CHAPTER VI

Ali had long cherished a violent passion for Zobeide, the wife of his son Veli Pacha:  Having vainly attempted to gratify it after his son’s departure, and being indignantly repulsed, he had recourse to drugs, and the unhappy Zobeide remained in ignorance of her misfortune until she found she was pregnant.  Then, half-avowals from her women, compelled to obey the pacha from fear of death, mixed with confused memories of her own, revealed the whole terrible truth.  Not knowing in her despair which way to turn, she wrote to Ali, entreating him to visit the harem.  As head of the family, he had a right to enter, being supposed responsible for the conduct of his sons’ families, no-law-giver having hitherto contemplated the possibility of so disgraceful a crime.  When he appeared, Zobeide flung herself at his feet, speechless with grief.  Ali acknowledged his guilt, pleaded the violence of his passion, wept with his victim, and entreating her to control herself and keep silence, promised that all should be made right.  Neither the prayers nor tears of Zobeide could induce him to give up the intention of effacing the traces of his first crime by a second even more horrible.

But the story was already whispered abroad, and Pacho Bey learnt all its details from the spies he kept in Janina.  Delighted at the prospect of avenging himself on the father, he hastened with his news to the son.  Veli Pacha, furious, vowed vengeance, and demanded Pacho Bey’s help, which was readily promised.  But Ali had been warned, and was not a man to be taken unawares.  Pacho Bey, whom Veli had just promoted to the office of sword-bearer, was attacked in broad daylight by six emissaries sent from Janina.  He obtained timely help, however, and five of the assassins, taken red-handed, were at once hung without ceremony in the market-place.  The sixth was the messenger whose arrival with the news had caused such dismay at Ali’s banquet.

As Ali reflected how the storm he had raised could best be laid, he was informed that the ruler of the marriage feast sent by Moustai, Pacha of Scodra, to receive the young bride who should reign in his harem, had just arrived in the plain of Janina.  He was Yussuf Bey of the Delres, an old enemy of Ali’s, and had encamped with his escort of eight hundred warriors at the foot of Tomoros of Dodona.  Dreading some treachery, he absolutely refused all entreaties to enter the town, and Ali seeing that it was useless to insist, and that his adversary for the present was safe, at once sent his grand-daughter, the Princess of Aulis, out to him.