"Let us leave the children to play," said Madame Beldi, and led her friend out on the balcony from which was a view of the valley of Tatrang flooded with moonlight. While the men talked seriously and the children gave themselves up to play, the two ladies began one of those confidential conversations so dear to young women, especially when they have so much to tell each other, to ask and to inquire, as these two had. Madame Beldi sat down beside Katharine, took her affectionately by the hand and asked half in jest;--"So your husband has no other wife?"
Katharine laughed, but there was a little vexation with it, as she said;--"I suppose you think a Hungarian marries a Turk only to be his slave. My husband loves me dearly."
"I don't doubt it, Katharine, but that certainly is the custom with you."
"A Protestant like yourself. It was a Protestant who married me--the Reverend Martin Biro, who lives in Constantinople in banishment, and to whom my husband in his gratitude gave a house where the Transylvanians and Hungarians living in Constantinople can meet for worship."
"What, does not your husband persecute the Christians?"
"No, indeed. The Turks believe that every religion is good and leads to heaven, only they think their own religion is the best; for in their opinion theirs leads the way to the heaven of heavens. Besides, my husband has a kind heart and is much more enlightened than most Turks."
"Then why couldn't you bring him over to the Christian faith?"
"Why not? perhaps because whenever the story-tellers relate the romance of a Turk who fell in love with a Christian girl, they end the tale with her bringing him to baptism and exchanging the caftan for a coat. In this case they have a romance in which the wife follows her husband and sacrifices everything for him."
"You are quite right, Katharine, but you see it takes me some little time to become accustomed to the thought that a Christian, a Hungarian woman, can have a Turk for a husband."
"But consider, my good friend, God might not have counted it such a good service on my part if I had brought my husband over to our religion, as he does that I left him in the religion in which he was born. A Christian renegade, the most that he could have done would have been to take his place in the Church. But now, as one of the most influential Pashas, he can transform the fate of any Christian in Turkey to one so favorable that the Christian subjects of other lands crowd thither as to the Holy Land. How often, when he has received his portion of the war-plunder, has he handed me a long list on which were marked the names of my imprisoned countrymen whom he had set free for a large sum. He has expended immense treasure for this purpose, and, my darling, the reading of such a list gives me more pleasure than would the most beautiful Eastern pearls he could have bought for the same treasure; and such a deed raises him higher in my eyes than if he could say all the psalms by heart. Beside, he is not at all the man whom you would expect to change his opinions in the least for God or man; then, too, if he were ready to give up his religion I could no longer trust his love, for he would cease to be the same man I knew and loved--a man who, when he had once said a thing, stood firmly by it and never yielded to any fear or persuasion."