The King Of The Mountains Part 5

The poor woman emptied her pocket; her purse contained a dozen sovereigns. As her watch was not in sight, and as they did not search us, she kept that. The kindness of these thieves left her her handkerchief.

Mary-Ann threw down her watch and a string of charms against the evil eye. She took off, with mutinous grace, a s.h.a.green-leather bag, which she wore slung on her shoulder. The bandit opened it with all the importance of a custom-house officer. He took out an English dressing-case, a bottle of English smelling-salts, a box of English Menthol pastilles and a hundred and several odd francs of English money.

"Now," said the enraged beauty, "you can let us go; we have nothing more for you."

One of the men indicated to her by a menacing gesture, that the interview was not yet over. The leader of the band knelt down before their spoils, called the monk, counted the money in his presence and gave to him a sum of forty-five francs. Mrs. Simons nudged me. "Do you see?" she whispered; "the monk and Dimitri have betrayed us into their hands; the bandits have divided with them!"

"No, Madame," I replied, "Dimitri has received only a fraction of what was taken from him. It is customary everywhere. On the borders of the Rhine, when a traveler is ruined at roulette, the banker gives him enough to return home."

"But the monk?"

"He has only received the t.i.the of the spoils, according to custom from time immemorial. Do not reproach him, but rather be grateful to him in his wish to save us, when his convent would have benefited by our capture."

This conversation was interrupted by Dimitri's departure. They had told him that he was free. "Wait for me," I said to him, "we will return together." He sadly shook his head and answered in English, so that the ladies could understand:

"You are prisoners for a time, and you will not see Athens again until you have paid a ransom. I am going to inform milord. Have the ladies any message to send to him?"

"Tell him," cried Mrs. Simons, "that he must hurry to the Amba.s.sador, that he must go to Piraeus to find the Admiral, that he must complain at the Foreign Office, and he must surely write to Lord Palmerston! That we must be rescued from here by force of arms, if necessary, or by political authority; but that I will not hear of paying one penny for my liberty."

"And I," I said with less anger, "I pray thee to tell my friends in whose hands thou hast left me. If it is necessary to have a few hundred drachmas to ransom a poor devil of a naturalist, they will furnish them without doubt. The lords of the road will not put a very high price on me. I wish whilst thou art still here, that thou wouldst ask them the price."

"Useless, my dear M. Hermann, they do not fix the ransom."

"Who, then?"

"Their chief, Hadgi-Stavros."

IV.

HADGI-STAVROS.

Dimitri descended to Athens; the monk went back to his bees; our new masters pushed us into the path which led to the camp of their king.

Mrs. Simons rebelled and refused to stir a step. The brigands threatened to carry her in their arms; she declared that she would not let them carry her. But her daughter talked her into a more tractable frame of mind, telling that she would find the table spread and that she would be invited to breakfast by Hadgi-Stavros. Mary-Ann was more surprised than frightened. The followers who had come to arrest us, had acted with a certain courtesy; they had not searched us, and they had kept their hands from their prisoners. Instead of turning our pockets wrong side out, they had asked us to put down our money and valuables ourselves; they made no remark about the ladies' ear-rings and they did not even ask them to take off their gloves. We were far, it seemed, from those highwaymen in Spain and Italy who cut off a finger to get a ring and who tear out an ear-ring to possess themselves of a diamond or pearl. All these misfortunes were reduced to the payment of a ransom; yet was it not probable that we might be delivered without it? How could one imagine that Hadgi-Stavros would be able to hold us with impunity, at five leagues from the capital, from the court, from the Greek army, from her Britannic Majesty's battalion, at an English station. Thus reasoned Mary-Ann. As for me--I, involuntarily, thought of those two little daughters whom Mistra went to seek, and I was sad. I feared that Mrs.

