Chapter Twenty Two
News From Home
“And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.”
The days passed on until October. Fernando saw no more of Catalina, though he still laboured in her neighbourhood; and no incidents broke his life of toil, till one day the Portuguese were sent for to the presence of the prime minister. It was part of the humiliation laid upon him that he was now and then, forced to appear in the midst of the splendid court in his slave’s dress, his hands stained with toil and fettered, as they always were, except when actually engaged in working. But spite of all this, and though his stiff limbs moved slowly and feebly, there was no air of embarrassment, no consciousness of degradation. He walked up the great hall, and looked Lazurac firmly in the face, bowing to him with the courtesy of a superior, neither shrinking nor defiant.
Lazurac burst out in sudden accents of fury.
“Now, slave,” he cried; “now you are wholly in our power. What is to prevent us from flaying you alive, beating you to death, in revenge for the perfidy of your countrymen? And now no fleets will sail to deliver you; we need fear no more from the vengeance of Portugal.”
“And why?” said Fernando, as soon as Lazurac paused.
The Moor came and stood over him, his dark face convulsed with rage, a strange contrast, with his splendid dress and infuriated aspect, to his prisoner, whose clear calm eyes were raised to his without fear or falter.
“Because the king, your brother, has died while shilly-shallying over his intentions of freeing you. Here is the news of his death, and no word of keeping the treaty. Ha! I have moved you now!”
For Fernando staggered, and would have fallen but for Lazurac’s rough grasp.
“My brother – my brother!” was all he could utter.
“Ay, there is a letter for you also; but the news is enough for you, rest content.”
“I pray you give me the letter?” said Fernando, faintly.
Lazurac laughed scornfully.
“Have you no mercy – no pity?” cried Fernando. “Offer me any insult you will, but give me the letter?”
It was the first time his calm dignity had been moved to intreaty or anger; but now he flashed out suddenly —
“You do not dare to withhold it from me? Nay, nay, I would not anger you; only give me the letter?”
Lazurac drew out the letter, with Enrique’s writing above the great black seal on the cover, and held it before his eyes.
“Kneel to me then; kneel to your master, and beg him of his favour to grant you your boon.”
Fernando drew himself up for a moment, while the other Portuguese rushed forward and threw themselves on their knees.
“Give us the letter,” they cried; “but spare this insult to our prince.”
“Rise, friends,” said Fernando, who had regained his self-control. “The shame lies not with me; and to my Master I kneel;” and he knelt, and for a moment raised his eyes to Heaven.
Lazurac flung him the letter, with a sense of gratified spite and hatred, and the prisoners were suffered to withdraw. What mattered the scene that had passed to Fernando; what mattered insult and hardship, compared to the sorrow and anguish of heart of reading of the beloved brother’s illness and death! Tears such as all his suffering had never wrong from him flowed fast as he read, and for the first time he was unable to comfort and support his followers, who all knew that a much blacker cloud had fallen on them, and that their chances of deliverance were lessened by this blow.
“My son,” said Father José, tenderly, “our beloved king suffered much grief and anxiety. We may think of him now in the rest of Paradise.”
“Grief and anxiety which I helped to cause,” sighed Fernando. “Doubtless it is well; but now, submission is hard.”
And when the prince was thus cast down, the spirits of the whole party failed utterly, and one after another fell into disgrace with their tyrants, and suffered accordingly. At last, after a second night of tears and anguish, Fernando regained the mastery over himself, and before they started on their day of toil he called his friends around him, and thus spoke —
“My friends, I think we must put hope away. It was my dear brother’s earnest wish to free us by ransom, by force, or even by the yielding of the Christian city, for which, for my part, I think our poor lives were a bad exchange. But what he could not do, our bereaved country in its hour of trial will fail to accomplish. So pardon me my share in your sorrows, my rashness first, and now that I cannot bring myself to beg our freedom at the price they ask. Could I but bear it all – could I but make in our own land such a home and rest as you deserve! But there remaineth a rest for us all, where my brother is gone before. So let us pray, my friends, that the will of the Lord may be perfectly fulfilled in us; let us in utter submission find peace at last. For there is an end to our trial, and a home from which we shall not be shut out.”
And so Fernando wholly, and the others as far as they might, gave up the restless hope of freedom, and set themselves to bear the suffering of each day as it passed, not looking to the morrow. And so there came to them in the midst of their toiling, driven lives, some still and peaceful moments, some inward consolations that carried them through.
