This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
By Georg Ebers
The Vekeel, like the Persian lovers, did not allow the heat of the day tointerfere with his plans. He regarded the governor's house as his own;all he found there aroused, not merely his avarice, but his interest.His first object was to find some document which might justify hisproceedings against Orion and the sequestration of his estates, in theeyes of the authorities at Medina.
Great schemes were brewing there; if the conspiracy against the KhaliffOmar should succeed, he had little to fear; and the greater the sum hecould ere long forward to the new sovereign, the more surely he couldcount on his patronage—a sum exceeding, if possible, the largest whichhis predecessor had ever cast into the Khaliff's treasury.
He went from room to room with the curiosity and avidity of a child,touching everything, testing the softness of the pillows, peeping intoscrolls which he did not understand, tossing them aside, smelling at theperfumes in the dead woman's rooms, and the medicines she had used. Heshowed his teeth with delight when he found in her trunks some costlyjewels and gold coins, stuck the finest of her diamond rings on hisfinger, already covered with gems, and then eagerly searched every cornerof the rooms which Orion had occupied.
His interpreter, who could read Greek, had to translate every document hefound that did not contain verses. While he listened, he clawed andstrummed on the young man's lyre and poured out the scented oil whichOrion had been wont to use to smear it over his beard. In front of thebright silver mirror he could not cease from making faces.
To his great disgust he could find nothing among the hundred objects andtrifles that lay about to justify suspicion, till, just as he was leavingthe room, he noticed in a basket near the writing-table some discardedtablets. He at once pointed them out to the interpreter and, thoughthere was but little to read on the Diptychon,—[Double writing-tablets,which folded together]—it seemed important to the negro for it ran asfollows:
"Orion, the son of George, to Paula the daughter of Thomas!
"You have heard already that it is now impossible for me to assist in therescue of the nuns. But do not misunderstand me. Your noble, and onlytoo well-founded desire to lend succor to your fellow-believers wouldhave sufficed. . ."
From this point the words written on the wax were carefully effaced, andhardly a letter was decipherable; indeed, there were so few lines that itseemed as though the letter had never been ended-which was the fact.
Though it gave the Vekeel no inculpating evidence against Orion itpointed to his connection with the guilty parties: Paula, doubtless, hadbeen concerned in the scheme which had cost the lives of so many braveMoslems. The negro had learnt, through the money-changer at Fostat, thatshe was on terms of close intimacy with the Mukaukas' son and hadentrusted her property to his stewardship. They must both be accused asaccomplices in the deed, and the document proved Orion's knowledge of it,at any rate.
Plotinus, the bishop, at whose instigation the fugitives had been chased,could fill up what the damsel might choose to conceal.
...