Simons, in her obstinate patriotism, only exposed her daughter to some great danger, and I promised myself that I would enlighten her as to her position. We walked in a narrow path, single file, separated from each other by our disagreeable companions. The journey seemed to me to be interminable, and I asked more than ten times, if we would not soon be there. The road was frightful; in the crevices of the bare rock an oak sapling struggled for life, or a th.o.r.n.y bush scratched our legs. The victorious bandits manifested no joy, and their triumphal march resembled a funeral parade. They silently smoked cigarettes as large as one's finger.

They did not speak; one, only, now and then hummed a sort of tune. Those people are as lugubrious as a ruin.

About eleven o'clock, a fierce barking announced the neighborhood of the camp. Ten or a dozen enormous dogs rushed out and hurled themselves upon us, showing all their teeth. Our captors drove them back with stones, and after a quarter of an hour of hostilities, peace was declared. These inhospitable monsters were the advance sentinels of the King of the Mountains. They scent the soldiers as a contrabandist's dog scents a custom-house officer. But that is not all, and their zeal is so great, that they, occasionally, devoured an inoffensive shepherd, a lost traveler, or even one of Hadgi-Stavros' band. The King kept them, as the old Sultans kept their Janissaries, with the perpetual fear of falling a victim to them.

The King's camp was a plateau of seven or eight hundred metres in extent. I searched everywhere for our captors' tents. The brigands were not sybarites, and they slept under the sky on the 30th of April. I saw neither heaps of spoils nor a display of treasures, nothing which one would hope to find at the headquarters of a band of brigands.

Hadgi-Stavros took upon himself the sale of the plunder; each man received his pay in silver and used it according to his fancy. Some put their money into commerce, others invested in mortgages on houses in Athens, while others bought land in their villages; no one squandered the proceeds of theft. Our arrival interrupted the morning meal of twenty-five or thirty men, who hastened to meet us, bread and cheese in hand. The Chief furnished his band with food: the men received, every day, a ration of bread, oil, wine, cheese, caviare, piment (wine mixed with honey and spices), bitter olives, and meat when their religion permitted. Gourmands who wish for mallows and other green food, can pick these dainties on the mountains. Brigands, as some other cla.s.ses of people, rarely light a fire for their repasts; they eat their food cold, and their vegetables uncooked. I noticed that everyone was religiously observing the law of abstinence. We were on the eve of the celebration of the Ascension, and these good people, of whom the most innocent had at least the life of one man on his conscience, would not touch a mouthful of meat. Holding up two Englishwomen, at the point of a musket, seemed an insignificant sin; Mrs. Simons had very greatly sinned in eating the cold meat, the Wednesday before Ascension. The men who had escorted us, satisfied the curiosity of their comrades. They were overwhelmed with questions and they answered them all. They put down in a pile, the booty they had secured, and my silver watch scored yet another success, which added to my pride. Mary-Ann's little gold watch was less noticed. In that first interview, public attention fell upon my watch, and it reflected a little on me. In the eyes of these simple men, the owner of such an imposing piece of silver could be no less than a lord.

The bandits' curiosity was annoying, but not insolent. They did not treat us harshly. They knew that we were in their hands and that we would be exchanged, sooner or later, for a certain number of gold pieces; but they did not think that they ought to avail themselves of that circ.u.mstance to maltreat us, or show a lack of respect. Good sense, that imperishable spirit of the Greeks, told them that we represented a different race, and one, to a certain degree, superior. Victorious barbarians render a secret homage to a conquered civilized people. Many of these men saw for the first time, the European dress. These walked around us, as the inhabitants of the new world around Columbus'

Spaniards. They furtively felt my coat, to see of what material it was made. They would have been happy to have examined the articles of my clothing, one by one. Perhaps, even, they would have liked to break me in two or three pieces, in order to study the inner mechanism of a lord, but I am sure that they would have done it with profuse excuses, and not without asking pardon for the liberty.

