The Khas-Oda-Bashi announced that the two humblest of the Sultan’s servants, Abdullah, the Chief Mufti, and Damad Ibrahim, the Grand Vizier, were waiting on their knees for an audience in the vestibule of the Seraglio.  They desired, he said, to communicate important news touching the safety and honour of the Empire.

The Sultan had not yet given an answer when, through the door leading from the harem, popped the Kizlar-Aga, the chief eunuch, a respectable, black-visaged gentleman with split lips, who had the melancholy privilege of passing in and out of the Sultan’s harem at all hours of the day and night, and finding no pleasure therein.

“Kizlar-Aga, my faithful servant! what dost thou want?” inquired Achmed going to meet him, and raising him from the ground whereon he had thrown himself.

“Most gracious Padishah!” cried the Kizlar-Aga, “the flower cannot go on living without the sun, and the most lovely of flowers, that most fragrant blossom, the Sultana Asseki, longs to bask in the light of thy countenance.”

At these words the features of Achmed grew still more gentle, still more radiant with smiles.  He signified to the Khas-Oda-Bashi and the Kapu-Agasi that they should withdraw into another room, while he dispatched the Kizlar-Aga to bring in the Sultana Asseki.

Adsalis, for so they called her, was a splendid damsel of Damascus.  She had been lavishly endowed with every natural charm.  Her skin was whiter than ivory and smoother than velvet.  Compared with her dark locks the blackest night was but a pale shadow, and the hue of her full smiling face put to shame the breaking dawn and the budding rose.  When she gazed upon Achmed with those eyes of hers in which a whole rapturous world of paradisaical joys glowed and burned, the Padishah felt his whole heart smitten with sweet lightnings, and when her voluptuously enchanting lips expressed a wish, who was there in the wide world who would have the courage to gainsay them?  Certainly not Achmed!  Ah, no!  “Ask of me the half of my realm!”—­that was the tiniest of the flattering assurances which he was wont to heap upon her.  If he were but able to embrace her, if he were but able to look into her burning eyes, if he were but able to see her smile again and again, then he utterly forgot Stambul, his capital, the host, the war, and the foreign ambassadors—­and praised the Prophet for such blessedness.

The favourite Sultana approached Achmed with that enchanting smile which was eternally irresistible so far as he was concerned, and never permitted an answer approaching a refusal to even appear on the lips of the Sultan.

What pressing request could it be?  Why it was only at dawn of this very day that the Padishah had quitted her!  What vision of rapture could she have seen since then whose realisation she had set her heart upon obtaining?

The Sultan, taking her by the hand, conducted her to his purple ottoman, and permitted her to sit down at his feet; the Sultana folded her hands on the knees of the Padishah, and raising her eyes to his face thus addressed him: