her attendants
deserted her;--Antonio unwillingly remained, ashamed of abandoning the
wretch he had made. But at length even he fled her abode; then
terminated the fate of Gonsalva: that phrenzy which had hitherto shewn
itself only at intervals, now seized on her wholly, and living in one
fearful paroxysm, she was left to rave out her life in the cell of a
convent where a charitable sisterhood devoted themselves to assuage this
last, worst calamity of human nature.
Too enlightened for belief in the monstrous notion of Don Sebastian’s
_spiritual_ re-appearance in a _tangible body_ (for Gonsalva
acknowledged having grasped his garments and his hand,) De Castro felt
confident that his royal master had really appeared in Lisbon; but of
the fate that had befallen him, he dared not think: it was too probable
that he had fallen a victim to his uncle or to his cousin.
By suspecting the former, Don Emanuel was guilty of injustice: the aged
King had been at that period scarcely more than a cypher; he was
governed by a ministry (the creatures of Philip,) who kept from his
knowledge every rumour of his nephew’s existence, prevented any subject
of whatever rank from addressing him save through their medium, and
finally dismissed Don Emanuel to Brazil, and allured Gaspar to prison,
without disclosing to the half-childish monarch their motives for
either action.
All that Gaspar knew of these events he briefly detailed, ere he
indulged his own private feelings by inquiring the situation of his
orphan sisters: Sebastian’s donation to them gave peace to his fraternal
anxiety.
Not unmoved did the King of Portugal hear the awful catastrophe of Donna
Gonsalva; his agitation however, did not appear outwardly in all its
force, for horror and amazement locked up the usual expressions of pity,
and it was only by the fitful variation of his complexion, and the
nervous startings of his body, that Kara Aziek’s heart felt the pangs
which wrung his:--she saw that he struggled to hide his suffering from
her observation.
Tenderly solicitous to divert him of the apprehension which made him
thus dissemble, she approached behind his chair, and bending over him,
rested her lips upon his forehead, then pressing his hand, whispered
softly, “I should not love thee, if thou didst not pity her.”
Sebastian wrapt his arms round Aziek without speaking; and his heart,
thus permitted by her to lament one whom he had formerly idolized,
opened itself to a moment of weakness.--Till now, an ocean of time
seemed to have flowed between those days, and these present; one instant
swept this away, and blended the two periods together: Sebastian saw
Gonsalva again in all her beauty and apparent innocence; again he felt
the successive thrills of resentment and transport, of misery and
delight, which her capricious character used to excite in him; he
remembered how he had doated,--he felt how much he now contemned!
Penetrated with a sense of the lamentable uncertainty of all human
goods, and of the yet sadder change which circumstances force our hearts
to make in their affections and in their wishes, he burst into tears,
convulsively pressed Aziek to his breast, then hastily relinquishing
her, would have hurried away, had she not gently detained him.
Her soft eyes filled with tears and raised tenderly to his, were
expressive of so much sympathy with his grief, and so much confidence in
his affection, that yielding to their mute intreaty, he let his head
sink again upon her bosom, where he wept unreservedly for some time:
Aziek was silent also; but she wept with him, and every sigh that heaved
his manly heart, was marked by a yet fonder pressure of her encircling
arms.
CHAP. VII.
Relieved by this indulgence of a natural sensibility, Sebastian raised
himself from the neck of his wife with a serener countenance, and bade
Gaspar conduct him to the viceroy’s: they went out together.
As they passed through the streets, silently taking that complacent
repose of the soul which follows tumultuous joy, Gaspar’s eyes remained
still fixed on his sovereign’s face, with an expression of affectionate
pleasure that seemed incapable of being sated:--his heart indeed
overflowed with happiness.
Sebastian was conducted to a private apartment in the house of De
Castro, at the entrance of which Gaspar left him to return and guard
Kara Aziek: Don Emanuel was standing alone; he came hastily forward,
fastened the door, and fell at his master’s feet. The King’s emotion
confused his sight, but he raised De Castro and embraced him warmly; a
long silence prevailed between them: the same recollections, the same
troubled anticipations of the future, were in the minds of each: their
meeting was less joyous than that with Gaspar, because their more
reflective characters acted on each other and roused serious thoughts,
but it was equally affectionate.
“When I first saw thee, De Castro!” said his sovereign, “could I have
foreseen this day, how would my frantic spirit have been appaled and
checked in its unjust”----Don Emanuel’s looks interrupted him; too
respectful for other interruption he only averted his head, and put the
King’s hand to his lips with the air of one that beseeches: Sebastian
gratefully eyed him.
“Generous De Castro!” he exclaimed, “vainly would you have me banish
from my mind those events which your figure so forcibly recalls.--I
cannot forget--I cannot forget!” he repeated, deeply sighing and sinking
into a reverie. Every scene in which De Castro had been an actor, was
now brought back with such frightful closeness to him, that regret and
compunction grew into absolute agony; the remembrances of Antonio and of
Gonsalva were so contradictory, so made up of the amiable and the
hateful, that they increased the anguish of Sebastian by increasing his
incertitude: he sought to end it, by suddenly inquiring of De Castro
whether he had known the guilt of Donna Gonsalva ere their departure for
Africa.
“By a singular chance it was discovered to me;” replied Don
Emanuel,--“On my return from the Indies I went to visit my affianced
wife, and found her all that she had been described to me in beauty,
wit, and accomplishments. I confess that these graces, together with
the animated reception she then gave me, dazzled away my intended
scrutiny of her disposition, and I reluctantly tore myself from the
temptation of making her wholly mine, in order to devote myself to the
last hours of my respected grandfather. When we met again, her manner
was changed; an air of haughty coldness, almost amounting to contempt,
gave to her beauty a new character, but that character was one which
disgusted me. I could only suppose that I was indebted for this to pique
at my preferring a sacred duty to the indulgence of passion.”
The death of my grandfather interrupted the uneasy thoughts which her
evident caprice or selfish vanity had created: my mourning was yet
fresh, when in journeying from Santaren to her father’s villa near
Crato, it was providentially ordained that I should pass through a
cluster of farm-houses, one of which was on fire. It was midnight at
this time; my servants assisted me to succour the inhabitants; most of
them were saved, but one woman, whom I rescued at the imminent hazard of
my life, was so grievously burned that that no hope could be entertained
of her recovery. On learning my name, she testified the most
extraordinary agitation and desiring to be left alone with me, entered
upon a confession of guilt which filled me with consternation.
Judge my astonishment, Sire! when I found that she was the confidential
maid of Donna Gonsalva, and having met with this fatal accident during a
short visit to her family, deemed it a visitation of divine
justice.--She told me”--here De Castro paused apprehensively.
“Proceed without fear!” said Sebastian, with a steady voice, though his
cheek was blanched--“the name once so dear to me is now only a
watch-word of horror or of pity. I am eager to know her, and her
seducer, completely.”
Don Emanuel resumed. “I learnt from the woman’s recital these
facts.--Left to the care of so indolent, unsuspicious and weak a
guardian as her aunt, Donna Gonsalva had ill brooked the retirement to
which she was condemned by the absence of her father and of her husband;
her restless vanity was eager for gratification, when chance shewed her
to Don Antonio of Crato. I pass over his passion and its seductions; he
found the fair Gonsalva too ready to sacrifice herself to vanity and
ambition: he was the King’s cousin, and he persuaded her that your
majesty had sworn never to marry, but resolved on declaring him heir to
the crown by substantiating his mother’s marriage with the Duke De Beja,
after which Antonio would endeavour to procure the Pope’s dispensation
for making her his wife.
“These temptations, added to the insinuating manners of her lover,
conquered the virtue of Gonsalva--she yielded herself to the prior.”
A crimson flush was reflected from the faces of each, as Don Emanuel
paused, and Sebastian covered his eyes with his hand: each felt at that
moment a sentiment of having been dishonoured.--De Castro resumed.
“Urracca, (this servant I spoke of,) was the confidant of their
meetings, for they took place in her apartments, and by her contrivance;
she assured me that their guilty attachment had endured for more than a
year, when I returned to Portugal. Gonsalva was then awakening from her
vain dream of a throne; for your Majesty had graciously announced to
your subjects that it was your intention to marry at some future period,
and negociations with France and Spain were even then on foot: she began
to think that to share my fortune and honours, was preferable to this
pursuit of a phantom; I was therefore received with flattering ardour.
“It was after this period that she saw her royal victim.--O, Sire! must
I go on?--dare I repeat those acts of treasonable deception,--of
amazing ingratitude, which--”
“All, all, De Castro!” replied Sebastian, “Judge not my heart exactly by
these coward cheeks of mine: ’tis the trick of my nature to grow pale
and red, at what stirs not the complexion of other men--go on--my
passions are not so inflammable as they used to be--go on!--”
Don Emanuel bowed his head and resumed.--“Your Majesty’s first interview
with Gonsalva charmed her vanity, it offered her amusement; she saw you
again; and when detailing the adventure to Urracca, she expressed a
certainty of being familiar with your features, and suddenly
exclaimed--“it is the portrait of Don Sebastian, that he resembles!”--In
one moment her vanity and imagination had too truly united this likeness
with the circumstance of the court being then at Crato, and when she saw
you again, Sire, by seemingly random railleries, she nearly confirmed
herself in her suspicion.
“Don Antonio had a picture of your Majesty on a snuff-box, Gonsalva
examined it attentively at their next meeting, and determining to be
satisfied compleatly, obtained her aunt’s permission to attend her to
the cathedral of Crato, where the court were to be present at the
celebration of high mass.--There, concealed under a veil, she beheld and
recognized her mysterious admirer.--
“I need not add, it was immediately subsequent to this, that my second
visit was received so haughtily.--About this period your majesty
remained several days absent from the villa, a circumstance which
alarmed the yet-unfixed hopes of Gonsalva: nightly Urracca watched from
the upper window of a turret where her mistress had granted you
permission to appear. One night she descried your royal person from
afar, and hastening down to inform Gonsalva, heard her propose to charm
you, by a seemingly unstudied display of her melodious voice. Assured
of your rank, Sire! instructed in your character by him who knew you
best, she learnt how to inflame your passion by a thousand charming
caprices, till she had brought you to the point desired.--Meanwhile
Antonio”----
“Ah what of Antonio?” interrupted the King, his limbs quivering with
restrained emotion, “did he conspire?--damned, damned dissembler!” he
added, losing his self-command, “when I was weaving him into my
soul--when I trusted him--poured out my love-sick heart to him
alone----boy, idiot, bubble that I was!--O De Castro, these are
recollections to madden!--I regret not such perfidious wretches,
but my blood grows fire when I think of the jest they must have
made of feelings like mine!”
