“The morrow her despair increased; her reason grew feeble. In her delirium she called me a wicked son. She accused me of silencing this voice. If she heard this voice no more, she must die.
“She was, indeed, going to die. For many hours she refused all nourishment. What could I do? What could I do?
“The emir of our tribe was the most powerful of emirs.
“If he raised his djerid ten thousand cavaliers mounted horse.
“His palace was worthy of the sultan, his treasures immense. Alas! how could I dare conceive the thought of saying to him, ‘Come, and by your songs snatch an old and despairing woman from death?’
“And yet that I dared. My mother had perhaps but a few more hours to live. I went to the palace.”
“And the emir?” cried Reine, deeply moved and interested, while Stephanette, not less excited than her mistress, clasped her hands in admiration.
The Bohemian gave the two young girls a glance of indescribable sadness, and said, interrupting this kind of improvising, and laying his instrument on his knees: “‘My mother was a woman,’ said the emir to me, and he came.”
“He came!” exclaimed Reine, with enthusiasm. “Ah, the noble heart!”
“Oh, yes, the most noble of noble hearts,” repeated the Bohemian, with transport; “he deigned, he so grand, he so powerful, to come, for five days, every evening into our poor dwelling. How shall I tell you of his touching, almost filial kindness? Alas, if my mother had not been stricken with a mortal disease, the songs of the emir would have saved her, for the effect they produced on her was wonderful. But she died at last without suffering, in a profound ecstasy. This guzla, it once belonged to the emir; he gave it to me. Thanks to it the last moments of my mother were peaceful,--poor mother!”
A tear glittered a moment in the black eye of the Bohemian; then, as if he wished to drive away these painful memories, he took up his guzla quickly and recited these other stanzas in a proud and excited voice, as he made his sonorous instrument resound:
“The name of the emir is sacred in his tribe; let him but speak and we will die.
“Not one is more brave; not one is more beautiful; not one is more noble.
“He is hardly twenty years old, and his name is already the terror of other tribes.