“And who told thee that I had turned my face from thee?”

“Oh, Achmed! the Wind does not say, I am cold, and yet we feel it.  Thy heart is far, far away from me even when thou art nigh.  But my heart is with thee even when thou art far away from me, even then I am near to thee; but thou art far away even when thou art sitting close beside me.  It is not Achmed who is talking to me.  It is only Achmed’s body.  Achmed’s soul is wandering elsewhere; it is wandering on the bloody field of battle amidst the clash of cold steel.  He imagines that those banners, those weapons, those cannons love him more than his poor abandoned, forgotten Adsalis.”

The salvo of a whole row of cannons was heard in front of the Seraglio.

“Hearken how they call to thee!  Their words are more potent than the words of Adsalis.  Go then! follow their invitation!  Go the way they point out to thee!  The voice of Adsalis will not venture to compete with them.  What indeed is my voice?—­what but a gentle, feeble sound!  Go! there also I will be with thee.  And when the long manes of thy horse-tail standards flutter before thee on the field of battle, fancy that thou dost see before thee the waving tresses of thy Adsalis who has freed her soul from the incubus of her body in order that it might be able to follow thee.”

“Oh, say not so, say not so!” stammered the tender-hearted Sultan, pressing his gentle darling to his bosom and closing her lips with his own as if, by the very act, he would have prevented her soul from escaping and flying away.

And the cannons may continue thundering on the shores of the Bosphorus, the Imperial Ciauses may summon the host to arms with the blasts of their trumpets, the camp of a whole nation may wait and wait on the plains of Scutari, but Sultan Achmed is far too happy in the embraces of Adsalis to think even for a moment of seizing the banner of the Prophet and leading his bloodthirsty battalions to face the dangers of the battlefield.

The only army that he now has eyes for is the army of the odalisks and slave-girls, who seize their tambourines and mandolines, and weave the light dance around the happy imperial couple, singing sweet songs of enchantment, while outside through the streets of Stambul gun-carriages are rattling along, and the mob, in a frenzy of enthusiasm, clamours for a war of extermination against the invading Shiites.

Meanwhile a fine hubbub is going on around the kettle of the first Janissary regiment.  These kettles, by the way, play a leading part in the history of the Turkish Empire.  Around them assemble the Janissaries when any question of war or plunder arises, or when they demand the head of a detested pasha, or when they wish to see the banner of the Prophet unfurled; and so terrible were these kettles on all such occasions that the anxious viziers and pashas, when driven into a corner, were compelled to fill these same kettles either with gold pieces or with their own blood.