A banquet
had been prepared for her at home, and all the invited guests were
already there, but still no sign of her! And now she could see him
coming down to the sea-shore, and sweep the smooth shining watery mirror
with his eyes in every direction, and ask the sailor-men: 'Where is my
daughter? Do you know anything about her?'"
Here the eyes of the father and the husband involuntarily filled with
tears.
"Wherefore do you weep? How silly of you! Why, you know, of course, it
is only a tale. Listen now to how it goes on! The robber carried the
maiden he had stolen to Stambul. He took her straight to the Kizlar-Aga
whose office it is to purchase slave-girls for the harem of the
Padishah. The bargaining did not take long. The Kizlar-Aga paid down at
once the price which the slave-merchant demanded, and forthwith handed
Irene over to the slave-women of the Seraglio, who immediately conducted
her to a bath fragrant with perfumes. Her face, her figure, her charms,
amazed them exceedingly, and they lifted up their voices and praised her
loudly. But when Irene heard their praises she shuddered, and her heart
died away within her. Surely God never gave her beauty in order that she
might be sacrificed to it? At that moment she would have much preferred
to have been born humpbacked, squinting, swarthy; she would have liked
her face to be all seamed and scarred like half-frozen water, and her
body all diseased so that everyone who saw her would shrink from her
with disgust--better that than the feeling which now made her shrink
from the contemplation of herself.
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