Mrs. Simons soon lost patience; she did not like to be examined so closely by these cheese-eaters, who offered her no breakfast. No one likes to be made a spectacle of. The role of "living curiosity" very much displeased the good woman, although she had filled it advantageously in all countries of the globe. As for Mary-Ann, she was overcome with fatigue. A ride of six hours, hunger, emotion, surprise, had worn out this delicate creature. Imagine this young girl, brought up delicately, accustomed to walk on carpets, or upon the velvety turf of parks. Her shoes were already nearly off her feet, worn out by the roughness of the path, and the bushes had torn her dress. Only the evening before she had taken tea in the parlors of the English Legation, while looking over the beautiful alb.u.ms belonging to Mr. Wyse. She now found herself transported into a frightful country, in the midst of a crowd of savages, and she had not the consolation of saying: "It is a dream!" because she was neither in bed, nor even seated, but standing, in great despair, on her two weary little feet.

A band now surrounded us, which rendered our position intolerable. It was not a band of thieves; it was worse. The Greeks carry upon their persons a whole menagerie of little animals, agile, capricious, not seizable, who cling to them night and day, give them occupation even when asleep, and by their jumps and their stings, accelerate the action of the mind, and the circulation of the blood. The fleas of the brigands, of which I can show some specimens in my Entomological collection, are very much larger, stronger and more agile than their city cousins; the open country air possesses virtue so powerful! I soon perceived that they were not content with their lot, and that they found more to their taste, the fine skin of a young German than the tough hide of their masters. An emigrating army settled upon me. I felt, at first, an uneasy sensation around the ankles: it was the declaration of war.

Two minutes later, an advance guard threw itself upon the calf of my right leg; it reached my knee. I was out-flanked, and all resistance became useless. If I had been alone, I might have been more successful in the combat.

I dared neither complain nor defend myself; I heroically hid my sorrows and did not raise my eyes.

At last, at the end of my patience, and determined to escape, by flight, from the pests, I demanded to be taken before the King. This recalled our guides to their duty. They asked the whereabouts of Hadgi-Stavros.

The reply was that he was at work in his offices.

"At last," said Mrs. Simons, "I can seat myself in an easy chair."

She took my arm, offered hers to her daughter, and walked, with a deliberate step, in the direction in which the crowd conducted us. The offices were not far from the camp, and we reached them in five minutes.

The offices of the King resembled other offices, as the bandits' camp was like to other camps. There were neither tables, chairs nor furniture of any sort. Hadgi-Stavros was seated, tailor-fashion, upon a square of carpet, under the shade of a fir tree. Four secretaries and two servants sat around him.

A young boy of sixteen or eighteen, was incessantly occupied in filling, lighting and cleaning his master's chibouk. He wore at his belt a tobacco bag, embroidered with gold and fine pearls, and a pair of silver tongs, used for taking out coals. Another servant pa.s.sed his days preparing cups of coffee, gla.s.ses of water and syrup, destined for the royal mouth.

The secretaries, seated on the bare rock, wrote with cut reeds, upon their knees. Each of them had a long copper box containing reeds, a knife and an inkstand. Some tin cylinders, like those in which soldiers keep their papers, served as a place of safety for their archives. The paper was not poor, for the reason that each sheet bore in capitals the word "Bath."

The King was an old man, marvelously well-preserved, straight, thin, supple as a steel spring, clean and shining as a new sword. His long, white mustaches hung over the chin, like two marble stalact.i.tes. The rest of his face was scrupulously shaved, the cranium bare as far as the occiput, where a great ma.s.s of white hair flowed down from under his bonnet. The expression of his face was calm and reflective. A pair of small, clear blue eyes, and a square-cut chin denoted an inflexible will. His face was long, and the many long wrinkles added to its length.

Every fold in his forehead seemed to break in the middle and diverge toward the meeting of his eyebrows; two wide and deep furrows descended to the corners of the lips, as if the weight of the mustaches dragged down the muscles of the face. I have seen a great number of septuagenarians, I have even dissected one who would have attained a hundred, if the diligence from Osnabruck had not pa.s.sed over his body; but I never remembered having seen an old man fresher and more robust than Hadgi-Stavros.

