The moments flew with fearful speed, and pressing her tenderly to his heart, the pretended Jew had only time to resume his disguise when the Bey entered.  He saw in the face of his child a color and spirit that had not been there for months before, and delighted, he turned to the Jew to know if he had administered any of his cunning medicines, and being told that a small portion of the necessary article had been given, was overjoyed at the effect.

Being of a naturally superstitious race, the Turk heard the Jew’s proposition as it regarded the administering of his next dose of medicine beneath the calm rays of the moon in the open air, with satisfaction; for had he not already worked a miracle upon his child?  He was told that by administering the medicine once or twice at the proper moment beneath the midnight rays of the moon, he should doubtless be able to effect a perfect cure.

Satisfied fully of what he had seen and heard, he dismissed the pretended Jew with a heavy purse of gold, and bade him choose his own time, telling him also that his palace gates should ever be open to him.

CHAPTER X.

The serenade.

Beautiful as a poet’s fancy can picture, is the seraglio, a fitting home for the proud Turkish monarch, gemmed with gardens, fantastic palaces, and every variety of building and tree on its gentle slope, descending so gracefully towards the sea, spreading before the eye its towers, domes, and dark spots of cypresses like a sacred division of the city of Constantinople, as indeed it is to the eye of the true believer.

The Sultan’s household were removed at his will from the Valley of Sweet Waters hither and back again, as fancy might dictate.  Thus Komel had met her lover Aphiz Adegah here before his sentence; and here she was now, still queen of its royal master’s heart, still the fairest creature that shone in the Sultan’s harem.  Every luxury and beauty that ingenuity could devise or wealthy purchase, surrounded her with oriental profusion.  Still left entirely to herself, the same occupation employed her time, of tending flowers and toying with beautiful birds.  Sometimes the Sultan would come and sit by her side, but he found that the wound he had given was not one to heal so quickly as he had supposed, and that the Circassian cherished the memory of Aphiz as tenderly as ever.

The idiot boy, almost the only person in whom she seemed to take any real interest, still followed her footsteps hither and thither, now toying with some pet of the gardens, a parrot or a dog, now performing most incredible feats of legerdemain, running off upon his hands, with his feet in a perpendicular position, to a distance, and coming back again by a series of summersets, until suddenly gathering his limbs and body together like a ball, he went off rolling like a helpless mass down some gentle slope, and having reached the bottom, would lie there as if all life were gone, for the hour together, yet always so managing as to keep one eye upon Komel nearly all the while.