Their lives were very monotonous, chiefly varied by the sickness of one or other, often of Fernando himself, which held them solitary prisoners in the miserable, airless lodging where they dwelt, or by a different overlooker at their toil, or a change in the part of the gardens where they pursued it. Now and then, too, they saw their old friend the Majorcan merchant, who brought them little comforts; on which occasions Fernando’s appetite was often found to fail, and he would beg some other to take his share.
They had very little opportunity of intercourse with the other slaves, by whom a chance word or look from Fernando was highly valued; but since the Moors were not all fiends incarnate, Fernando’s faultless life and ready performance of all that was allotted to him won him some favour from his masters, and with some of them a little courteous intercourse. Their lot, with its toil, squalor, and hardship, was bad indeed, but endurable when not made worse by wilful cruelties.
Soon after the news of the king’s death, Fernando and Manoel, alone of their party, were digging out the ground for some new fountains in the ladies’ garden. Their overseer was a certain Hassan, the mildest of his race, and he was superintending the other prisoners at a little distance, sitting cross-legged on a bank, smoking his hookah.
Princess Zarah and her maidens were seated at some distance, watching the alterations. Manoel worked slowly, and paused often for breath.
“Rest, now,” said the prince, “there is nothing to do here but what I can finish easily.”
“I would gladly save your highness from doing one stroke of it,” said Manoel, wearily; “but sometimes I think, sir, my sorrows are nearly over.”
“If so, dear lad,” said Fernando, with a smile, “the rest of us might envy you; sorely, as I, at least, should miss your face.”
“But for you, my lord, I could not have held out so long,” said Manoel, as, weak and faint, he sank down on the ground. The prince raised him in his arms, and looked round for help.
“Princess! princess!” said Leila, who was stringing beads for her mistress, “one of the slaves is fainting.”
“It was very stupid of Hassan not to send men who can do their work. He should whip them when they are idle,” said Zarah, indolently.
“Oh, princess! let me take him water; he will die!” cried Leila.
“If you like,” said Zarah, putting a sweetmeat between her lips.
Leila seized a jar of water, and some fruit and bread, and came towards the prisoners. She looked frightened and shy; but held out the jar of water to Fernando, who bathed Manoel’s face with it.
“He does not revive,” said the girl.
“Yes! his eyes open! – Manoel, dear friend!”
But as Fernando looked in his face, he saw that the last hour was come, and Father José far away on the other side of the gardens. He laid Manoel down, with his head on a heap of turf, and kneeling beside him, made the sign of the cross over him, and repeated the Pater Noster, while a smile of peace passed over the face of the dying boy.
Beside them knelt Leila, brought there by her sweet impulse of pity. She clasped the cross still hanging within her dress, and the long-forgotten words of the prayer taught in her childhood rose to her lips. The words were hardly said, Fernando bent down to kiss Manoel’s brow, when the end came, and with a long, gasping sigh, one prisoner was free.
“He is at rest,” said Fernando, in thankful accents, though his lips quivered as he thought how much he should miss the special love which this poor boy had borne him.
Leila stood trembling beside him, hardly knowing that she looked on death, and Hassan, seeing something amiss, came hurrying down to them, and not unkindly summoned some of the other Portuguese to bear away their comrade, allowing Fernando to follow, while he called other slaves to finish their work.
Leila was surrounded by her companions, who pressed her with a thousand frivolous questions, more amused at the exciting incident than horrified at it.
Leila shrank away from them, and as soon as she found herself alone, sat down under a tree and tried to think – tried to remember.
Long ago a strange pang had shot through her, when she had recognised in the toiling slaves her fellow-Christians. And the sight of Fernando had awakened in her a whole world of recollections; had made her suddenly feel, as well as know, that she was not of kin to the soft luxurious life around her – her kindred were these wretched toiling slaves – her faith should be their faith – in their sorrows she, too, ought to suffer.
Leila could not have clearly explained this to herself; she could only feel the strong impulse that twice had carried her to the aid of a Christian slave in distress. And now an odd sort of instinctive respect for the prince, who had been the hero of her babyhood, rose up in her mind. She had been taught but little religion to put in the place of the forgotten faith she had learnt with her sister so long ago; and the only result of being a Christian that could occur to her was miserable slavery. A great terror came over her, she tried to wake as from a dream, and ran back hurriedly to her companions.