Sebastian trod the apartment with fierce and irregular steps; De Castro
looked on him with an air of tender compassion--this sensibility to
injuries recalled their first interview at Lisbon, and he lamented its
continuance.
“Donna Gonsalva, he resumed, “determined not to disclose her secret to
Antonio till confident of your Majesty’s settled passion; your own
august lips first revealed it to the prior: surprize and resentment
nearly banished his discretion, but never having dared to let your
Majesty know the libertine license in which he indulged himself, he was
restrained from avowing any knowledge of Count Vimiosa’s daughter.--Of
course their subsequent meeting was one of reproach: Gonsalva
conquered.”
“She pleaded to Antonio the necessity of covering the consequences of
their intrigue by some marriage, and since he could not legitimatize the
child she carried, it was fortunate for them both, that instead of
resigning herself to the _observing, frigid De Castro_ (this was the
epithet she gave me, Sire!) she might aggrandize their offspring by a
union with Majesty itself.
“Antonio had yielded to her arguments, and they were impatiently waiting
the arrival of Vimiosa from France to break through the engagement with
me, when this abhorrent secret was confided to me by Urracca.--The woman
spoke with a dying breath, could I doubt her veracity?--recovering that
presence of mind which the shock had deprived me of, I besought her to
repeat the story in confession to a holy friar who might hereafter
support my testimony; she expired ere he arrived.
“It was now impossible for me to follow the impulse of my heart by
hastening to undeceive my Sovereign; would he believe a tale so horribly
improbable?--would he not deem it a malicious fabrication prompted by
jealousy, or disappointment?--I was obliged to smother it in my own
breast, and be content to watch the conduct of Gonsalva. Her third
reception of me sealed the truth of Urracca.
“Your Majesty must now guess at the motive of my former inexplicable
conduct: I sought only to gain time; I wished but to struggle with my
sovereign’s desires, till the condition of Donna Gonsalva should become
apparent to every eye, and the birth of her child render her shame
notorious. If I erred in not hazarding my life by avowing at once”----
“I should not have believed you, noble, injured De Castro!” interrupted
the King, stopping and fervently squeezing his hand, “how mad I was
then, you well remember. I loved that pernicious woman to such delirious
excess--no, no, it was not love,--let me not disgrace the sacred
sentiment which sympathizes with Aziek’s, by affixing the same name to
each!”
Sebastian had now afforded Don Emanuel an opportunity of giving a turn
to their discourse.--Familiar with the name of Kara Aziek, on which
Gasper had frequently dwelt in his narrative of their captivity, and
yielding to pleasurable surprize, De Castro inquired the meaning of his
Sovereign’s apostrophe.--
The succeeding explanation gave rise to a variety of sweet emotions in
the bosom of Sebastian, which spreading over his countenance the glow of
love and happiness, communicated to Don Emanuel a portion of his own
delight.--That faithful noble contemplated his royal master’s character
and person after a separation of nearly four years, with wonder and
satisfaction: how much more of character was visible on those admirable
lineaments!
The smiling beauty there, which was wont first to catch the sense, and
charm the fancy, was now lost in the majesty of nobler expression: it
was an expression that spoke sufferings magnanimously endured, passions
bravely subdued, virtues rapidly matured. De Castro felt it penetrate
his heart, and exalt the poignant feeling with which he revolved the
wrongs and the privations of so interesting a creature.
With what attention did he listen to the recital of Sebastian’s visit to
Portugal, his second captivity, his honorable reception at the court of
Persia, and the rare attachment of Kara Aziek! in return he distinctly
stated his own limited powers in Brazil.
Philip’s policy had gradually abridged them; yet aware of De Castro’s
upright conduct in the arduous station to which he had been elevated, he
suffered him to remain amongst the people whom his virtues rendered
obedient. Every post of influence in Brazil was now filled by Spaniards,
or Portuguese devoted to Spanish views: the colony was yet weak, and
therefore unable to act alone in the cause of its lawful sovereign,
should he even declare himself: its land could furnish only a
resting-place for him and his, where they might securely wait under De
Castro’s protection for some political change in Europe, which might
prove favorable to discovery.
The death of Philip, or the defection of his most powerful allies, or
possibly the insurrection of Portugal itself, might hereafter offer an
inviting conjuncture for a step of some risk: the recovery of his crown
could not be rashly attempted, if he would spare to his people the
misery of a fruitless contest. Don Emanuel suggested nothing but
patience, watchfulness, and hope.
Too well convinced by the arguments of De Castro, Sebastian saw that he
had no other line of conduct to choose; he must reconcile himself to an
obscure life in Brazil. He consented therefore to settle as a wealthy
but untitled individual, whom a mercantile speculation had brought to
the new world.
“I submit to my destiny;” he said, after they had discussed these
topics, “I submit to my destiny! an inglorious, unoccupied life is a
fresh trial for a spirit like mine.--Deem me not a boaster De Castro,
when I say, that to live without an aim, without great and
soul-quickening duties, will be in my eyes a living death: I shall
scarcely feel privileged to enjoy the happiness of loving and being
beloved by the little circle that now encloses all my affections.--To
what have I reduced myself?--to a nothing!--a worthless husk deprived of
what was valuable within!”
Sebastian sighed heavily, and fixed his eyes on the ground.
“Not so, my honored liege!” observed Don Emanuel, “a benevolent spirit
can everywhere make for itself duties and enjoyments, for to what spot
shall man fly, where the voice of suffering does not reach
him?--Ignorance is a calamity; it is the soil of crimes; and here we are
surrounded by ignorant natives, whom the memory of former cruelties
almost justifies in hating us. Those great and amiable qualities, which
even in a state of slavery made to themselves power and usefulness,
will surely enable my King to find the same noble pleasures in a more
liberal station.”
“You are right De Castro,” replied Sebastian, with a look of
satisfaction, “I may here study the people I once governed without
knowing; I may here endeavour to atone for the outrages of my ancestors,
to that simple race whose land they moistened with blood. The
magnificent gifts of Schah Abbas have made me rich,--adversity has made
me patient; wealth and patience added to a sincere desire of doing good,
ought to produce beneficial effects: if I can diffuse even a small
portion of comfort around me, my days will not pass in vain.”
Sebastian now minutely inquired the character and situation of the
neighbouring tribes, who tributary to the Portuguese government lived
under their protection, and occasionally trafficked with them in skins
and feathers: to attempt their civilization, appeared an object worth
consideration. Don Emanuel briefly replied to him.
Among the tribes he described, were the Guaymures, a ferocious race that
had formerly occupied the whole sweep of country, from Cape Frio to the
river St. Francis: after perpetual wars with other tribes and European
settlements, they were now driven beyond the southern bank of this great
river, and lived roaming round the borders of the inconsiderable
Cachoeira.
The Guaymures were cannibals: they devoured their prisoners taken in
battle, and to their idol Marakha, occasionally sacrificed even their
own infants. Armed with ponderous clubs and poisoned arrows, their naked
bodies besmeared with the juices of noisome plants, and rendered hideous
by strange punctures, their long black hair flying loose over their
bodies, these tremendous savages would issue from their woods, yelling
like beasts of prey, and falling on the plantations of the Europeans,
would fire their sugar-mills, slaughter the inhabitants, and make horrid
banquets upon their quivering limbs.
Carrying horror and misery to others, they were themselves wretched:
each gentler tribe was interested in their destruction; and by open
fight or secret ambush wasted their population, and robbed them of their
food. The Guaymures had neither industry nor foresight, they were
therefore exposed to perpetual want and suffering, even in that
bounteous climate, where nature’s liberality almost out-runs the wishes
of man: the rainy season produced amongst them the most grievous
diseases, (for they had no better lodgings than trees) and the sick
abandoned by their relations, perished in crowds every winter from
starvation and bodily anguish.
Even while drawing this horrid picture, De Castro added some faint
touches descriptive of humanity: here and there he could record an
instance of magnanimity or of mercy, which inspired Sebastian with the
hope of reclaiming these unhappy creatures from their habits of blood.
The tribe was now reduced to a number comparatively trifling; their
situation was deplorable, “for every man’s hand was against them and
their hand was against every man;” they were hunted like wild animals:
thus pressed by famine and by persecution, they might not perhaps be so
difficult to tame. Sebastian paused and considered.
“Force and terror have been used in vain,” said he, “let us then try
gentleness: I still think so well of human nature, as to believe that no
heart is beyond the touch of gratitude. The dismal condition of this
exasperated race goes to my soul; surely I shall be able to convince
them that I pity them, that I wish to succour them, that I want nothing
from them, and if so, to win their affection will not be a chimerical
attempt.”
As it would be prudent for Sebastian to shun scrutiny and promiscuous
society in the capital, and as the viceroy now offered him a lodge near
a country house of his own, within a league of the Guaymures, Sebastian
instantly resolved to take up his abode there.
In this retirement his active mind would still find employment and
objects of interest. The new task of humanizing a savage race, of
teaching them the arts of European nations, elevating their thoughts
beyond the mere animal part of our nature, and leading them to the
knowledge and the worship of the one true God, would be a task of
permanent gratification.
Blessed with love and friendship, and having regained the power of
benefitting his fellow-creatures, he would no longer feel existence a
blank: he would no longer consider this portion of his life wasted
without memorial or recompence. It was sweet also to reflect, that such
a plan embraced not merely his own views, but the peaceful wishes of
Kara Aziek; sharing in each others satisfaction, both would be
satisfied.
Having agreed on the propriety of extreme circumspection in their future
intercourse, yet determining to avoid any appearance of mystery, the
King and Don Emanuel settled the mode of their mutual visits. As a
Portuguese merchant desirous of using his wealth for public good, the
viceroy’s consideration of him might pass uncensured: his money and
jewels were to be deposited for the present in the treasury of St.
