Let them laugh on in their happy ignorance of a better lot, while round them is gathered all that their lord can command of luxury and pleasantness. His wealth is hoarded for them alone; he permits himself no ostentation, except the respectable one of arms and horses; and the time is weary that he passes apart from his home and hareem. The sternest tyrants are gentle there; Mehemet Ali never refused a woman's prayer; and even Ali Pasha was partly humanized by his love for Emineh. In the time of the Mamelukes, criminals were always led to execution blindfolded, as, if they had met a woman and could touch her garment, they were saved, whatever was their crime.
Thus idolized, watched, and guarded, the Egyptian woman's life is, nevertheless, entirely in the power of her lord, and her death is the inevitable penalty of his dishonour. Poor Fatima! shrined as she was in the palace of a tyrant, the fame of her beauty stole abroad through Cairo. She was one among a hundred in the hareem of Abbas Pasha, a man stained with every foul and loathsome vice; and who can wonder, though many may condemn, if she listened to a daring young Albanian, who risked his life to obtain but a sight of her. Whether she _did_ listen or not, none can ever know, but the eunuchs saw the glitter of the Arnaut's arms, as he leaped from her terrace into the Nile and vanished into the darkness.
The following night a merry English party dined together on board Lord E----'s boat, as it lay moored off the Isle of Rhoda; conversation had sunk into silence as the calm night came on; a faint breeze floated perfumes from the gardens over the star-lit Nile; a dreamy languor seemed to pervade all nature, and even the city lay hushed in deep repose, when suddenly a boat, crowded with dark figures, among which arms gleamed, shot out from one of the arches of the palace.
It paused under the opposite bank, where the water rushed deep and gloomily along, and for a moment a white figure glimmered among that boat's dark crew; there was a slight movement and a faint splash, and then the river flowed on as merrily as if poor Fatima still sang her Georgian song to the murmur of its waters.
I was riding one evening along the water-side. There was no sound except the ripple of the waves and the heavy flapping of a pelican's wing. As I paused to contemplate the scene an Egyptian passed me hurriedly, with a bloody knife in his hand. His dress was mean and ragged, but his countenance was one that the father of Don Carlos might have worn. He never raised his eyes as he passed by; and my groom, who just then came up, told me he had slain his wife, and was going to her father's village to denounce her.