she sighed:  ’Blessed Virgin!’—­and lo! at these words her face grew pale, her eyes closed, and she fell to the ground as one dead.  This was not the first time that such a spectacle had been seen in the harem.  Everyone of the damsels brought thither generally commenced with a fainting-fit.  The slave-girls immediately came running up to her, rubbed her body with fragrant unguents, applied penetrating essences to her face, let icy-cold water trickle down upon her bosom—­and all was useless!  The damsel did not awaken, and lay there like a corpse till the following morning—­in fact, she never stirred from the spot where they laid her down.  Next day the Padishah again summoned her to his presence.  He spoke to her in the most tender manner.  He gave her all manner of beautiful gifts, glittering raiment, necklaces, bracelets, and diamond aigrettes.  The slave-girls, too, censed her all around with stupefying perfumes, bathed her in warm baths fragrant with ambergris and spikenard, and gave her fiery potions to drink.  But it was all in vain.  At the name of the Blessed Virgin, the blood ceased to flow to her heart, she fell down, died away, and every resource of ingenuity failed to arouse her.  The same thing happened on the third day likewise.  Then the Sultana Asseki’s wrath was kindled greatly against her.  She declared that this was no doing of Allah’s as they might suppose.  No, it was the damsel’s own evil temper which made her pretend to be dead, and she immediately commanded that the damsel should be tortured.  First of all they extended her stark naked on the icy-cold marble pavement—­not a sign of life, not a shiver did she give.  Then they held her over a slow fire on a gridiron—­she never moved a muscle.  Then they sent and sought for red ants in the garden among the puspang-trees and scattered them all over her body.  Yet the girl never once quaked beneath the stings of the poisonous insects.  Finally they thrust sharp needles down to the very quicks of her nails, and still the damsel did not stir.  Then the Sultana Asseki, full of fury, seized a whip, and lashed away at the damsel’s body till she could lash no more, yet she could not thrash a soul into the lifeless body.”

“By Allah!” cried Halil, smiting the table with his heavy fist at this point of the narration, “that Sultana deserves to be sewn up in a leather sack and cast into the Bosphorus.”

“Why, ’tis only a tale, you know,” said Guel-Bejaze, stroking mockingly the chin of worthy Halil Patrona, and then she resumed her story.  “The Sultan commanded that Irene should be expelled from the harem, for he had no desire to see this living corpse anywhere near him, and the Sultana gave her as a present to the Padishah’s nephew, the son of his own brother.