Salvador, and hereafter, part of it might be employed advantageously in
commerce; with the remainder he could follow at will the dictates of
benevolence.
Eager to impart this amiable project to Kara Aziek and to Caspar,
Sebastian took leave of De Castro, who scarcely knew how to yield to
the formalities imposed by his situation, since they retained him from
hastening to pay the homage of duty and inclination to the wife of his
sovereign.
A servant conducted the supposed merchant from the presence of the
viceroy, to his temporary lodging in the city, where welcomed by her he
loved, and by him he esteemed, Sebastian gave himself to joy, and strove
to forget those horrid features of perfidy and depravity which the hand
of De Castro had unveiled.
After this period, a scene completely new, opened before the King of
Portugal; he removed to the house destined for him near the district of
Guaymures, where he devoted himself to win the confidence of a
suspicious and cruel, because fearful and once ill-used people.
By his orders the desolate solitude was filled with cottages, to which
he invited his wandering neighbours: his first care was to supply their
wants without exacting or seeming to wish for any influence over their
feelings. He frequently allured their children to his dwelling, and
returned them to their native forests, loaded with presents of ornament
and use: the children communicated a portion of their own curiosity to
their parents, and these were thus brought to come and be spectators of
his conduct.
Imitating the example of Orpheus (the first tamer of men,) Sebastian
touched their hearts through the purest of our senses: his flute, joined
to the yet softer voice of Kara Aziek, called from their remotest haunt
the amazed and delighted savages. Thus beguiled near him, they witnessed
the comforts and the elegancies of polished life, in his own beautiful
residence; from wandering, they came to understand and to admire; and
the transition was easy from admiration to the wish of possession, and
the desire of imitation.
One by one they deserted their woods and came to dwell in his cottages;
at length they sent their children to the schools he established, in
which the most simple and useful manufactures were taught. They learned
to trust and to love him: by degrees they lost all doubt, they passed
from the extreme of suspicion, to the extreme of confidence: and soon,
as if drawn by magnetic force, the whole of the Guaymures deserted their
mountain dens, abandoned their precarious existence, crouded around his
colony, asking to be instructed in the arts of agriculture and building.
Industry like knowledge, has the property of humanizing; for the
Guaymures ceased to delight in destruction: in proportion as they
acquired the power of creating comfort around them, they became
disgusted with scenes of wretchedness; and Sebastian had soon the
gratification of beholding a people tamed by kindness, and rapidly
proceeding in the path of improvement.
The village of Cachoeira became a town; it grew into the wonder and the
boast of Brazil.
It was situated in a deep valley, embosomed among mountains covered with
forests; the gentle Cachoeira washed their feet: plantations of young
sugar-canes, maize and cotton, clothed the earth with their tender
green; domestic cattle were seen feeding in meadows of the most
luxuriant verdure; and round the lightly-constructed cottages arose
gardens, in which beauty blended with utility.
The various and brilliant flowers of that benevolent climate grew there
spontaneous: bowers of Tatai-iba and Guaiba appeared together, the
purple fruitage of the one, and the glittering leaves and variegated
blossoms of the other, mingled in the same shade.
Sometimes in summer evenings when the sun was about to set, and a
freshening spirit breathed upon the reviving sense, Sebastian and Kara
Aziek would sit under the flowery porch of their dwelling, and delight
themselves with the joyous scene.
The village, with its white buildings, (each surrounded by cultivated
ground) afforded a smiling prospect: its simple inhabitants released
from labour, were collected under the shade of their trees, observing
the sports of their children, as they pursued the gaudy insects of the
country from flower to flower. Above their heads, shining like coloured
foils in the sun and varying the spotless blue of the heavens, myriads
of birds (whose plumage has no rival in our colder skies,) were seen
flashing to and fro. Everything was magnificent, or beautiful, or
cheerful: the very reptiles gliding through the grass, partook of beauty
and glowed with living gold.
Sometimes a sudden and heavy rain would transiently interrupt their
festivity, and fall with a mighty noise alarming to those who have never
heard it before: but these fearful showers are of short continuance,
they cease as suddenly as they commence; again the veil would disappear
from the azure sky, again the scattered birds would sparkle in the
setting light; and rainbows of inconceivable magnitude and splendor,
would stretch from height to height, clasping in their gigantic arch the
dark and massy forests below.
Far remote from the depths of these pathless woods, would come the sound
of mountain-torrents and river falls which the rain had hastily swelled.
Sebastian saw not the forests of Brazil without sublime emotions: their
depth, their darkness, the immeasurable height of their trees, (whose
thick branches had been woven together since creation;) the strange and
solemn sounds proceeding from them, (to which the mind could not affix
any distinct image, but which were indeed the mixed noise of insects, of
birds, and of serpents, that dwelt among their innumerous leaves) all
conspired to arrest and fix attention.
These vast solitudes seemed to him like the impenetrable depths of time
past, and time to come: he contemplated them with similar feelings, and
often did their mysterious gloom soberize his thoughts, when the
delighted spirit of Kara Aziek had beguiled him into joyance. Then, lost
in profound reveries, he would amaze himself with comparing the
different parts of his chequered life: the years of his youth and
prosperity, those of his manhood and misfortune would pass in review
before him, and while he alternately remembered the days he had spent
amongst the nobles in Portugal, and those he had lingered out in bitter
servitude in Africa, he started to find himself thus isolated from all
that was familiar, an individual almost solitary, standing on the shore
of the broad Atlantic, teaching savages how to live, and peaceably
gliding through existence without a name, a station, almost without a
wish!
But was there not a voice within his own breast, the sound of which was
more precious to him than the loudest blast of fame? Were there not eyes
that looked on him with such fulness of love and joy that he needed no
livelier emotion?
The countenance of Kara Aziek beamed with her happy and approving heart:
she beheld her Sebastian with enthusiasm, for she saw in him at
Cachoeira, more than a King.
What palace could present so majectic a spectacle as the populous and
busy valley which his beneficence had spread with dwellings and crouded
with inhabitants? What train of courtiers, what pomp of ceremonies might
compare with the touching and sublime sight of parents and children,
husbands and wives, hanging round his steps, with thanks and
assiduities, abhorring their former brutish and desperate lives, and
owing to him all the blessings of civilization?
The savages reclaimed from their barbarous habits, and won to imitate
the social virtues by feeling their sweet effects, were led to seek
some acquaintance with their benefactor’s worship.
It was to this point Sebastian had looked for the only binding principle
capable of cementing and giving duration to the virtues they had learned
from selfish motives, but which it was necessary for them to practise
with nobler feelings, in order to deserve the name of virtuous. He
taught them the religion he believed and loved himself; but he spoke
only to their hearts, they were not yet sufficiently enlightened to
comprehend a direct appeal to their reason. He bewildered not their
just-awakening intellect by such mysterious contradictions as the
professors of popery were used to force upon their converts: it was
enough for him to place them on the right track, confident that as their
minds expanded by exercise on minor subjects, their moral and religious
views would expand also.
At first the monks adjacent, were clamorous against this heresy of the
Indians, but Don Emanuel De Castro’s authority suppressed their
murmurs, and the Brazilian Portuguese relieved from the terror which the
Guaymures formerly inspired, and benefitted by the gold of their
countryman, suffered themselves to believe that to no other form of
Christian worship would these savages have submitted.
Thus protected by the power of Don Emanuel, and assured of his
friendship, Sebastian was content to remain in exile from his country
and his throne, while Providence allowed him thus amply to fill even an
obscure sphere of usefulness. His soul and his senses had pleasures in
Brazil far superior to all they had ever enjoyed in the old world: the
sight of so many human beings rescued from the misery of ignorance,
indolence, and crime, was a never-ceasing source of satisfaction; and to
this was added the society of a tried friend, (for Gaspar had come to
Cachoeira) and the perpetual possession of her who summed up in herself
all that was necessary to complete the happiness of Sebastian: she
delighted his taste, she filled his heart.
The magnificent scenery of Brazil, its wondrous productions, and
balsamic climate, added to his enjoyments by producing a variety of
pleasurable sensations; he tasted for the first time a sweet and
tranquil happiness; tranquil because it was profound and constant in its
flow: he forgot not his kingdom, but he thought of it with less anxiety,
and knowing that his days were passed in action, he ceased to regret his
separation from other duties.
Kara Aziek’s soul dwelt in the light of his: like the beautiful planet
of night she reflected his happiness with a softened brightness. He knew
himself the source of all the blessings he witnessed around him,
therefore his feelings were animated and striking; she lived to love his
goodness, to watch the daily colour of his mind, to adapt herself to the
passing humour of the hour, to receive her bliss from the knowledge of
his, and that bliss therefore wore a tenderer and more touching aspect.
Her natural humility taught her to overlook the value of her own
character and actions; but Sebastian marked them all with fond
approbation; and often pausing to regard her as she administered to the
wants or infirmities of the aged Guaymures, he confessed to himself that
to elevate her to a throne would be to remove her from a scene in which
the most endearing virtues of her soul were exercised.
Gaspar alone preserved an undiminished thirst for his King’s
restoration: he beheld him with a devotion nearly allied to idolatry,
and in proportion as that exalted friend became absorbed in his new
duties and delighted with the pleasures growing out of them, Gaspar’s
admiration and love increased, and with them his wish to see him
re-seated on the throne of his ancestors.
He languished to have those royal virtues shine upon his own country; he
languished to have that chastened character known in its full
excellence, where it was now remembered only with a mixture of esteem
and blame. His eyes would often fill with tears, while those of
Sebastian and Kara Aziek were sparkling with amiable sympathy in the
simple pastimes of their Indians; but his heart shared in that sympathy,
and could he have dismissed this one source of repining, he too, would
have been compleatly happy at Cachoeira.
CHAP. VIII.
Time trod on down, for his step was unheard, and the months as they
stole by, glided away like so many hours: a new source of happiness was
given to Kara Aziek and to Sebastian; they became parents.