He wore the dress of Tino and all the islands of the Archipelago. His red bonnet formed a large fold around his forehead. He wore a black vest, heavily embroidered with black silk, immense blue trousers which must have taken twenty metres of cotton stuff, and large boots of Russia leather, solid yet supple. The only richness about his costume, was a belt decked with gold and precious stones, worth two or three thousand francs. Thrust in it, was a purse of embroidered cashmere, a Damascus blade in a silver sheath, a long pistol, mounted with gold and rubies, and a ramrod, similarly decorated.

Immovable in the midst of his secretaries, the King moved only his lips and his fingers; his lips to dictate his letters, his fingers to tell off the beads of his rosary. It was one of those beautiful milk-white amber rosaries which serve, not only to mark the number of prayers, but to amuse the solemn idleness of the Turks.

He raised his head at our approach, divined, by a glance, what had brought us to him, and said, with a gravity, not at all ironical; "You are very welcome! Be seated."

"Monsieur," cried Mrs. Simons, "I am English, and----"

He interrupted the discourse: "All in good time," he said; "I am occupied." He spoke in Greek and Mrs. Simons understood only English, but the King's face was so expressive, that the good woman easily comprehended what he meant without the aid of an interpreter. We sat down on the ground. Fifteen or twenty brigands crouched around us, and the King, who had no secrets to hide, dictated family letters as well as those pertaining to business. The leader of the band which had arrested us, went to him and whispered in his ear. He haughtily answered: "What of that? I am doing nothing wrong, and the whole world is welcome to hear me. Go, seat thyself; Thou, Spiro, write: it is to my daughter."

After he had vigorously blown his nose, he dictated in a grave, yet sweet voice:

"My Dear Child:

"The preceptress of the school writes to me that thy health is much improved and that the severe cold with which thou wast troubled, has left thee with the cold winter weather. But she is not pleased with thy lack of application, and complains that thou hast done nothing with thy studies during the month of April. Mme. Mavros writes that thou hast become distrait, and that thou sittest with thy elbow on thy book, thy eyes looking at nothing, as if thou wert thinking of something else. I know that it is unnecessary to tell thee to work a.s.siduously. Follow the example of my life. If I had taken it easy, as many do, I should never have reached the position which I occupy in society. I wish to have thee worthy of me, that is why I make great sacrifices for thy education. Thou knowest that I have never refused thee the masters nor the books for which thou hast asked; but my money must profit by it. The set of 'Walter Scott,' has arrived at Piraeus, also the 'Robinson,' and all the other English books thou hast said that thou didst wish to read; have our friends in the Rue d'Hermes get them from the Custom-House for thee. Thou wilt receive, at the same time, the bracelet which thou desirest, and that steel machine for puffing out thy skirts.

If the piano from Vienna is not as good as thou toldest me, and it seems necessary that thou shouldst have another, thou shalt have it. I shall do one or two villages, after the sales of the harvest, and the Devil will be against me, if I cannot find enough money for a pretty piano. I think, as thou dost, that thou must learn music.

Use thy Sundays in the way I have told thee, and profit by the kindness of our friends. Thou must learn to speak French, English, and above all, German. Because, thou art not to live forever in this ridiculous country, and I would rather see thee dead than married to a Greek. Daughter of a King, thou shouldst, by right, marry a Prince. I do not mean, a prince of smugglers, like all our Fanariot families, who pride themselves on their descent from Oriental emperors, and whom I would not have for servants; but a Prince, reigning and crowned. One can find some very good ones in Germany, and my fortune will enable me to choose one of them. If these Germans come to reign in this country, I do not see why thou canst not reign there, in thy turn. Make haste, then, to learn the language, and tell me in thy next letter of the progress thou hast made. My child, I embrace thee tenderly, and I send thee, with thy quarter's allowance, my paternal blessing."

Mrs. Simons leaned toward me and whispered: "Is he dictating our sentence to his brigands?"

I replied: "No, Madame; he is writing to his daughter."

"Concerning our capture?"

"Concerning a piano, a crinoline, and Walter Scott."

"That takes a long time. Will he invite us to breakfast?"