"An eagle!" he cried contemptuously, when told what it was. "Gentlemen, do not trifle with me,--an eagle always has two heads. This must be some other bird."
In due time we reached the hotel. Paul was standing in the doorway, and came forward to help the ladies as they descended from the carriage, greeting them one by one. When his mother got out, he respectfully kissed her hand. To the surprise of most of us, Madame Patoff threw her arms round his neck, and embraced him with considerable emotion.
"Dear, dear Paul,--my dear son!" she cried. "What a happy meeting!"
Paul was evidently very much astonished, but I will do him the credit to say that he seemed moved as he kissed his mother on both cheeks, for his face was pale and he appeared to tremble a little.
The travelers were conducted to their rooms by Macaulay, and I saw no more of them. But John insisted that I should dine with them in the evening. In the mean while I went home, and found Gregorios reading, as usual when he was not on duty at Yildiz-Kiöshk,--the "Star-Palace," where the Sultan resides.
"Have you deposited your friends in a place of safety?" he asked, looking up from his book. "Have they all come,--even the old maid with the green eyes, and the mad lady whom Patoff is so unfortunate as to call his mother?"
"All," I answered. "They are real English people, and my old friend John Carvel is the patriarch of the establishment. There are maid-servants and men-servants, and more boxes than any house in Pera will hold. The old lady seems perfectly sane again."
"Then she will probably die," said Gregorios, reassuringly. "Crazy people almost always have a lucid interval before death."
"Fate would confer a great benefit on Patoff by removing his mother from this valley of tears," returned my friend. "Besides, as our proverb says, mad people are the only happy people. Madame Patoff, in passing from insanity to sanity, has therefore fallen from happiness to unhappiness."
"If all your proverbs were true, the world would be a strange place."
"I will not discuss the inexhaustible subject of the truth of proverbs," answered Balsamides. "I only doubt whether Madame Patoff will be happy now that she is sane, and whether the uncertainty of the issue of our search may not drive her mad again. She will probably spoil everything by chattering at all the embassies. By the by, since we are on the subject of death, lunacy, and other similar annoyances, I may as well tell you that Laleli is very ill, and it is not expected that she can live. I heard it this morning on very good authority."