I frequently prayed that her love might be as lasting in her as it proved agonizing to me.
Studhome knew my secret. To conceal from him that I was miserable was impossible, but honest Jack's advice "to take heart of grace--to remember that there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, that--
"'There were maidens in Scotland more lovely by far, Who would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar,'"
and a great deal more to the same effect and purpose, proved but sorry comfort and counsel.
On a Saturday evening I had tiffed with him in his tent. We had no second parade or anything to do. He vowed that he was tired of his studies, which generally consisted of the _Racing Calendar_, Hart's "Annual Army List," "White's Farriery," and the "Field Exercise and Evolutions for the Cavalry," varied by _Punch_ and _Bell's Life_, so we ordered our horses, and rode to Varna, the variety and unwonted bustle of which afforded the means of amusement and relief, after the quiet and monotony of our camp in the green wooded vale of Aladyn.
We put up our horses at an old rickety Turkish khan, which an enterprising French sutler had turned into a species of hotel, for over the door a gay signboard, painted in tricolour, informed us that it was "_Le restaurant de l'Armee d'Orient, pour messieurs les officiers et sous-officiers_."
There we had a bottle of excellent Greek wine, in a large whitewashed room, full of French officers, of every branch of the service and of all ranks, who received us with great politeness. They were all smoking cigarettes, chatting, laughing, playing chess or dominoes, and reading the _Moniteur_ or _Charivari_, which last caricatured the Russians as unmercifully as our good friend _Punch_ ever did.
Their gaiety and _etourdi_ fashion of quizzing the women who passed drew many a scowl of wonder and reprehension from the turbaned, shawled, and solemn Turks, for few of the believers took kindly to "the sons of perdition who had come to aid them and the Vicar of God--the refuge of the world--from the Muscovite dog," as one was heard to say; "and at the behest of a queen--a woman--_Allah razolsum!_" he added, with special reference to us.
"What a change all this is from our recent barrack life at Maidstone," said Studhome. "We see such strange scenes--a new world here."
"For our used-up guardsmen and hussars, who have been hitherto bored by the mere aimlessness and emptiness of their lives, our friend, the Emperor Nicholas, has certainly provided that which Sir Charles, in _Used Up_, would call a 'new sensation,' and a little healthy excitement."
A young sous-lieutenant of Zouaves was particularly vehement and droll in describing a certain Egyptian magician, who had shown some wonderful things to him and his friends. His words seemed to excite much laughter, and, on drawing nearer, I discovered him to be Jules Jolicoeur, the Zouave, who had now been promoted to the rank of second-lieutenant in his regiment, in the ranks of which the cholera had already made sad ravages.
"Monsieur Jolicoeur," said I; "a magician, do you say?"
"_Peste!_ you know my name," said he, smiling, while he pirouetted about and twirled his moustache.
"I have to congratulate you on your promotion. Better this than poring over Lemartiniere, Ambrose Pare, and so forth, at the Ecole de Medecin, eh?"
"_Parbleu, monsieur!_ how do you come to know all this?" he asked, with pardonable surprise.
"Perhaps I am a magician too," said I, laughing. "But this Egyptian of whom you tell us--he is a juggler, I presume?"
"_Jouer--joueuse de gobelets_, you mean? Oh, no. In a little water or ink, poured into the hollow of your hand, he will show you the face of any friend you most desire to see. It is miraculous."
"_Diable!_" exclaimed Victor Baudeuf, a well-decorated captain of a French line regiment; "then he shall show me Mogador."
The name of this well-known French dancer elicited a burst of laughter; but Jolicoeur said--
"Monsieur, you should call her Madame la Comtesse de Chabrillan!"
"And where the devil is _monsieur le Comte_?" asked Baudeuf, with a grimace.
"At the gold-fields, having spent his fortune twice on the girl."
"Well, to a wife in Paris a husband at the gold-fields is just as valuable as no husband at all. _Tres bon_! I shall see pretty Mogador, if your magician has any skill."
"And where does your magician hang out?" asked Studhome.
"Hang--hang--_il merite la corde_, you mean, monsieur?" asked the puzzled Frenchman.
"No, no; where is he to be found?"
"_Monsieur le magicien_ holds a spiritual seance to-night," observed a French hussar, whose gorgeous dolman was almost sword-proof with silver lace.
"_Tres bon!_" exclaimed another; "there are twenty girls in Paris I want to see."
"What is his time, Jules?"
"Eight o'clock."