To those who know not the sacredness of such tender connexions, or who
feel not the delightful endearingness of children, the birth of an
infant seems an event of little interest; but O! who that loves to
contemplate the purest innocence under the purest and loveliest form,
the unconscious trust and dependance of infancy, the charm of its
smiles, its caresses and its slumbers, who that loves or possesses a
child can deem the mother’s and the father’s joy a trifling emotion?
As Kara Aziek wrapt her arms around her babe, she seemed to enfold it
with her whole heart; she felt as if she now possessed her Sebastian
more perfectly than before: she loved him still in his offspring, and
the idea of her own being never once mingled with this fond sentiment.
His emotion was as heart-penetrating: in one moment every regret, every
anxiety, every other thought fled from his mind; with his infant in his
arms, and his eyes alternately resting upon it and Aziek, he wanted
nothing more, here seemed the boundary of his views, here seemed the
completion of all his wishes!
When Gaspar first embraced the little Blanche, his heart overflowed at
his eyes: forgetting the prudential caution which his royal master had
long demanded of him, that of waving even in private, all forms of
peculiar respect, he dropt on his knees, and holding up the child,
exclaimed vehemently,
“Is this noble babe to grow up in obscurity?--O Sire, are we ever to
live thus, banished from our country?”
Sebastian understood the appeal which Gaspar’s agitation would not
permit him to finish; a sudden flush crimsoned his cheek, some of its
former fire kindled in his eye--he took Blanche from his friend, and
looking at her fixedly, remained for awhile in thought, then restoring
her to her mother, turned towards him:
“No Gaspar!” he said, “we shall not live ever thus; I hope to draw my
last breath in our native land, and leave there on its throne, and in
the hearts of its people, this smiling girl:--but once undone by
rashness, I will not a second time be the cause of my own ruin. The
favourable hour is not yet come; let us await it with confidence, let us
sow the seed that is to reward us in the time of harvest: my child’s
first years should pass in tranquillity and instruction.”
Gaspar grew pale; “Years!” he repeated, “What Sire, are years to pass?”
The King interrupted him: “I speak of what may, not absolutely what will
be; Providence perhaps destines otherwise, and by some fortunate change
in the politics of Europe, may open for me a path to Portugal. But
through blood, through horror, and desolation, over the breaking hearts
of thousands, never will I trample to my throne.--O Gaspar! there is a
wound in this heart of mine, not to be healed; a wound which makes me a
coward at encountering others!
“The memory of what I have brought on wretched Portugal, palsies
my arm, even as it rises to strike her oppressor; what a struggle!
what proscription! what misery would follow if prompted by
impatience,----no--speak of it no more; rely on my inextinguishable
love for the people I once protected; and be assured that _I feel the
rights of my child_.”
Gaspar recognised in the tone of Sebastian, his master and his King; he
bowed respectfully and stood silent.
Kara Aziek divining his fear of having offended, turned on him a look of
healing softness, and said kindly, “It is honourable for you both to
feel thus differently on the same subject: my Sebastian would have
spoken like Gaspar had he not been Sebastian.”
Gaspar’s crimsoned face was immediately bathed in tears, he rushed
forward, and joining the extended hands of Aziek and her lord within his
own, he kissed them vehemently and repeatedly.
From that moment the little Blanche became the object of universal
interest: De Castro contemplated her as the future sovereign of
Portugal, and every time his eye fell on her, he mused over times to
come, and lost himself in a labyrinth of anticipation and conjecture.
Gaspar spoke no more of her royal birth, but he nourished expectations
to which reason gave no sanction: his ardent fancy appointed certain
periods for the completion of certain events, and still as those periods
passed by without altering the destiny of his King, he only removed his
hopes a little further, and beguiled himself with a new delusion.
Sebastian alternately delivered up his soul to the full enjoyment of
wedded and parental love, (forgetting the world in their Elysium) or
pondered with deep solicitude on the future destiny of his child.
An adherence to our rights, is next to self-preservation the strongest
principle of our nature: this principle yet survived in the breast of
Sebastian, struggling against that excess of remorse for a past error,
which led him to acquiesce in his obscurity: to this was added the
notion of owing to his daughter the inheritance he had received from his
ancestors.
At each arrival of ships from Europe, the news they brought would render
him thoughtful and joyless, for no ray of light broke through the gloom
that enveloped Portugal. He heard fresh details of her suffering and her
abasement; he heard livelier descriptions of her tyrant’s giant power:
he learnt that France was consuming with intestine divisions in her
church and state, England waging a perpetual though vigorous contest
with jealousy abroad and malecontents at home, and Rome espousing the
cause of Philip in his war with the low countries, where the
assassination of the brave Prince of Orange, (a deed to which Philip’s
gold had bribed the murderer) left the states under the guardianship of
a youth, from whose tender years it was folly to expect wisdom.
Where then was the country that would receive, where was the potentate
that could succour a fugitive King?
These considerations frequently discussed with Don Emanuel, and
discoursed on in sweet confidence with Gaspar; were sufficient to
reconcile Sebastian to the privation of that rank and power which now he
coveted solely for his child: nay, sometimes he almost congratulated
himself on the leisure his retirement afforded for the culture of her
beautiful little body, and her inquiring mind.
With the sweetness and loveliness of her mother, Blanche inherited the
fine constitution of her father; and taught to share the sports of the
Indian children, became like them, light, agile, and healthful.
Crowned with the clustered roses of the Vruca, as she led the fairy
train of her companions, in self-invented dances under the shade of
cedars and ibiripitangas, or as sportively dragging the docile and
loving Barémel in flowery chains, she flew like a breeze over the
meadows, Sebastian joyed to trace the resemblance of his best beloved,
in that silken hair and those large dark eyes, which as yet knew but two
expressions, delight and compassion.
Kara Aziek would stand leaning on the shoulder of her husband, tenderly
noting the graceful varieties of Blanche’s infant figure, the glowing
transparency of her skin, (set off by contrast with her dusky
associates) the symmetry of her features, and those evanescent dimples
which now appeared, now vanished, about her smiling mouth. All these
were the characteristics of Sebastian; and a virtuous love was still the
first sentiment in the constant heart of Kara Aziek, her child became
dearer for resembling her husband.
It was her delight to observe in her childish mind and heart, the same
resemblance in properties and qualities: it was her aim to nourish, to
increase, to fix them.
Blanche was accustomed to hear from her infancy the eulogium of virtue,
she was accustomed to see the effects produced by goodness and kindness,
and she grew up therefore in such habits of active benevolence, that to
have seen any one live wholly for themselves, however innocently, would
have been in her eyes a sort of moral phenomenon.
The tenderness of her mother and the ardour of her father, were blended
in her character; but if either quality predominated, it was the
feminine one of tenderness.
Gaspar and Barémel were her dearest companions; at the voice of the
first she would at any time fly from her gayest pastime, to go with him
over the plantations he superintended, or to steal into some mountain
cleft, where he discoursed to her of the old world and its inhabitants.
Gaspar thought only of preparing her mind for the august station he
believed her born to occupy, and he became therefore a student for her
sake.
The history of his own country, and of all the other European kingdoms,
was now familiar to him; he collected the books which treated of their
political events, their laws and customs; he tasked his memory to
recollect whatever his grandfather and uncles had told him of the days
of Charles V. those days in which Europe was a scene of splendid but
fearful rivalry between two powerful Princes.
In the misfortunes of Francis I. he found a parallel with those of his
own sovereign, and cheering himself by hoping that like Francis,
Sebastian would one day return to his dominions, he detailed the
sufferings and the triumph of that monarch with peculiar enthusiasm.
Blanche listened, wondered, and remembered, but the more she heard, the
less she envied the lot of Gaspar’s heroes; her soul alive to pleasure
rather than to ambition, loved to diffuse itself over the beauties of
creation: she frequently forgot her lecturer in the sternest part of his
histories, while she watched the majestic motion of some tall magnolia
as the land-breeze slowly lifted its far-spreading branches, and
showered its white blossoms on every side like vegetable snows.
Her ear was entranced with music, her eye with colours; the song of
birds, and the varieties of verdure, were at all times more magical to
her than barren descriptions of gaudy courts, or frightful portraits of
warring armies. She loved Gaspar, but it was rather for the manner in
which he told his narratives, than for the narratives themselves:
affection beaming in all his looks, went at once to her infant heart,
and often did she break upon his details and banish from his mind
everything but herself, by suddenly clasping him round the neck,
uttering some endearing epithet, and printing on his cheek the pure,
the angel kiss of childish love.
Carried in his arms to the summit of such mountains as human industry
had succeeded in making accessible to human feet, she would gaze with
him on the distant sea, and hear with delight that she was one day to
cross it and to behold the happy country he described: then she would
eagerly draw a plan of their removal from Cachoeira, in which every
inhabitant was included.
The children must go because they were her playfellows, their parents
could not be left behind, else her young associates would be sad, and
the very aged people ought to accompany them also, since otherwise they
must perish for want of care and food: Barémel, dear Barémel, taught her
to feel that every other young heart would have some dumb favorite to
carry away, till at last she would multiply her companions in this
removal, so that Gaspar was obliged to confess she must have an ark
larger than Noah’s to transport the whole colony.
Blanche would then abandon the idea totally, (for curiosity was a feeble
sentiment in her breast when compared with tenderness) she loved the
good Indians, and no novelty in Europe compensated to her for the pain
of quitting them for ever.
Content with her situation, occupied and amused by turns, passionately
fond of her parents, she found no blank in the days that flowed on at
Cachoeira: innocence, gaiety, and affection, made them all charming.
Blanche had attained her seventh year, when some change was produced in
the prospects of her family.
An autumnal evening had closed a day of pastoral pleasure: it was the
birthday of Blanche, and it had been celebrated by her young playmates,
with such honors as their limited means would allow. The flowers and the
fruits which grew in their own gardens were all the offerings or
ornaments they had to spread before the child of their benefactor; but
with these they formed new bowers, and loaded mossy tables; with these
they decorated themselves, and beneath the glorious vault of Heaven
presented a scene more picturesquely beautiful than any which could be
found under the domes of man.