Chapter Twenty Three
Loving Service
“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
A free and quiet mind doth take
These for a hermitage.”
The streets of Fez presented often a motley mixture of passengers – merchants and traders of all nations mingling with the Moorish inhabitants and with the numerous slaves.
One morning, bright with all the glory of a southern spring, a tall young man, sunburnt, and carrying a merchant’s pack, was standing in one of the chief streets watching the passers-by. First was a dark Ethiopian, heavily fettered; then several of the lower-class Moors themselves; then a pair of slender, long-limbed Italians, trudging wearily beneath a burden too heavy for them. The trader accosted them —
“Can you direct me to the lodging assigned to the Portuguese prisoners? I would speak, if permitted, with the Prince Dom Fernando.”
“Softly, Signor,” said the Italian; “it is not so we obtain speech with friends. There is the lodging for your compatriots; but all day they toil in the royal gardens.”
“That wretched hovel?” ejaculated the stranger.
“Ay, and now I recollect one of the Portuguese told me sadly, but now, that their prince was sick, so he will be within. Maybe a bribe to their warder will gain you an entrance.”
Like one in a dream, the young man moved towards the entrance of the low stone building which his acquaintance had indicated, and accosted a Moor who stood before the door.
“I am servant to Paolo, a Majorcan merchant,” he said, “who is permitted to visit the prisoners. Will the King of his grace permit me entrance?” and he dropped a purse into the warder’s hand as he spoke.
“Well, may be, if you leave your pack behind you. Who knows what it may contain?”
“Willingly, so I may take these few dried fruits to my compatriots.”
The warder sullenly unlocked the door, and ushered the young merchant into a small low room, with no furniture save a few sheepskins thrown on the floor. On one of these, in a corner, lay a figure, worn and wasted, and dressed in a torn and ragged coat of the commonest serge. His eyes were closed as if asleep, and only the delicate outline of the features, and the fair hair, still tended more or less carefully, bore any resemblance to the Infante Fernando.
“Wake! – rouse up!” said the Moor with a rough push. “House up, slave! – here’s a visitor for you.”
The prisoner opened his large blue eyes and looked up languidly.
“Just a draught of water,” he said, faintly, “for my lips are parched with this fever.”
“My prince! – oh, my prince! My lord, my lord! – oh, wretched day, that I should see this! Curses on the ruffians. Oh, my dear master!” and down dropped the young merchant on his knees, sobbing, and covering the prince’s hand with kisses.
“What! – Harry Hartsed! Not a prisoner too?”
“No, no! Alas, alas!”
“Hush!” said Fernando. “Come, good Moussa, thou knowest I am to be trusted. Withdraw but for a few minutes.”
“Well – ’tisn’t much harm can be done. I’ll get you that draught of water, since a tamer set of birds I never had in cage.” And locking the door behind him, Moussa went out.
“That man is often kind to us,” said Fernando; “but oh, Master Hartsed, what brings you here?”
“I come – I have sought your highness for months – that a word from you might right me. But oh! what are my wrongs to this? Oh, my lord! let me but share your prison, that I may wait on you and tend you. Alas, alas!”
“Nay, nay,” said Fernando, “I have no lack of loving tendance, and to-morrow I hope to be at my work again, for this is but a passing sickness, and at night my poor friends return to me. But when were you at Lisbon? My brothers! – oh, Harry, you come from home?” and the gentle eyes grew wistful, and filled with tears.
“I come not now from Lisbon,” said Harry, “and I know not what is now passing there. My lord, when you were sick formerly, you would sometimes rest on my arm – so – ”
“Thanks – thanks!”
The poor prince closed his eyes; the familiar voice and touch, unknown for so long, brought back a dream of home. Could he but sleep so, and know no waking in his dreary prison! It almost seemed for a moment as if, when his eyes opened, he should see Enrique leaning over him, and hear his loving greeting. Ah, never – never! till they met in Paradise! With a great effort he roused himself, for time was passing.
“But these wrongs of which you speak?”
