Everything was asleep in the Halls of Felicity, only Love was still
awake. Mahmud, forgetful alike of himself and his empire, pressed to his
bosom his dear enchanting Sultana, the most precious of all the
treasures he had won that day; but the fair Sultana shuddered from time
to time in the midst of his burning embrace. It seemed to her as if
someone was standing behind her back, sobbing and sighing and touching
her warm bosom with his cold fingers.
Perchance she could hear the sighing and the sobbing of him who lay
sleepless far, far below that bower of rapture, in one of the cold
vaults of the Place of Oblivion, thinking of his lost Empire and his
lost Eden!
* * * * *
Early next morning the chief captains of the host, the Bashas and the
Sheiks, appeared in the Seraglio to greet the new Sultan. It was only
the leaders of the rebels who did not come.
Ever since Sulali had frightened the insurgents by telling them that the
cellars of the Seraglio were full of gunpowder, they did not so much as
venture to draw near it, and when the public criers recited the
invitation of Mahmud in front of the mosques, thousands and thousands of
voices shouted as if from one throat:
"We will not come!"
Not one of them would listen to the invitation from the Seraglio.
"It is a mere ruse," observed the wise Reis-Effendi. "They only want to
entice us into a mouse-trap to crush us all at a blow like flies caught
in honey.
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