Tired with so many hours festivity, Kara Aziek threw herself on a couch
to enjoy the fresh air, which blowing through pendent branches of
passion-flower and clematis, that curtained an open porch, came sweet as
cooling: the risen moon shone full upon her lovely figure, illuminating
those eloquent eyes which were fixed on their dearest object. Blanche
had fallen asleep: her delicate little form partly rested on the ground,
partly leaned on the body of Barémel, who having made no inconsiderable
appearance in the fairy revels, was like his mistress profusely adorned
with flowers, and full as weary.
Everything within, was still; everything without, was tranquil. Nothing
was heard, save the monotonous and plaintive hum of swarms of Brazilian
bats, which instead of disturbing, induced repose.
Sebastian sat by the couch of Kara Aziek, wrapt in a tender trance of
fond contemplation; his child and his wife were equally the objects of
that sweet delight which gently warmed his heart; and the faithful
Barémel shared the admiration.--A book was in his hand; he had taken it
up to read to Kara Aziek: she reminded him of it, and opening the
volume, he read with a low, gentle voice, the following poem.
THE INDIAN ISLAND.
The sunbeams gild the waters green
That float round Borneo’s palmy shore,
And angel-forms are dimly seen
Gliding the glassy ocean o’er.
Moveless one little bark remains,
That lately skimm’d the liquid way;
Silence thro’ all her chambers reigns,
And no one chides her short delay:
Above, below, entrancing sounds
Now breathe, now ring, now sudden cease;
Then balmy mist the ship surrounds,
While all is stillness, sweetness, peace!
Again the airy voices swell!
Again the light blast sweeps the sea!
Again the balmy vapours dwell
On every wave, and every tree!
Swift shoots the bark, (unfetter’d now,)
Tho’ smooth the tide and calm the air;
Its purple sail and gilded prow,
Some power unseen, must onward bear.
Ah who is she, that lonely lies
Beneath the broad o’er-arching sail,
With panting breast and closing eyes,
With with’ring wreath, and floating veil?
Loose o’er her neck the golden hair
Like lucid moonshine softly streams;
Her glowing cheek, (etherial fair!)
Thro’ tears of tender transport beams:
For joy’s excess, o’er all her face
Hath cast a clouded sweetness dim;
Smiling she leans with languid grace,
While round her dreams ecstatic, swim:
Fixed in a trance of twilight sleep,
She hears at times the magic choir,
And scents the mists that o’er the deep
Now forward flow, and now retire.
Onward the winged vessel flies,
Till sudden in a verdant bay
It stops: while viewless being’s sighs
Waft the meridian fires away.
Umbrageous on the kissing hills
Tam’rinds and cedars mix their boughs;
And sounds are there of trickling rills,
And smell of cassia, myrrh, and rose:
Satiate with musky breath of flowers,
With luscious clove, and sandal sweet,
The hot air pants in leafy bowers
Where birds and beasts for shade retreat.
And now the virgin’s slumbers fade,
As clashing cymbals shake the trees:
Ah, ’tis not Delos, wretched maid,
That rises mid these foreign seas!
’Tis not thy dear, thy native isle,
Where green andrachnés shade the vales,
Where almonds blush, and olives smile,
And spring leads on the freshning gales!
’Tis not the distant coast of Greece
That stretches there along the main:
Lo! as the spicy heats increase,
Thou seek’st thy natal airs in vain.
Ah! never, (haply,) shall thou more
Thy parents or thy love behold;
Thou touchest now, wild Borneo’s shore;
Thou see’st the land of crime and gold!
A shadowy shape, (more heav’nly bright
Than that which opes the gates of day,)
Oft melting from her wondering sight,
Now points the fearful stranger’s way.
Thro’ citron woods, and palmy dells,
(Thick set with flowers,) where every sweet,
That scattered thro’ the wide world, dwells,
Seems there in verdant home to meet;
O’er heights with orange blossoms strewn,
By springs that gild the dipping grass,
By rocks of crystal yet unhewn,
And mines of glitt’ring gems, they pass.
High in the centre of the isle,
Where broad bananas thickly grow,
Ascends a fair, majestic pile,
Whiter than Lapland’s drifted snow:
Around its alabaster base,
Unnumber’d flowers their garlands wreathe;
There jasmine leads her fragrant race,
Carnations bloom, and roses breathe;
Above its proud, imperial crest,
Like plumed helm of giant mold,
The streaming clouds fantastic rest,
And shade its battlements of gold.
Now to the spot appointed, come,
Here stays the lovely stranger’s guide;
She flits before the stately dome,
And lo! its portals open wide.
With rainbow splendour, blinding bright,
The di’mond hall at once appears,
But sightless with that blaze of light,
The thrilling Láis only hears.
Echoes the vaulted roof above,
With voices like the turning spheres;
Such as in grotto, dell, or grove,
Came never yet to mortal ears;
While harps harmonious, ring around,
One silver flute alternate sighs;
And floating on a tide of sound,
The soul in trance celestial lies.
High piled with food ambrosial, towers
A board, whose garniture of pride
Displays each precious gem that pours
Thro’ earth’s deep gloom a tinctured tide:
There glows the sunny topaz, there
The vernal em’rald freshly smiles,
And ruby cups such nectars bear,
As Bacchus brought from Indian isles.
With flowers immortal, gaily crowned,
(Unknown to man’s obscure abodes;)
A dazzling band the feast surround;
It seems a banquet of the Gods!--
All, brighter than the starry host,
Which Hesper (monarch of the train,)
Leads o’er Siberia’s glittering coast,
When night and frost together reign!
All, fairer than a grove of palm,
When now its spring-tide leaves are on;
Or pillar’d dome in evening’s calm;
Or ocean bright’ning in the sun!
But rais’d supreme on sapphire throne,
One glorious form, unequall’d, shines;
The Genius of the burning zone,
The God of India’s woods and mines.
Dark as the olive’s deepening dye,
Yet radiant are his faultless limbs:
Effulgent, large, his lifted eye,
The hall and host immortal, dims!
It burns upon the Grecian maid,
Who like a sun-struck lily bends;
For to her startled gaze displayed
The genius from his throne descends.
Trembling she sinks, and deems that now
Before her stands the Delian God;
Such was his height and beamy brow,
When first on Cynthus’ top he trod;
Such was his voice, (inspiring sweet!)
When green Inopus’ banks among,
He first from out her deep retreat
Called Echo, with the lyric song!
Gazing, the youthful Genius hangs
Enamoured, o’er the kneeling Greek;
Then thrill’d by love’s delightful pangs,
Thus gives his kindling heart to speak.
“See here, the nymph by magic brought!
“See here, the boast of human charms!
“Can wildest wishes ask for aught
“Of fairer mould to fill my arms?
“No genii, no!--these deathless flowers
“Of rosy light, embodied air,
“That grew in Eden’s summer bowers,
“Are not so sweet, or trancing fair:
“The countless, sparkling forms that gleam,
“Or shine, or fade, or vanish quite,
“Sporting in sunny Fancy’s beam,
“Are not so perfect, not so bright.
“Then hail your Queen! for sure those eyes
“Will glow with tender bliss for me;
“Those lips repay my ardent sighs;
“That heart, my heart’s dear treasure be!”--
Raised from his head, the circlet gay
He places fondly on her brow;
Her senses fade,--she swoons away,
And fills his arms, a wreath of snow!
When back returns her trembling sight,
A soothing stillness round her spreads!
The pearly walls reflect a light
Like that which doubtful morning sheds:
No sound is near, save rustlings soft
Of myrtles waving to and fro,
And nightingales, that warbling oft
At distance, pour the plaint of woe:
Thro’ violet beds whose sweets distil,
A far-off, gliding fount she hears;
And lo! the youthful genius still,
(But prostrate at her feet) appears!
Eclipsed by tears, no more his eyes
Burn, or insufferably shine;
Faultering with fear and broken sighs,
His voice no longer rings divine.
“And have I seen thee but to love!
“And hast thou seen me but to hate!--
“Ah, that with thee in Delian grove,
“’Twere mine beloved to share thy fate!
“Ah that with thee, ’twere mine to tend
“A peaceful flock on Cynthus’ plain,
“Or bless’d with thy rare smiles, to spend
“A transient life of joy and pain!
“For this, my days immortal, given,
“My boundless power o’er Indies deep,
“My throne on earth, my rank in heaven,
“Were even then, a purchase cheap!”--
“O cease thou unknown God! or say
“By what strange magic am I here?
“Why torn from all I love away,
“And doom’d thy fruitless vows to hear?
“Art thou a God, and dost not know
“That I this withering garland wore,
“To welcome from a vanquished foe,
“The warlike youth whom I adore?
“That as his conquering gallies rode
“Majestic o’er the foamy sea,
“I hasted from the shouting croud,
“To shed the tears of ecstacy;
“And while my raised, transported soul,
“On joy’s tumultuous surge was tost,
“Strange slumbers o’er my senses stole,
“That fled but on thy fearful coast?--
“What means that cry of wild despair?
“That look of more than mortal pain?
“Why dost thou rend thy radiant hair?
“O, waft me to my home again!”
“Cease then to talk of love, or be
“Thy voice for me thus thrilling sweet;
“Thy love-expressive eyes, from me
“Thro’ softer mists, abashed retreat!
“O let me, let me fondly press
“These trembling, longing lips to thine,
“And lost in rapture’s tranc’d excess,
“Blend all thy lovely soul with mine!
“Then shalt thou share my ample throne;
“Then to my prayer incessant, given,
“Thine shall it be, yes thine alone,
“In mortal shape to range thro’ heaven!”
“Forbear! forbear!” she breathless cries,
(As now with wild, impassion’d start,
With burning cheeks and burning eyes,
The Genius strains her to his heart.)
“O, by those precious tears, that late
“Thy splendor quench’d, and seem’d to prove
“A breast incapable of hate,
“But warm with pity, as with love;
“O, by those drops of sacred dew,
“I charge thee now, this storm control!
“Death could not thus affright my view,
“Thy guilty transports stain my soul!
“Wrapt in these arms, with chastest bliss
“Oft has my blooming Phaon sighed;
“This cheek hath blush’d beneath his kiss,
“These eyes to his fond gaze replied;
“Then by the Queen of Night I swear!