Harry was silent. The boiling indignation in which he had quitted Lisbon, the rage and hate that had proved his own undoing, sank away ashamed; and it was very meekly that at length he told his tale – told of the false accusation, the quarrel with Alvarez, the anger of Sir Walter, the hasty banishment, adding, as he had never done before —
“My lord, had I been patient, it might have been otherwise with me.”
“Ah, dear friend, there is no remedy but patience for all the evils brought on us by our own rash folly. Repentance and patience. But now, have you tablets?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Then – your arm again for a moment, and I will Write – for Moussa will soon return.” So saying the prince wrote —
“I, Fernando of Avis, declare that Harry Hartsed was my most faithful friend and servant, and that no charge of treason can be proved against him, and I beg my dear brother, Dom Enrique, to look once more into the matter.”
“Go, Harry,” said the prince, “at once to my brother. And now I have a matter to tell you. I have found Catalina Northberry, Sir Walter’s lost child.”
“My lord! Where?”
“Here, in the royal palace of Fez. She is the slave of the Princess Zarah; but happy and tenderly nurtured. Alas! I know not whether escape is possible for her; but she knows her name and has a kind heart. I dare not write of her; but you might, through Paolo, obtain speech with her, and take welcome news to Sir Walter,” said Fernando, concluding with a smile.
Harry looked as if he could hardly believe in so startling a coincidence.
“But oh, my dear lord! your sufferings – this wretched place.”
“I can but thank our blessed Saviour, and those holy saints who have followed in His steps, for the grace that has been given me so to meditate on their examples, and to remember their far greater sufferings, as to bear with somewhat less repining my share in the blessed cross. For what is it that I should bear rough words, or now and then a blow, when for my sake the Lord Himself was mocked and scourged?”
“And oh,” thought Harry, with bent head, “what is it then that I should be misjudged?”
“And yet,” said Fernando, “since our dear Lord knows how weak I am, and how hard it is to hold a firm heart amid slavery and cruelty, and without those whom I love, He holds me up with such a frequent consciousness of His presence, and such a blessed sense of His goodness, as is better than freedom and friends; so weep not, dear Harry, and bid my Enrique not to weep for one who has blessings of which he is all unworthy.”
Harry could only bend down and kiss the wasted hands that held his.
“My lord, I have sinned in my fierce anger,” he said; “I see it, now I know what my prince has to bear.”
“You did always know, Harry, what was borne by the Prince of Peace,” said Fernando. “But here is Moussa; maybe we shall meet again in the royal gardens; if so, pay me no respect – treat me as a slave.”
Moussa here entered with a skin of water, with which he permitted Harry to bathe the prince’s face and hands before quitting him, as he lay grateful and smiling, with a word of thanks to Moussa for his kindness.
When Harry found himself in the free air again, he staggered as if he would faint, and, hardly recovering, hurried away out of the streets of the town into a quiet spot, where he threw himself down on the ground, able to think of nothing but of the condition in which he had found the prince. When he quitted Lisbon, full of resentment and anger, he had at once resolved to seek the prince in his imprisonment, and obtain some evidence from him of his innocence. He was far too proud to go back to England with a dishonoured name, and though he believed Nella lost to him for ever, he could not bear to think that she should be taught to disbelieve in him. He was too angry to consider that his violent quarrel with Alvarez, rather than the vague charge against him, had been the cause of his banishment. After a long series of adventures, and some hardship and difficulty, he finally encountered the good Paolo, who undertook to obtain him speech of the prince, and provided the bribe for the warder. But not all the merchant’s descriptions had prepared Harry for what he saw, and he could not recover from the impression. He hung about the place where the slaves were employed, and obtained speech of one or two of the Portuguese, who were all eager to hear a word from home. They were all more patient than the other poor slaves, and had evidently learnt something from the example of the prince, who after a day or two appeared again among them, working feebly at his humble toil; a sight that nearly drove Harry crazy.
Chapter Twenty Four
Restored
“Laila rushed between
To save – .
She met the blow, and sank into his arms.”
Thalaba.
Meanwhile Leila mused much over the death of Manoel. The dim visions of her childhood were too far away to be attractive. Even Nella, though a tender thought to her, was vague compared to the maidens by whose side she had played for years. The notion of a father was utterly strange to her – too strange to be attractive. She loved the princess, who had been on the whole kind to her, with the devotion of a loving nature; and she shrank timidly from the unknown world without the palace walls.
