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The Turk was determined to pluck every one of the plums himself; the hand of a slave should never profane the dessert of the pasha. And the poor slave was all the time thinking to himself that when he got home with his lord, Jigerdilla would treat him exactly as Potiphar's wife treated Joseph.
Back he went to his work very much ashamed, and he now worked with such zeal that he finished in one hour what it usually took him two to do. But Jigerdilla gave him no peace. She made ribald songs upon him, pelted him with green nuts, and mocked him in all sorts of ways. And Valentine felt just like a child who has been naughty and expects to be beaten for it.
The neighbors observed nothing of all this, for they were much too intent upon getting to the town themselves before the gates were closed, to notice what others were doing. Valentine next locked the door of the kiosk and set about tearing up the mortar flooring. Jigerdilla had spoken truly; there was no lack of ducats.
At this sight he immediately became quite sober. "Who did that?" he roared, tearing his whip from his girdle, while his eyes rolled about as if he were the brother of the hippopotamus whose hide had supplied the lashes of his whip. But before Valentine could say a word, Jigerdilla had already exclaimed: "I did it. What does it matter if there be one paltry branch more or less?"
And the men who marry them pay them for their devotion, not with gifts and gold, but with equal devotion and sympathy." At these words Jigerdilla smote her hands together. "Then your religion will suit me very well. If in your country such things are not matters of cash and barter, but free-will offerings, that is just what I should like. I'll follow you of my own free will.
Suddenly he heard behind him a mocking peal of laughter Jigerdilla had been on the watch all the time and in his terror he started back so violently, that he snapped off the branch of the plum tree which he had pulled down toward him. "Ha, ha, Valentine! Now you can look forward to something pleasant."
Now the Turk had a very beautiful slave, or wife, which with the Moslems is pretty much the same thing. She was called Jigerdilla, which signifies "the piercer of hearts." She was a Circassian. He had purchased her at Buda from a slave-dealer who had brought a whole shipload of female slaves from Stamboul.
And Jigerdilla could sing those enticing songs so seductively that it was impossible to listen to her and remain cold. But Valentine manfully hardened his heart, and would not accompany her. "Can't you sing these songs, then?" asked Jigerdilla derisively. "I know one or two of them, and have sung them quite often enough. It was for nothing but that that I was expelled from college.
"Come now, tell me!" cried Jigerdilla, suddenly giving another turn to the conversation, "how could you quietly look on yesterday, while Ibrahim whipped me instead of you? Why did you not seize his arm and confess that it was you who did the mischief?" "I'll tell you why.
Then Jigerdilla began to sing a popular ballad all about love. Even in those times such ditties used to be sung, but on the sly, in the woods or the meadows; for within the walled cities the clergy forbade them, preached whole series of sermons against them, called them "flower songs," said that they only served to corrupt good manners.
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