“The spotless Goddess of the chase,
“Never shall god or mortal, share
“With him I love, my pure embrace!
“Betrothed to his, my wedded heart
“No time, no distance can divorce:
“At first was shot thy deadliest dart;
“Thou hast no more of equal force;”
Like a clear cloud, in which appears
The wat’ry moon or showery bow;
Shining thro’ sad yet tender tears,
She stands awhile in silent woe;
In mem’ry’s glass she sees the grove,
Where Phaon met her oft by night;
She beauteous as the queen of love,
He like the young Adonis bright,
Prone at her feet, the Genius sinks
With frantic looks of new desire;
His eye her melting beauty drinks,
His lips impassion’d sighs respire.
“Vain are thy vows! for never more
“Canst thou to Delos’ coast return:
“Thee only would I thus implore;
“For thee I languish, thee I burn!
“Eternal fires my breast destroy,
“My thoughts in strange deliriums float:
“O never can that earthly boy
“So wildly love, so madly dote!--
“Abhorrent still then take thy fate!
“Hence to a life of ceaseless fear!
“Ne’er shall thy heart’s alarm abate,
“Till that proud heart hath wished me near!”
He speaks, and instant darkness falls
Stilly and thick, o’er all things round;
Silence that virtue’s self appalls,
Succeeds to Love and Music’s sounds;
Sudden loud thunders peal on high,
Huge forests crash, and ocean raves;
While beasts of prey tremendous cry,
And Echo calls from all her caves;--
At this part of the ballad, the sudden entrance of Don Emanuel de Castro
interrupted Sebastian, and throwing aside the book, he arose to welcome
him.
CHAP. IX.
The countenance of the viceroy announced important intelligence: “What
have I to learn?” exclaimed Sebastian, eagerly advancing.
“That I am recalled:” answered De Castro. “I am now a simple individual
in Brazil. A new governor is just landed; and the same ship which
conveyed him from Spain, has brought me letters from my sister of my
Medina Sidonia: their contents make me welcome my recal as a
harbinger”--
Here Kara Aziek springing up with a blanched cheek, caught his arm,
exclaiming in a voice of alarm,
“O say not that our peaceful days are over! rouse not those thoughts,
those wishes--danger, anxiety, destruction perhaps, await--ah! my
Sebastian, thy looks tell me what I have to fear.”--
Sebastian received her trembling frame in his arms, as weeping and faint
she turned from Don Emanuel to him; she felt that his body shook with
strong emotion: he spoke not to her, but he pressed her against his
heart while his eyes impatiently searched those of De Castro. The
unusual animation he saw there, deceived him; his rapid imagination shot
away, and seized the utmost of his wishes: in breathless haste he could
scarcely articulate;
“You are recalled--a new viceroy is arrived!--Philip then is dead!”--
“Not dead, nor dying,”--replied De Castro, pained to observe the
delusion his manner had excited.
Sebastian’s cheek lost its flush, and he sunk down on the couch Aziek
had quitted, with such a deep sigh of disappointment, that De Castro
stopped.
The King recovered himself after a short struggle, and while a blush
recoloured his face, said faintly, “This is foolish in me--quite foolish
De Castro!--you see how imperfectly I have quelled my character: after
so many years of discipline, imagination and passion are as omnipotent
as ever!--Well, tell me what you have to relate of our ill-fated
Portugal.”
Kara Aziek folded her arms closely round him, in silence; as if fearful
that De Castro’s next words were to tear him from her: pale and
speechless she hung upon his looks.
“The situation of Europe, Sire!” resumed Don Emanuel, “affords for the
first time a rational prospect of hope. The Low Countries still wage
successful war against Philip; their young Prince Maurice proves himself
worthy of his father; England has openly declared against Spain; the
grand armada of Philip has been destroyed on her coast, and she
threatens to attack his shores in return. Henry of France has been
assassinated!--the Protestant King of Navarre is his successor. The
Catholic league thus shaken, France, England, Holland, Sweden, and the
petty states of Germany all professing the same faith with my sovereign,
all hostile to the religious opinions and political views of the
relentless bigot, may we not conclude, that to seat a protestant prince
on the throne of Portugal will be considered by them as an act of sound
policy?”
Don Emanuel paused, and his temperate eyes met the fixed ones of
Sebastian; how much was in them!--Animated by their kindling expression,
he went on.
“These are the hopes which make me hail my recal: I shall be enabled to
ascertain the situation, and to feel the pulse of the Portuguese. After
satisfying myself on these points, it is my intention to pass into
England or into France, as circumstances may direct; and there, should
my sovereign approve the bold design, I may unfold the plan of a
quadruple alliance between the four Protestant powers, which could not
fail of crushing the general tyrant, and giving peace to Europe.--O
Sire! might I but live to be instrumental in bringing you back to your
people; might I but live to see a Portuguese Prince wear the crown so
long usurped by the very fiend of intolerance, I should think my life
nobly filled up, and its duties done.”
As De Castro spoke he bent his knee to the earth, and kissed the hand of
the King: Sebastian raised him.
“Excellent De Castro!” he said, “I have not words to thank you;--here is
one that should thank you too, but love makes a coward of her.--What
fear you, my Aziek! (he said, fondly turning to her, and resting his
lips on her pale cheek,) I am with you--now and for ever with
you:--alike inseparable in danger or obscurity, in weal or woe, in life
or death!”--
The look, the voice, the words of her Sebastian went at once to the
heart of Kara Aziek; she burst into a passion of tears, exclaiming, “Ah!
let me ever have thee here--here in these arms!--I ask but to share thy
fate, not to oppose thy duties or thy wishes.”
“I will have none in which you do not willingly share, my Aziek!”
replied Sebastian, tenderly smiling on her, “be assured that the first
object still in this heart, is thyself, the next our child; but my first
duty is to my country.--Allow me then to risk something for her sake, at
least not to turn aside from the favourable avenue thus suddenly opened
to me by the hand of Heaven itself?”
“And what wouldst thou do, my Sebastian?” asked Kara Aziek, yet clinging
to his arm; “wouldst thou quit Brazil, embark in a perilous enterprize,
and put thy wife, thy child, thy very existence to the hazard?”
This question caused Sebastian to pause and consider what course was
best to pursue. De Castro ventured to suggest some arguments against a
precipitate confidence in any European power, and those arguments being
enforced by the conclusions of Sebastian’s own mind, wrought him to
confess that prudence commanded him to remain in South America.
Till secure of being acknowledged, received, and supported, either by
France, England, or the Netherlands, it would be madness in him to
abandon the peaceful retirement in which he lived; and distant as was
Brazil, still it was better to remain there unsuspected, than to wander
in disguise and apprehension from realm to realm.
Political bodies do not move with the rapidity of natural ones;
consequently a voyage to and from Brazil might be made if required,
without delaying the execution of any grand blow: De Castro’s secret
mission might be diffusing itself through the different courts, till a
moment arrived in which policy would demand the decisive act of
Sebastian’s personal appearance.
In discussion and consultation half the night was consumed, and on the
morrow Gaspar was sent for to take leave of the late viceroy.
No sooner did that faithful friend hear the momentous events which
seemed conducting his King to the point for which he languished, than he
gave way to the wildest joy, and offered Don Emanuel to accompany him if
needful, to the remotest corner of Europe.
Still more endeared by these testimonies of attachment, Sebastian would
not endure the thought of being bereaved of two friends at once; and Don
Emanuel deemed it imprudent to return home accompanied by one who might
be recollected in Portugal as the man who had asserted his sovereign’s
existence in Africa.
He now bade farewel to Cachoeira with some regret, but more presages of
future good: as he kissed the hand of Kara Aziek, she whispered in a
tremulous voice; “Adieu, Don Emanuel! justify the trust my heart reposes
in you, by thinking more of your King’s happiness, than of that
ungrateful Portugal which spurned him from her. In the name of God I
conjure you be well assured of her penitence and resolution--be
confident of the fidelity of other powers, ere you call my Sebastian
from the bosom of benevolent and peaceful enjoyment, to a scene of
contest. I have no ambition for this unconscious child.”
De Castro replied to the touching sigh with which she concluded, by a
glance full of enthusiasm; “But I have, madam!” he said, bending to
press the forehead of little Blanche, “this expansive brow must one day
wear a crown; even now, it promises to be the seat of royal virtues. You
must not tempt me into treason against my country; and treason it would
be to withhold such a treasure from her arms.”
A faint smile shone through the tears of Kara Aziek; she bent towards
her child with a mixture of pain and pleasure, for the mother was
gratified by this tender compliment.
Sebastian embraced his noble friend: his looks were unusually serious,
and by turns the colour on his cheek deepened and faded.
“You go, De Castro!” he said, “you go with our destiny in your hands.
You know my soul--you know the tender ties which render life and liberty
precious to me: once, I would have gone as gladly to death for the mere
chance of recovering my rights, freeing my people, and regaining power
to punish her oppressor, as I would have hasted to my bridal hour; but
now, these dear objects, these more precious parts of myself, in whom I
breathe, live, and enjoy, tug at my heartstrings, and make a coward of
me!”
Sebastian stopt to recover voice, for a tide of tenderness subdued him.
After a moment he resumed. “Think of them in all your actions: be just
to them, as to Portugal: let your zeal for each be equally balanced, and
then whatever be the requisitions you may demand of my domestic
security, I will implicitly comply with them. I am ready to _risk much_
for my people if they be worthy the risk; but I will not _sacrifice all_
to a capricious or ungrateful nobility.”
Kara Aziek snatched her husband’s hand to her lips, with an exclamation
of joy: Sebastian turned on her a look expressive of his soul.
De Castro gave the promise desired of him, settled the cypher with which
they were to correspond on political subjects, and taking a gracious
leave of Gaspar, was about to depart, when Sebastian called him back.
“Stay awhile, Don Emanuel,” he said, “I had forgotten to give you a
passport to Sir Anthony Shirley. This ring, for which I exchanged one
bestowed on me by my Aziek, will recall me to him as the Knight of the
Cross; and through his testimony perhaps, your romance may obtain an
accredited hearing from the Queen of England. Tell the generous
Englishman how truly, how warmly I remember him; tell him that the
memory of his noble confidence at a time when everything conspired to
make suspicion almost a virtue, will never leave my heart!
