The King Of The Mountains Part 14

"Certainly."

"They did not take from you your rings and your ear-rings?"

"No, Monsieur le Capitaine."

"Will you be good enough to give them to me?"

"Give you what?"

"Your rings, your ear-rings, the silver traveling case, two watches and the sum of three hundred francs."

Mrs. Simons cried out: "What! Monsieur, you would take from us the articles the bandits returned to us?"

The Captain replied with dignity: "Madame, I must do my duty."

"Your duty is to despoil us?"

"My duty is to collect all the articles for necessary conviction in the trial of Hadgi-Stavros."

"He will then be tried?"

"Since we have taken him."

"It seems to me that our jewels and our money would serve nothing, and that you have sufficient testimony to hang him. First of all, he captured two Englishwomen; what more is necessary?"

"It is necessary, Madame, that the forms of justice be observed."

"But, dear sir, among the articles which you demand there are some which I prize highly."

"The more reason, Madame, to confide them to my care."

"But if I had no watch I should never----"

"Madame, it will always give me pleasure to tell you the hour."

Mary-Ann observed in her turn that it was disagreeable to her to be obliged to give up her ear-rings.

"Mademoiselle," the gallant Captain replied, "you are beautiful enough not to need jewels. You can do better without gems than your gems can do without you."

"You are very good, Monsieur, but my silver dressing case or necessaire is an indispensable article. What one calls a necessaire is a thing with which one cannot dispense."

"You are a thousand times right, Mademoiselle. So I beg of you not to insist upon that point. Do not add to the regret with which I have already legally despoiled two so distinguished persons. Alas!

Mademoiselle, we military men, we are the slaves of orders, instruments of the law, men of duty. Deign to accept my arm, I will do myself the honor of conducting you to your tent. There, we will proceed to the inventory, if you will be good enough to permit it."

I lost not one word of this conversation, and I kept silent to the end; but when I saw this rascal of an officer offer his arm to Mary-Ann in order to politely plunder her, I became enraged, and I marched up to him to tell him what I thought of him. He must have read in my eyes the exordium of my discourse, because he threw a menacing look at me, left the ladies at the staircase of their chamber, placed a sentinel there, and returned to me, saying:

"Between us two!"

He drew me, without adding a word, to the rear of the King's cabinet.

There, he seated himself before me, looked me straight in the eyes, and said:

"Monsieur, you understand English?"

I confessed my knowledge. He added:

"You know Greek, also?"

"Yes, Monsieur."

"Then, you are too learned. Do you understand my G.o.dfather, who amuses himself recounting our affairs before you? That is of no importance to him; he has nothing to hide; he is King, he is responsible to no one but himself. As for me, what the devil! put yourself in my place. My position is delicate, and I have many affairs to manage. I am not rich; I have only my pay, the esteem of my chiefs, and the friends.h.i.+p of the brigands. A traveler's indiscretion might cost me my promotions."

"And you count on the fact that I will keep your infamies secret?"

"When I count on anything, Monsieur, my confidence is rarely misplaced.

I do not know that you will leave these mountains alive, and yet your ransom may never be paid. If my G.o.dfather would cut off your head, I should be satisfied you would not talk. If, on the contrary, you should return to Athens, I counsel you, as a friend, to keep silent about what you have seen. Imitate the discretion of the late Madame la d.u.c.h.esse de Plaisance, who was taken captive by Bib.i.+.c.hi and who died ten years later without having related to any one the details of her captivity. Do you know a proverb which runs: "The tongue cuts off the head?" Meditate seriously upon it, and do not put yourself in a place to exactly verify it."

"The menace----"

"I do not menace you, Monsieur, I am a man too well brought up to resort to threats, I warn you! If you should gossip, it is not I who would avenge myself. All the men in my company adore their Captain. They are even more warmly interested in my interests than I am myself; they would be pitiless, to my great regret, to any indiscreet person who had caused me any trouble."

"What do you fear, if you have so many accomplices?"

"I fear nothing from the Greeks, and, in ordinary times, I should insist less strongly on my orders. We have, among our chiefs, some fanatics who think that we ought to treat bandits like Turks; but I have also found some who are on the right side, in case it came to an internecine struggle. The misfortune is that the diplomats would interfere, and the presence of a stranger would, without doubt, injure my cause. If any misfortune happens to me through you, do you see, Monsieur, to what you would be exposed? One cannot take four steps in the kingdom without meeting a gendarme. The road from Athens to Piraeus is under the vigilance of these quarrelsome persons, and accidents frequently occur."

"It is well, Monsieur; I will reflect upon it."

"And will keep the secret?"

"You have nothing to ask of me and I have nothing to promise. You have advised me of the danger of being indiscreet. I accept the advice and I will refrain from speaking of it."

"When you return to Germany, you may tell whatever you please. Speak, write, publish; it is of no importance. The works published against us do no harm to any one, unless, perhaps, to their authors. You are free to relate the adventure. If you paint, faithfully, what you have seen the good people of Europe will accuse you of traducing an ill.u.s.trious and oppressed people. Our friends, and we have many among men of sixty, will tax you with levity, caprice, and even of ingrat.i.tude. They will recall that you have been the guest of Hadgi-Stavros and mine; they will reproach you with having broken the holy laws of hospitality. But the most pleasing thing of the whole will be, that no one will believe you.

