Shortly afterward, during the night, whilst the pacha was at the city of Tocata, where the cares of government detained him, a man was brought furtively into the gardens of the Red River. A bostangi had found means to introduce him in a flower vase. This bostangi, gained by rich presents, conducted him by then deserted paths to the pavilion of the favorite.
Baïla was in the bath, when the Abyssinian negress appeared and made her a signal. The beautiful odalisk, under a pretext of a desire to repose, then dismissed her serving-women, after they had bound up her hair and carefully perfumed her person.
Her slaves dismissed, she dressed herself with the assistance of Mariam, but in such haste that her cashmere girdle, tied negligently, kept her robe scarcely half closed, and her long veil thrown around her, alone concealed the richness of her shoulders and bust.
She stopped on her way to the saloon in which the mysterious visiter awaited her. Her respiration failed, a nervous tremor agitated her beautiful limbs, and made her skin, still moist with rose-water and the essence of sandal-wood, to shiver—placing her hand on her heart to restrain, as it were, its tumultuous beatings, she murmured, “I am afraid!”
“What do you fear now?” said Mariam, sustaining her by her arms, and whose courage, like a game of see-saw, appeared to be exalted and strengthened in proportion as that of her mistress failed. “The pacha is far off—every thing around us sleeps; this Frank, whom you desired to see and whom you are about to see, has crossed the portals of the palace without awakening suspicion. He awaits you; he has not trembled in coming to you; time is precious, he counts it impatiently, let us join him.”
“I am afraid,” said Baïla, resisting the impulse which the old slave wished to give her, and trembling all over, with her body bent, her eyes half closed, she appeared to drink in with delight the alarm she experienced; as the sick, saturated with tasteless and sugared beverages, rejoice in the bitter draughts of abscynthe. It was an emotion, and every emotion is precious to a recluse of the harem.
She entered finally the saloon in which the unknown awaited her, but not without casting another glance on the _abandon_ of her toilet. By the feeble light of two candles placed in a bracket, she saw the stranger standing in a meditative posture.