“To be a Christian” hardly came before her in the light of an obligation; she knew nothing of Christianity but a few words of prayer, which she did not understand, and the sign of the cross, made instinctively, to which she could scarcely attach a meaning. She was frightened by the call to become something so new and strange. Her feelings were dormant and uncultivated. She was happy enough; why should she change?
Then there rose up before her the one figure who had come to her out of the mists of darkness, the enslaved prince. Her friends oppressed him, and she thought with a shudder of the ill-treatment she had witnessed. If she was a Christian too, was it not a shame to lie there on her soft couch, to eat sweetmeats, and play with flowers, while he suffered such cruel pangs! Strange contradiction! – it was not freedom, a father or a sister’s love, that made her feel that she was a Christian, but the stripes and the fetters of her fellow-slave.
Still this was but a feeling; and this poor child was no heroine, no deliverer of her race, but a little soft, spoiled, tender creature, who had lived all her days on sweetmeats and caresses.
But a great desire possessed her to hear what the prince would say to her about that unknown world of which she had been lately thinking; and with a view to getting an interview with him, she set herself to watch the slaves as closely as possible. She soon perceived that it was a bad time for the Portuguese. The mild Hassan had been succeeded by an overseer named Jussuf, whose cruelties were frightful, and the poor prisoners could do nothing so as to escape his blows.
One day, as she stood by the garden-wall watching, with a fascination that grew every moment more painful and more intense, Fernando detached himself a little from the others, and, unobserved for a moment, rested the heavy load under which he staggered against the wall. The little gate was unfastened, for some work had been going on within; and, with sudden courage, Leila, pulling her veil over her face, pushed it open, and touched the prince’s arm.
“They are not looking. Come inside and rest,” she said.
Fernando was almost fainting; he yielded unthinkingly, and putting down his burden of heavy stones, dropped down on the grass.
“Oh, you will die, as the other slave did,” cried Leila, in terror.
“No, lady,” said Fernando, recovering himself; “this rest has revived me. I have sought to speak with you to tell you that I have been enabled to send home a message to your father, telling him of your safety; and I doubt not that he will find means to offer such a ransom as may restore you to your friends.”
Leila trembled.
“My lord,” she said, “I am afraid to be a Christian.”
“Ah, do not think,” said Fernando, “that the cross would bring on you such suffering as you see in these poor slaves; or, if so, it is in the service of a Master Who endured infinitely more for His followers.”
“Like you,” said Leila.
“Nay,” said Fernando, “yet if I could reach that likeness – ”
The prince had risen to his feet, and stood leaning against the gateway. Leila sat on the grass. She had pushed aside her veil, and was looking up at him with her clear blue eyes shining through half-shed tears. Suddenly Jussuf’s heavy hand fell on Fernando’s shoulder, striking him down to the ground again.
“Dog of a Christian! – what do you here?” he cried, striking blow after blow.
With a sudden impulse Leila rushed forward, and threw herself on her knees beside them.
“I too am a Christian!” she cried, and before Jussuf could stay his hand, the heavy blow intended for his victim, fell on Leila’s head, and stretched her senseless on the grass.
“Coward and villain!” cried the prince, all his knightly manhood roused, as with sudden strength he sprang up, and for once returned the blow.
All passed in a moment. Leila’s screams had brought both the other women and the slaves and overseers without to the spot, and Fernando’s hands were pinioned, and he was dragged away before he had time to see whether Leila’s senses returned to her. He bitterly blamed himself for having yielded to her proposal, for the incident brought far severer restrictions on himself and his companions, and he feared much suffering on the poor maiden herself; and many were the prayers he offered that she who had been impelled to so brave a confession might not be forced into denying the Faith which she scarcely knew, and that this tender, innocent child might not have to endure such suffering as tried the uttermost strength of grown men. Leila, when she revived from the stunning blow, was dizzy and faint; but when her princess questioned her, she answered boldly, that she knew the slave Selim to be the Prince of Portugal, and that she herself was a Christian lady – she could not bear to see him beaten.
Whereat the princess angrily reminded Leila that she too was but a slave, and sentenced her to a whipping – not very severe – for her disobedience and folly. Leila was a slave, and she took the stripes as her due, and cried at their smart, then kissed her mistress’s hand, and begged for pardon; and the princess indolently forgave her, and bade her go and work at her cushion.
