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Updated: June 25, 2025
"You mistake, you mistake," repeated the Sultan, earnestly; "that was because I loved you so well, Komel. I saw in you, not only the transparent beauty with which Heaven has endowed your race, but a soul and intelligence that won my heart.
He now found the music of her voice as delicious as the almost angelic beauty of her form and features, and so charmed was he with the improvement that Komel evinced, and so did he love to listen to her voice, that he could even bear to hear her plead for Aphiz, and beseech that he might be brought to her.
The idiot boy, almost the only person in whom she seemed to take any real interest, still followed her footsteps hither and thither, now toying with some pet of the gardens, a parrot or a dog, now performing most incredible feats of legerdemain, running off upon his hands, with his feet in a perpendicular position, to a distance, and coming back again by a series of summersets, until suddenly gathering his limbs and body together like a ball, he went off rolling like a helpless mass down some gentle slope, and having reached the bottom, would lie there as if all life were gone, for the hour together, yet always so managing as to keep one eye upon Komel nearly all the while.
While the boy looked upon Komel as she spoke, his fine eye glowed with warmth and expression, but when Aphiz took his hand, and he turned towards him, that light was gone, like the fire from a seared coal, and the optics of the idiot were cold and expressionless. The reader will remember the fleet and beautiful slaver mentioned in an early chapter, when lying off the port of Anapa.
"And what is that?" "Who was it that sang that song beneath the seraglio walls?" "The same notes that formed our signal to-night?" asked Selim. "Yes." "O, that was a young Circassian, who is on board here," was the answer. "But judging from the song he sang, he must be from my native valley." "Was it familiar to you?" "As my mother's voice," answered Komel, with feeling.
He had ever professed the warmest friendship for both him and Komel, and he was deemed honest. But during the melee, when the honest mountaineer had rushed to Komel's rescue, and had received the fatal blow, her parents heard a voice that they recognized, and both exclaimed, "Can that voice be Krometz's!"
At the same moment that he answered thus, Lalla turned by chance from her engravings, towards them, when her eyes resting upon those of Aphiz, she rose, staggered a few steps towards him, and uttered a scream so shrill and piercing that even the imperturbable Turk sprang to his feet in amazement, while Aphiz cried: "It is she, it is my lost Komel!"
But no sooner had the officers, sent to execute his sentence against the innocent mountaineer, returned and announced the task as performed, than Komel was summoned to the presence of the the Sultan. "I have sent for you, Komel," said the monarch, while he regarded her intently as he spoke, "to tell you that Aphiz is dead." "Dead, excellency; do you say dead?" "Yes."
"Then shall good come out of evil, dear Aphiz, inasmuch as we shall now live content." "Have you seen Captain Selim this morning, Komel?" he asked. "Yes, and I fear he is ill, some heavy weight seems to be upon his heart." "Let us seek him then, for we owe all to his manliness and courage."
"Nay, dear Aphiz," she would say to him, with a gentle smile upon her countenance, "let not that shadow rest upon thy brow, but rather look with the sun on the bright side of everything. Am I not a simple and weak girl, and yet I am cheerful and happy, while thou, so strong, so brave and manly, art ever fearing some unknown ill." "Only as it regards thee, Komel, do I fear anything."
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