Having returned to the consulate in Shivas he had double cause to congratulate himself on having arrived there safe and sound, when he learned that the gardens into which he had so foolishly adventured were none other than those of Djezzar.
But this woman whom he had seen—who could she be? When he thought of his meeting with her, he thought he had dreamed or had seen a vision.
She reappeared before him in a multitude of forms; he saw her resembling a Bacchante, her cup in her hand, reclining indolently on a tiger’s skin; then, like a Peri or an Undine, when appearing to him through the gilded reflection of the sun and the rainbows of the small marble basin; and, finally, in her third transformation, erect, severe, irritated, ordering him to fly and threatening him with a dagger.
His calm and chaste imagination lent, however, no charm to this triplicity of forms. He asked himself, on the contrary, if this vision did not present to him an emblem of all the vices united—intoxication, licentiousness, idleness, anger? He found means to complete the seven cardinal sins. In those accursed gardens, which were inhabited by the persecutor of the Christians, was it not the demon himself that had appeared to him?
Thus, whilst Baïla was making of him a being apart—a marvelous being—whose traces she was honoring, an idol to which she was rendering the homage of love, he was piously entertaining a holy horror of her remembrance.
This demon, however—this frightful assemblage of the seven cardinal sins, was essaying every means to approach him.
Ferdinand, whilst sojourning with his uncle in this province of Anti-Taurus, was but little concerned about what was taking place in the harem of Djezzar. His thoughts were elsewhere. But after his involuntary visit to the gardens, he lent a more attentive ear to what was said about the pacha. He learned that the latter, abandoned entirely to voluptuousness, submitted to the control of a favorite Mingrelian. Soon, without knowing his own share in increasing the sway of the beautiful slave, he heard it repeated every where around him that, did she will it firmly, Baïla could make a Jew of her master, Ali-ben-Ali.
“Why not a Christian?” he said to himself.