“Shirley, who knew my past abhorrence of those pure doctrines I would
now die to defend, may doubt my present sincerity; but you, De Castro,
must clear me from the imputation of deserting the worship of my
fathers, through political motives.
“Fixed for an indefinite period in this land where every Portuguese
considers me as a strange and unhallowed, though perhaps, benevolent
person, policy would have bidden me shew an excessive zeal for the faith
of Rome: instead of that, I have risked my personal safety, and have
been grievously persecuted and traversed by those severe ecclesiastics
whom your authority was not sufficient to silence.
“As it is, I expect that this alteration in my religious opinions, so
far from assisting me to my throne, will prove a bar to my progress: my
people may apprehend persecution from me.--Did they but read my heart!”
The King having paused, De Castro ventured to speak. “My voice, Sire!
shall not slumber, believe me; happily the Portuguese have been used to
respect my voice; and since they hear the same temperate profession of
our national religion, from the man who has lived above seven years in
precious friendship with his sovereign, they will learn to understand
that what he _believes_ himself, he wishes not to _force_ on
others--adieu, my honoured liege! when we meet again”--
Don Emanuel could not proceed further: he threw himself once more at the
feet of his King, who bending to raise and embrace him, repeated in a
low voice, “when we meet again! De Castro, what a volume for thought, is
there in those few words!”
Sebastian still held Don Emanuel, but he ceased to see him: his mind
fell back on itself, and plunged in a deep reverie, he remained many
minutes standing in the same fixed attitude, when the soft touch of Kara
Aziek recalled him to recollection.
Starting at the gentle pressure of that dear hand, he recovered himself
with a pensive smile, and returned the parting benediction of De Castro.
Don Emanuel’s composed features now for the first time assumed an
appearance of great emotion; his face was whiter than death, and his
words inarticulate: he looked as if suddenly overcome with a painful
presentiment.
In truth, Sebastian’s expression had excited in him some apprehension
for the fate of his purposed embassy, and the possibility of failure
pierced him to the heart: he looked at his King, and the idea that they
were never to meet again, crossed him like a horrid phantom. Again he
kissed his hands, and hurrying out of the apartments, departed for ever
from Cachoeira.
CHAP. X.
The departure of Don Emanuel De Castro might have produced an alarming
change in the situation of Sebastian, had the Spanish viceroy been a man
of rigid principles; fortunately he was otherwise.
Indifferent to matters of conscience, and wholly devoted to pleasure, he
listened at first without emotion to the representations of the Monks,
(who now hastened to influence him against their heretical countryman;)
but when they added their belief that the Portuguese settler must have
used witchcraft to humanize the Guaymures, his inattention ceased, and
he questioned them further.
De Cunha was not a character easily impressed by superstition; and
laughing at the grave assertion of the Monks, he resolved to protect the
man they persecuted. If a private individual chose to waste his fortune
and his time upon the cultivation of a savage race, why should De Cunha
interfere, since his government would be rendered less troublesome by
their continuance in peace? why should he demolish the village of
Cachoeira and drive the Guaymures back to their dens and their
barbarism, solely to oblige a set of persons whom he denominated _moral
Locusts_? While De Cunha continued to live in this world as if there
were no other, while he worshipped only distinctions and delights, what
cared he if others chose to venerate Gods, saints, or devils?
This criminal apathy to the noblest sentiment of man, was here rendered
an instrument of good, to a being of a far different stamp: Sebastian
was permitted to pursue his own plans, and having had the discretion to
send a sumptuous present to the viceroy, his gift was accepted in lieu
of personal appearance, and from that hour his existence was scarcely
remembered at St. Salvador.
Domestic happiness still spread its mild sunshine over his retired
abode: alternate occupation and rest afforded him just time to feel that
he was useful, and that he was blest. If anxious thoughts intruded, he
strove to moderate, though not wholly to stifle them.
The expanding mind of Blanche now called for increased attention: intent
on nourishing and developing her precious qualities, both parents would
have ceased to recollect that she was born to inherit a crown, had not
the conversation of Gaspar, and the letters of Don Emanuel, kept that
recollection alive.
So remote from Europe, the communications they received from thence,
were necessarily at very distant intervals; but these were always
interesting, and calculated to animate hope.
De Castro had been recalled solely through an intrigue of De Cunha’s
family, who impoverished by their relations’ prodigality, had exerted
themselves to procure for him the lucrative situation of viceroy over
the new world: being supported by Philip’s mistress they had ultimately
succeeded.
The purity and discretion of De Castro’s government placed him beyond
the reach of censure: his retired manners excited no envy; he had not a
single enemy at the court of Castille, and therefore he found no
difficulty in gaining permission from Philip to seek the
re-establishment of his health by travel into other countries.
This leave obtained, he hastened to turn it to use: he visited his
sister the duchess of Medina Sidonia, and without unvieling to them the
motive of his enquiries, cautiously learnt from her and her husband the
real state of Philip’s affairs. These were not so flourishing as rival
potentates imagined.
Discontent at his long and wasteful, and unjust war with the
Netherlands, began to pervade his own dominions: the cruelties of the
Duke of Alva, were truly considered to have their origin in his
commands; and now from fearing their sovereign, his people began to hate
him.
The Portuguese were unanimous in abhorring a tyrant whom some of them
had assisted in seating on their throne; but repentance availed not;
they were shorn of their strength, and like the self-ruined Sampson,
were destined to behold their own degradation, with the poignant
conviction of owing it to their own imbecility.
De Castro staid not longer in Portugal than was necessary to revive
amongst some of the most spirited, a hope that Don Sebastian yet
existed. In secret, and with the utmost caution, he confided to a chosen
few, his belief of their master’s safety; but further than this, he
deemed it impolitic to proceed: the first step was to rouse them from
despair, the next should be to point out an animating ground for
expectation.
Having made the tour of Portugal, and singled out such persons as he
thought fitted for his purpose, and faithful to their country, he passed
into Italy, where he wearied out suspicion, by travelling from place to
place, as if solely led by curiosity, or in search of health.
Nothing was more common than noblemen travelling incognito,
consequently, no one expressed surprize when they heard that Don Emanuel
De Castro made his tour under a feigned name, and with a small suite.
Near a fishing town on the coast between Italy and France, he fixed
himself during several months: unknown and unobserved he dispatched from
this place a couple of trusty friends, to whom alone he had confided the
absolute existence of Don Sebastian.
Texere, an enlightened and liberal priest of the Romish church, went for
England; while Don Juan De Castro (a cousin of Emanuel’s) procured
admission into France, and penetrated even to the presence of Henry
himself.
Don Juan’s mission was to gain over the French King, and to convince him
of the policy of entering into a confederacy with England and Holland,
for the restoration of a monarch whom now the same faith would bind
closely to their future interests: father Texere was to insinuate
himself into the favour of those who governed the English Queen, and by
magnificent promises to them, insure her efficient assistance: another
emissary was sent into Holland, where Prince Maurice swayed at will the
hearts of his countrymen.
The progress of these agents was slow and wavering. In England the Earl
of Leicester (who then guided the councils,) acted with cold and narrow
policy: this policy looked not beyond its own immediate interests,
treating as visionary all solicitude for the rights of a sovereign no
longer able to throw a weight in the scale of Europe.
He considered, and calculated, and scrutinized so much, that he suffered
the time for action to escape; and secretly discrediting the report of
Texere concerning the new opinions, and altered character of Don
Sebastian, he habituated himself only to think of Don Sebastian’s
restoration as an act which would reseat a madman.
Sir Anthony Shirley was yet in Persia: no other courtier had equal
influence with Leicester, and forced to bear with all his caprices,
Texere wore away month after month in continual negociation, which still
produced nothing decisive, and which not even the urgent letters of De
Castro could bring to a point.
Don Juan was better received, though with less prospect of benefit, by
the amiable King of Navarre. Henry heard with extreme sensibility the
story of his royal kinsman; he even shed tears: but what availed his
sympathy or his zeal? he was himself struggling against one half of his
subjects, whose religious animosities threatened him with destruction;
and alternately conquering or conquered, without treasures, almost
without authority, it rather became him to seek the protection of others
than to stand forth the champion of Don Sebastian.
All that Juan could obtain or reasonably ask, was the promise of
assistance, whenever France should have acknowledged her lawful King.
In the Netherlands Prince Maurice also was hotly contending against the
arms of the Duke of Alva:--unless encouraged by France and England, and
aided by the insurrection of Portugal, he feared to animate the fury of
his invaders by a rash declaration in favor of the Protestant Prince,
and therefore frankly confessed, that the only service in his power was
that of continuing to employ the stoutest troops of Spain.
These negociations proceeded not with the rapidity of ordinary affairs:
sometimes they ebbed, sometimes they flowed; the events of one day would
accelerate their motion, the changes of another, suspend them
altogether.
Time passed, and so long was the period, that the inhabitants of
Cachoeira nearly abandoned expectation: they heard from De Castro of his
attempts, his risks, his mortifications, his suddenly raised, and as
suddenly blasted hopes, his busy goings hither and thither, his narrow
escapes of discovery, and all the long et ceteras of an important and
concealed mission.
They heard this at first with lively emotions that corresponded only too
faithfully with his own: but by degrees anxiety became exhausted,
frequent disappointment broke the spring of hope, and each in secret
resigned themselves to a life of retirement in Brazil.
Bitter were the tears shed by Gaspar whenever he pondered over such a
prospect: but he dared not interrupt by his complaints that serious calm
which Sebastian had succeeded in diffusing over his feelings: he wept
alone, or in company with the young Blanche, who compassionated his
sadness, though she knew not the cause.
Ships from Europe came to St. Salvador twice a year: their arrival
uniformly produced great agitation in Sebastian and Kara Aziek: the
former anticipated the news they might bring, with ungoverned eagerness,
the other dreaded to learn them, lest they should call her husband into
danger. But on each, the same cause produced the same effect: it gave
them a habit of trouble and anticipation; it destroyed that delightful
serenity, that tranquillity of the soul, which reflects in all their
beauty the various images of surrounding happiness: they no longer
moved through the paradise they had created, with looks that said, “here
is our world;” care and disquiet sat on their brows, and plunged in
frequent reveries, they gave evident proof of having deeper interest far
away.
