BOOK III
THE PRINCESS IRENE
CHAPTER I
MORNING ON THE BOSPHORUS
Our narrative proceeds now from a day in the third year after Lael, thedaughter of the son of Jahdai, dropped into the life of the Prince ofIndia--a day in the vernal freshness of June.
From a low perch above the mountain behind Becos, the sun is deliveringthe opposite European shore of the Bosphorus from the lingering shadesof night. Out on the bosom of the classic channel vessels are swinginglazily at their anchorages. The masthead of each displays a flagbespeaking the nationality of the owner; here a Venetian, there aGenoese, yonder a Byzantine. Tremulous flares of mist, rising aroundthe dark hulls, become entangled in the cordage, and as if there wereno other escape, resolve themselves into air. Fisher boats are bringingtheir owners home from night-work over in the shallows of Indjerkeui.Gulls and cormorants in contentious flocks, drive hither and thither,turning and tacking as the schools of small fish they are followingturn and tack down in the warm blue-green depths to which they arenative. The many wings, in quick eccentric motion, give sparkling lifeto the empurpled distance.
The bay of Therapia, on the same European shore over against Becos, wasnot omitted from rescue by the sun. Within its lines this morning theships were in greater number than out in the channel--ships of allgrades, from the sea going commercial galley to the pleasure shallopwhich, if not the modern _caique_, was at least its ante-type inlightness and grace.
And as to the town, one had but to look at it to be sure it hadundergone no recent change--that in the day of Constantine Dragases itwas the same summer resort it had been in the day of Medea thesorceress--the same it yet is under sway of the benignant Abdul-Hamid.
From the lower point northwardly jutting finger-like into the currentof the channel, the beach swept in a graceful curve around to the baseof the promontory on the south. Then as now children amused themselvesgathering the white and black pebbles with which it was strewn, anddanced in and out with the friendly foam-capped waves. Then as now thehouses seemed tied to the face of the hill one above another instreetless disarrangement; insomuch that the stranger viewing them fromhis boat below shuddered thinking of the wild play which would ensuedid an earthquake shake the hill ever so lightly.
And then as now the promontory south served the bay as a partialland-lock. Then as now it arose boldly a half mountain denselyverdurous, leaving barely space enough for a roadway around its base.Then as now a descending terrace of easy grade and lined with rock pinetrees of broadest umbrella tops, slashed its whole townward front.Sometime in the post-Medean period a sharp-eyed Greek discerned theadvantages it offered for aesthetic purposes, and availed himself ofthem; so that in the age of our story its summit was tastefullyembellished with water basins, white-roofed pavilions, and tessellatedpavements Roman style. Alas, for the perishability of things human! Andtwice alas, that the beautiful should ever be the most perishable!
But it is now to be said we have spoken thus of the Bosphorus, and thebay and town of Therapia, and the high promontory, as accessoriesmerely to a plot of ground under the promontory and linked to it by thedescending terrace. There is no word fitly descriptive of the place.Ravine implies narrowness; gorge signifies depth; valley means width;dell is too toylike. A summer retreat more delicious could not beimagined. Except at noon the sun did but barely glance into it.Extending hundreds of yards back from the bay toward the highlands westof the town, it was a perfected garden of roses and flowering vines andshrubs, with avenues of boxwood and acacias leading up to amplereservoirs hidden away in a grove of beeches. The water flowing thencebecame brooks or was diverted to enliven fountains. One pipe carried itin generous flow to the summit of the promontory. In this leafy Edenthe birds of the climate made their home the year round. There themigratory nightingale came earliest and lingered longest, singing inthe day as well as in the night. There one went regaled with the breathof roses commingled with that of the jasmine. There the bloom of thepomegranate flashed through the ordered thicket like red stars; therethe luscious fig, ripening in its "beggar's jacket," offered itself forthe plucking; there the murmur of the brooks was always in thelistening ear.
Along the whole front of the garden, so perfectly a poet's ideal,stretched a landing defended from the incessant swash of the bay by astone revetment. There was then a pavement of smoothly laid flags, andthen a higher wall of dark rubble-work, coped with bevelled slabs. Anopen pavilion, with a bell-fashioned dome on slender pillars, all ofwood red painted, gave admission to the garden. Then a roadway of graypebbles and flesh-tinted shells invited a visitor, whether afoot or onhorseback, through clumps of acacias undergrown with carefully tendedrosebushes, to a palace, which was to the garden what the central jewelis to the cluster of stones on "my lady's" ring.
Standing on a tumulus, a little removed from the foot of thepromontory, the palace could be seen from cornice to base by voyagerson the bay, a quadrangular pile of dressed marble one story in height,its front relieved by a portico of many pillars finished in the purestCorinthian style. A stranger needed only to look at it once, glitteringin the sun, creamy white in the shade, to decide that its owner was ofhigh rank--possibly a noble--possibly the Emperor himself.
It was the country palace of the Princess Irene, of whom we will nowspeak.[Footnote: During the Crimean war a military hospital was builtover the basement vaults and cisterns of the palace here described. Thehospital was destroyed by fire. For years it was then known as the"Khedive's Garden," being a favorite resort for festive parties fromthe capital. At present the promontory and the retreat it shelterspertain to the German Embassy, a munificent gift from His Majesty,Sultan Abdul-Hamid.]