"'Tis but twenty minutes from that now."
"We shall go too," said Studhome, "and have our fortunes told; it will be as good a lark, monsieur, as any other."
"Lark--_aloutte_--oh, yes, _tres bon!_" replied Jolicoeur, with a good-natured smile, though quite at a loss to understand why the bird was referred to.
"My fortune has often been told me, Newton, by gipsies, at Maidstone and Canterbury. By no two alike; but it was magnificent, according to the fee I gave, and always droll. We shall see what this astrologer--a real magician--has to show us."
"If he shows us Louisa Loftus, Jack, I'll forfeit a year's pay!"
"Come, messieurs, to the seance," shouted Jolicoeur, as he buckled on his sabre. "I wish to see Mademoiselle Sophie of ours, who has gone to Constantinople."
"And I Mogador," said Captain Baudeuf, "the delicious little dancer at the Mabille."
"And I Rose Pompon!" exclaimed the hussar, tying the cords of his silver dolman. "Rose, the heroine of a thousand flirtations."
"Mogador, the empress of ten thousand hearts," added the captain.
"Hearts such as thine, _mon camarade_," said the hussar, laughing.
"And Fleur d'Amour," added another heedless fellow, "the Queen of the Tourlurous!"[*]
[*] Camp phrase for the French linesmen.
"_Ah, mon capitaine_," said Jules. "_Peste!_ what a _roue_ it is. He has made as many conquests as our good friend Don Juan, in the delightful opera which bears his name."
"Beware!" said the other, with a mock frown; "I'm an ace of diamonds man with the pistol, Jules."
"Bah! Your pistol will never be levelled at me. Have a cigarette?"
"Thanks. As for Mogador, her silk tights were a study at the Mabille, and the grace with which she showed her feet and ankles----"
"_Cordieu, mon ami!_ we haven't a man in the 2nd Zouaves who has not appreciated that generous exhibition to the utmost. I hope she'll appear in Baudeuf's hand as Diana, or the chaste Lucretia!" said Jolicoeur.
These remarks elicited roars of laughter from the gay Frenchmen.
"By Jove, Newton," whispered Studhome, "our fair friends will be conjured up in odd company. These fellows are naming the most notorious _lorettes_ in Paris!"
With a prodigious clatter of swords and spurs, we all quitted the restaurant together for the residence of the magician; and Lieutenant Jolicoeur, who seemed disposed to fraternize with us, informed me that this personage, who was making so much noise in Varna, was a native of Al Kosair, on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, and that he was now chief hakim, or senior surgeon, of the 10th Battalion of Egyptian Infantry, which formed a portion of the Viceroy's contingent with the Turkish army. So we looked forward with some interest to the interview, as he had a high reputation among the Osmanlees for the marvels he produced, and was faithfully believed.
After an interview, this magician strongly reminded me of the Sooltan described by Lane, in his "Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians."
If in England, at this hour, so many persons believe implicitly in table-turning, spirit-rapping, mesmeric slumber, and mesmeric mediums, and many other outrageous whim-whams, it can surely be no wonder that the poor, ignorant soldiers of the Turkish and Egyptian armies should believe in the magic powers of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig, who, by the medium of another human soul, could show them whether their friends, their fathers, and mothers, at Gaza, at Cairo, or on the banks of the Nile, were still in the land of the living, as clearly as if they peeped through the magical telescope of the favoured prince in the fairy tale.
It was just about the period of which I write that the public of the modern Athens--that happy city of bibacious saints and briefless Solons--was electrified by a series of letters which appeared in one of her journals, signed by a tolerably well-known historian, occupying, however a lucrative legal position, to the effect that "he possessed a peculiar medium," of whose person and spirit he had such entire mesmeric control that he had sent the latter to the Arctic regions, in search of Sir John Franklin, whom she saw, accoutred with cocked hat and quadrant, seated sorrowfully on a heap of snow; next, that he had sent her on a visit to one of Her Majesty's ships in the West Indies, where she pryed into the savoury secrets of the midshipmen's berth; and, not content with these wonderful voyages, he actually announced that he sent her spirit to heaven to visit his friends, and a much warmer climate to visit his enemies; and this blasphemous rubbish and mid-summer madness found believers in the Scottish capital, though it excited the laughter of the masses; but one night the fair medium, "being hot with the Tuscan grape, and high in blood," or having imbibed over much alcohol, fairly unmasked the would-be Northern Balsamo as a dupe and fool, by forgetting to play her assumed character.