It was from observing this change in Kara Aziek, that Sebastian first
learnt to note the alteration in himself: that instant he decided on his
course.
He ceased to talk of Portugal and De Castro, he called on his family to
follow his example, and courageously striving to restore his mind to
that self-commanding state from which he had suffered it to be driven,
he resumed his former occupations with his former energy.
Again smiles and pleasures appeared at Cachoeira; again the beautiful
Blanche led the gay dance under her favorite trees; again she decorated
with flowers on each returning day of her birth, the loving Barémel, now
grown old and indolent. Meanwhile, the hopes of her parents, though
chastised, were not annihilated; the letters of De Castro still informed
them that his zeal was untired, and that, although adverse political
events might delay their wishes, he yet believed that all would prosper
at last.
Even Gaspar began to reconcile himself to these languid expectations,
when he was one day summoned to the presence of his friend and King.
Sebastian was standing alone with an opened letter in his hand; the
contents of which had evidently taken the colour from his cheek: never
before had Gaspar seen him so pale.
He raised his eyes on the entrance of the latter, and said in a low
voice, “Gaspar, you must support me--my heart will not have strength of
itself--such a sacrifice is demanded! all-gracious God! must I
acquiesce?”
Sebastian stood with his clasped hands raised to his head, though that
was bent down with the air of one whom the prospect of some impending
misfortune has completely subdued.
“What means my liege?” exclaimed Gaspar, “what sacrifice is demanded?”
“My child!--my child Gaspar!” interrupted Sebastian, fixing a wild look
on him, then instantly turning away: Gaspar spoke not; bewildered by the
many conjectures to which these few words gave rise, he stood silent.
Meanwhile Sebastian recovered.
“They would have my daughter in their hands;” he resumed.
“Of whom do you speak sire?”
“Of the English:” replied the King, “ere they will attempt aught for
Portugal, they must have a hostage in their possession, a gaurantee of
my good faith: De Castro in his zeal, had named my daughter, and it is
her they demand. O Gaspar, how shall I tear her from her doting mother?”
Relieved by this imperfect explanation, Gaspar found voice to inquire
more particularly. Sebastian shewed him the letter from Don Emanuel;
its contents were unusually important.
Disgusted with the timidity of Henry IV. and alarmed by his secession
from the Protestant interest, England began to cast an anxious eye on
every Prince of her own complexion in religion and politics: it was now
therefore that the agents of Sebastian obtained from her a favourable
hearing.
Leicester was dead, and his place in the heart of Elizabeth, was filled
by the young Earl of Essex, then the idol of the court, the camp, and
the city: his generous soul was touched by the affecting narrative of
father Texere.
Yet new in cabinets, and too benevolent for a system of mere policy, he
embraced the cause of a suffering King, with all the ardour of youth: he
led Texere to the Queen; and refusing any other discussion of so
delicate and sacred a subject, called on her to determine at once, for
justice and Don Sebastian.
Elizabeth was not so much the lover as to yield implicitly to this
importunity; she was the wily and the wary Elizabeth still: and it was
not till she had canvassed and balanced all the political advantages and
disadvantages of such a step, that she expressed her willingness to join
in the attempt of reinstating her royal supplicant on his throne.
Caution directed her discourse: she represented the necessity of
acquiring the support of other protestant Princes, whom she undertook to
sound through her agents at their courts; and she insisted on seeing Don
Emanuel De Castro himself, from whose lips alone she would accept those
promises she determined to exact on the part of his King.
Don Emanuel made no hesitation of immediately crossing to England: he
left his residence in Italy, began to travel, and suddenly affecting to
be sent for by a sick relation, who commanded one of the Portuguese
forts in Africa, he dismissed his household, and attended only by one
trusty domestic, passed in disguise from a neutral port to that of
London.
His reception at the British court was as flattering as his wishes:
satisfied with her policy, and warmed by Essex into some interest for
the fate of a monarch whose impetuous yet amiable character so nearly
resembled his own, Elizabeth met De Castro with an air of perfect
sincerity. The downfal of Philip rather more than the restoration of
Sebastian, was in her thoughts, but equity and religion alone were on
her tongue.
Having questioned De Castro upon the situation of his royal master, she
discovered that he was a husband and a father; though in what quarter of
the globe he lay concealed, not even her subtle art could penetrate.
This one reserve Don Emanuel deemed it a duty for him to insist on
preserving.
Pleased with the information thus obtained, as it afforded her the means
of security against ingratitude, she peremptorily told De Castro, that
unless the Princess of Portugal were put into her hands, she would not
draw a sword in her father’s cause.
At first, Don Emanuel was shocked; and conscious of the anguish such a
requisition would inflict upon Kara Aziek, ventured to propose himself
and his cousin as hostages for the fulfilment of any treaty she might
conclude with Don Sebastian.
Elizabeth was inflexible: and Essex, whose quick imagination had already
transported him from the projection of their enterprise to its happy
completion, and who saw therefore, but a span of time between the two
periods, joined his persuasions; representing the candour and dignity
of such a proceeding; assuring Don Emanuel that the moment in which he
welcomed Blanche to an English shore, should see him bind himself to be
her knight, her friend, and her protector.
Don Emanuel required some days to consider of his proposition: the
consideration cost him much disquiet. To separate Blanche from parents
to whom she was everything, seemed an act of absolute barbarity; yet to
lose the only rational and substantial prospect of regaining her rights,
by a want of firmness to endure unavoidable privations, appeared equally
criminal. It is true, Elizabeth had proposed the pleasing expedient of
leaving the pretty hostage still in her parents’ hands: but then those
parents must come with her to England, and accept an asylum there.
De Castro’s blood ran cold, when the dismal fate of Mary Stuart crossed
his memory: she too, had come for succour and for comfort; she too, had
been invited, caressed, and outwardly commiserated; but she had
languished out her youth in a prison, and terminated her sorrows on a
scaffold.
It was evident to him, from the looks and language of Essex, that his
thoughts had been similar, at this part of their discourse; and De
Castro therefore decided, that if policy enjoined Elizabeth to secure a
hostage for the fidelity of Sebastian, the same prudence required him to
preserve the father of Blanche, in order that his existence might act as
a check upon Elizabeth’s selfish views.
These reflections determined him; and he was on the point of hastening
to inform her majesty that he would signify her desire to his royal
master, when he heard that Sir Anthony Shirley was returned from Persia.
Taking this event as a favorable omen, the zealous De Castro lost not a
moment in procuring admission to him.
The ring confided to him at Cachoeira, was his passport: Shirley saw it
again, with an emotion of joy, honourable to his character.
“Then I hear of him at last!” he exclaimed, “where is he? what fortunes
have befallen him since we parted at the court of Schah Abbas?--how many
times have thoughts of him kept these eyes from sleep!”
“If I am to answer any, or all of these questions,” replied Don Emanuel,
with his usual stately yet sweet seriousness, “you must first assure me
Sir Anthony that the fortunes of my noble friend are sufficiently
interesting to you, to make you chearfully assist in repairing them?--at
this moment he claims, and I demand for him, the support of every loyal
heart.”
“He may command mine to the gates of death,” exclaimed Shirley: Don
Emanuel resumed.
“In those sleepless nights you speak of, did your thoughts never
conjecture who the Knight of the Cross might be?--did your thoughts
never start at your own imagination, deeming that suspicion romantic
which this period will shew to have been correct?--Surely Sir Anthony,
your eyes, accustomed to see the brightness of majesty--”
Shirley interrupted him: “Almighty God! then it is the King of Portugal
of whom we talk.”
By an instantaneous impulse Don Emanuel opened his arms without
speaking, for he was deeply affected, and Sir Anthony, impelled by the
same feeling, exchanged an embrace with him, which plighted their faith
to each other in the same cause. After this, De Castro opened himself
without reserve to the confidence inspired by Shirley.
Astonishment, pity, and admiration, kept the latter suspended during the
course of this recital: never in his life had he been so moved; and when
he heard that one faith, as one love, united the two hearts he prized so
much, some tears trickled down his cheek.
Shirley’s evidence respecting the perilous situation of Persia, tended
to heighten Queen Elizabeth’s respect for the character of Sebastian,
and by his advice De Castro no longer delayed acquainting her with his
intention of dispatching a pressing letter to Brazil, which he doubted
not would produce the effect they wished.
In this letter De Castro had suggested every thing necessary for the
safe conduct of Blanche to Europe: he advised placing her under the
protection of Gaspar, whose love for her was almost paternal; with him
she might proceed to Sicily, where the Duchess of Medina Sidonia had
just gone to take possession of an estate left her by an Italian
relation.
This favourite sister of De Castro’s, already warm in their cause, would
joy to receive the legitimate heiress of her native country, and Don
Emanuel engaged to be at Messina, as her escort into England.
Cautious himself, De Castro did not chuse that his young charge should
make direct for any British port; since it was impossible to foresee
what changes might have taken place in the period that must elapse
between the writing of the present letter, and the arrival of Blanche.
Such were the momentous details contained in the packet from Don
Emanuel, which he had warily transmitted through a neutral vessel to
Messina, and thence to Brazil: the perusal of them caused a conflict in
the heart of Caspar. He would have exulted had he not seen the friend
and master whom he idolized, a prey to extreme grief.
Sebastian was indeed suffering in idea, all the pangs of parting from an
only and beloved child; and while he fancied the tears and cries of her
yet dearer mother, his hardly-earned philosophy deserted him at once.
It was necessary that Caspar should now forget that he was his King, and
think of him merely as a man struck and enfeebled by sorrow, he
ventured to enter fully on the important inducements to the separation
they dreaded; and explaining every motive more distinctly than De Castro
could take time to do, he succeeded in recalling Sebastian to a sense of
his daughter’s interest, and his people’s claims.
After a long discussion, the sad father exhorted Gaspar to a temporary
silence on the subject of their discourse, and requesting to be left
alone, shut himself into his apartment to ruminate on the arguments to
which he had been listening.
END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
J. M‘CREERY, Printer,
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