“But do not weep,” said she, “for Ayesha is growing prettier than you, and if you cannot laugh and sing to amuse me, I shall let Jussuf marry you as he wishes. I told him you entertained me, and I would not spare you.”
“Oh, princess!” cried Leila in an agony, “I love you; let me stay with you.”
“Well, sing then, and learn some pretty dances; you are tiresome when you cry.”
But Leila’s efforts failed to please. She was no longer a little soulless plaything. Thoughts of her distant home, of her prince’s sufferings, yearnings after that unknown Saviour, Whom he followed, filled her heart, and her eyes grew absent and her lips sad. She fretted, and her feet were less light, her voice less ringing.
“I shall let Jussuf have her,” thought Zarah; “they are not so pretty and amusing as they grow older. Ayesha is only fourteen.”
In the meantime Harry Hartsed left Fez in company with Paolo, and before many weeks were over found himself on the stormy promontory of Sagres, telling his tale to Dom Enrique himself.
There Enrique had retired, and amid plans for navigation, observations of the heavens, and constant efforts to improve the mathematical instruments with which they were carried out, endeavoured to forget the distracting disputes between Dom Pedro’s party and that of the queen. Nevertheless he was never deaf to the call of duty, and succeeded on the whole in keeping unimpaired both his brotherly love and his loyalty to his young nephew, through all the petty spite and false accusation of that miserable time.
He listened with great attention to Harry’s story, and then said —
“I think, Master Hartsed, that in the soreness of our hearts we neglected to inquire sufficiently into the vague story that so angered you. But it is ended; for a wretched soldier not long since made confession that he, and he only, was aware of the traitor’s intention on that fatal night, and being sentry, permitted him to pass the outpost. But I will come with you to Sir Walter Northberry and confirm this tale.”
“I thank you, my lord. Dom Alvarez is doubtless – is doubtless – ”
“Dom Alvarez and Sir Walter are no longer friends, since Dom Alvarez, with his family, has joined the party of the queen. Sir Walter is one of those who wish for my brother’s regency. His betrothal therefore is at an end.”
“Oh, my lord, I never hoped – I never dreamed of hearing this,” cried Harry so ecstatically, that a smile broke over the prince’s grave face.
“Well, Master Hartsed, you shall come with me to Lisbon. I offer you again a place in my household, and doubtless Sir Walter will understand how matters have sped, especially when you bring him such good news.”
“My lord, I can never thank you.”
“I ask but this, this precious writing,” said Enrique, sorrowfully, as he laid his hand on the tablet.
“Oh, my lord, is there no hope of a deliverance? I would give the last drop of my blood to save him!”
Enrique shook his head.
“Sometimes,” he answered, “I am thankful that he does not know the intrigues and the meannesses that have kept him where he is, and all the light of my life with him. Well,” added the prince, as if to himself, “he is winning a martyr’s crown, and I must do that work in the world to which I am called. But you love him.”
And with a smile of exceeding sweetness Enrique rose and held out his hand to Harry, as if that love was to be a bond between them.
He kept his word. When they came to Lisbon, he took on himself to tell Sir Walter how completely he considered Master Hartsed’s character to be cleared from the doubt cast on it. He showed Fernando’s precious writing, and prepared the father for the revelation of Catalina’s existence.
And so it came to pass that one day Nella was called away from her embroidery, and found herself once more in the presence of her old friend, and heard that he had found her lost sister.
Nella had passed but a dreary time of late; but she was of a hopeful nature, and certainly had found it hard to regret the quarrels that parted her from her unwelcome suitor. She had learned too, by the endurance of a real grief and loss, to be more patient of the rubs and the dullnesses of daily life, just as Harry had learned patience by the sight of suffering so far exceeding his own.
Both were changed from the impetuous boy and wilful girl, who had laughed and disputed little more than a year ago. But their hearts were unchanged towards each other, and Dom Enrique’s influence soon induced Sir Walter to consent to a union which ensured his daughter’s happiness and gained a faithful adherent to the Regent’s cause.
But first there was great joy at hearing of Catalina’s safety, and Dom Enrique aided Sir Walter in offering a ransom large enough to insure her freedom, and it was sent to Fez by trusty messengers. It came at the right time; Leila had been bidden to consider herself the promised bride of the terrible Jussuf, and all her tears and intreaties had availed nothing.