The public will place no confidence in seeming lies. Try to persuade the c.o.c.kneys of Paris, of London, of Berlin, that you have seen a Captain of the standing army, embraced by a chief of banditti. A company of choice troops acting as guards to Hadgi-Stavros' prisoners, in order to give him the opportunity of capturing the army coffers! The highest State functionaries founding a stock company for the purpose of plundering travelers! As well tell them that the mice of Attica have formed an alliance with the cats, and that our sheep take their food from the wolves' mouths! Do you know what protects us against the displeasure of Europe? It is the improbability of our civilization. Happily for the kingdom, everything which will be written against us will be too unnatural to be believed. I can cite to you a little book, which is not in praise of us, although it is accurate from beginning to end. It has been read, somewhat, everywhere; in Paris they found it curious, but I know of only one city where it seemed true! Athens! I do not prevent you from adding a second volume, but wait until away; if not, there possibly might be a drop of blood on the last page."

"But," I answered, "if I should commit an indiscretion before my departure, how could you know that I was to blame?"

"You, alone, are in my secret. The Englishwomen are persuaded that I have delivered them from Hadgi-Stavros. I charge myself with keeping up the delusion until the King's return. It will be for only two days, three at the most. We are forty kilometres from the Scironian Rocks; our friend will reach there in the night. They will make the attack to-morrow evening, and conquerors or conquered, they will be here Monday morning. We can prove to the prisoners that the brigands surprised us.

While my G.o.dfather is absent, I will protect you against yourself by keeping you away from these ladies. I will borrow your tent. You ought to see, Monsieur, that I have a more delicate skin than this worthy Hadgi-Stavros, and that I ought not to expose my complexion to the changes of temperature! What would be said, on the 15th, at the Court Ball if I presented myself brown as a peasant? I must, moreover, give those poor captives the benefit of my society; it is my duty as their liberator. As for you, you will sleep here in the midst of my soldiers.

Permit me to give an order, which concerns you. Ianni! Brigadier Ianni!

I confide Monsieur to thy care! Place around him four guards, who will watch him night and day, accompany him everywhere, fully armed. Thou wilt relieve them every two hours. Forward!"

He saluted me with ironical politeness, and humming a tune, descended Mrs. Simons' staircase. The sentinel shouldered arms.

From that instant there began for me a purgatory of which the human mind can have little conception. Everyone knows or guesses what a prison would be; but try to imagine a living and moving prison, the four walls of which come and go, recede and approach, turn and return, rubbing hands, scratching, blowing noses, shaking, floundering about, and obstinately fixing eight great black eyes upon the prisoner. I tried to walk; my prison of eight feet regulated the step to mine. I went toward the front of the camp; the two men who preceded me stopped short, I b.u.mped into them. This incident explained to me an inscription which I had often seen, without understanding it, in the neighborhood of camps: "Limit of Garrison" I turned around; my four walls turned like the scenes in a theater where a change of view is required. At last, tired of this way of promenading, I sat down. My prison seated itself around me; I resembled an intoxicated man who sees his house turn. I closed my eyes; the measured step of the sentinels wearied my brain. At least, I thought if these four soldiers would but speak to me! I spoke to them in Greek; it was a seductive agent which had never failed me with sentinels. It was clear loss of time. The walls had, possibly, ears, but the use of the voice was denied them; no one spoke under arms; I attempted bribery. I drew from my pocket the money which Hadgi-Stavros had returned and which the Captain had forgotten to take from me. I distributed it to the four cardinal points of my lodge. The somber and frowning walls changed to a smiling front, and my prison was illumined as with a ray of sunlight. But five minutes later the Brigadier relieved the guards; it was just two hours that I had been a prisoner! The day seemed long! the night, eternal! The Captain had already taken possession of my tent and my bed, and the rock which served me for a resting place was not as soft as feather. A fine penetrating rain cruelly convinced me that a roof was a fine invention; and that thatches rendered a true service to society. If at times, in spite of my unpleasant surroundings, I dropped off to sleep, I was almost always awakened by the Brigadier Ianni, who ordered a change of guards.

Finally, what shall I say? At night and in dreams I saw Mary-Ann and her respectable mother in the hands of their liberator. Ah! Monsieur, how I began to render justice to the good old King of the Mountains! How I retracted all the maledictions which I had hurled against him! How I regretted his kind and paternal government! How I sighed for his return!

How warmly did I breathe his name in my prayers! "My G.o.d!" I cried with fervor, "give the victory to thy servant, Hadgi-Stavros! Make every soldier in the kingdom fall beneath his hand! Bring to his hands the coffer, and even to the last ecus of that infernal army! And let the bandits return, that we may be delivered from the hands of the soldiers!"

As I finished this prayer, a well-sustained fire was heard in the midst of the camp. This occurred many times during the day and following night. It was only a trick of M. Pericles. In order the better to deceive Mrs. Simons and to persuade her that he was defending her against an army of bandits, he had ordered that volleys should be fired from time to time.

This pretty conceit came near costing him dear. When the brigands arrived in camp, at dawn, on Monday morning, they believed that a fight was going on with a true enemy, and they began to fire some b.a.l.l.s, which, unfortunately, touched no one.