The despair of the Sultan emboldened the Janissary still further.
"Sign this document, or thy son shall die in our hands!"
"Miserable cowards!" moaned the Sultan. "And cowards they also who should have defended him! Did not even his mother defend him? Was it necessary to give him up?"
"He is in no danger," said Kara Makan; "nay, he is in a safe place. It rests with thee to receive him back into thy arms;" and he shoved towards him again the soiled and crumpled manuscript.
The Padishah, overcome by the shock of his own feelings, humiliated by the sense of his own soft-heartedness, tottered to the wall, and when his groping hands came in contact with the cold marble he collapsed altogether, and leaning against it, he pressed his burning temples to the cold stone. The Janissary might now say whatever he would, the Sultan neither listened to nor answered him.
At last the rough warrior, who had jumped so suddenly into power, shouted angrily to his comrades, who were cooling their heels outside, "Bring hither the prince!"
The Sultan heard the pattering of many footsteps in the corridor outside, and the clashing of swords mingled with the murmuring of voices, but he did not look in that direction.
"Behold!" cried Kara Makan, advancing towards him, "here is thy son! A drawn sword hovers above his head! Choose either to see thine own name at the foot of that paper or his head at thy feet!"
Mahmoud trembled, but he answered nothing, nor did he turn his head.
"Write, or thy son dies!" cried a number of the Janissaries, suddenly.
Then a musical, familiar voice responded amidst the wild uproar:
"My father! hearken not unto them! Let them slay me if they be valiant enough, but chaffer not with thy slaves!"
Mahmoud looked up in astonishment at this well-known voice, and saw before him a handsome figure in the prince's garments and with a proud and majestic countenance; but that face, though familiar to him and very dear, was not his son's face. Ah, it was Milieva!
The odalisk perceived that Mahmoud's features softened, that he looked tenderly upon her; and as if she feared that the Sultan might yield out of compassion towards her, she hastily turned her flaming face to the Janissaries and exclaimed: