F. Marion Crawford

“ One feels very little, or nothing at all, if one is badly wounded in the head, for one is stunned at once; it is the headache afterwards that really hurts. If one is wounded in the lungs, one feels nothing, but one is choked by the blood, and one must turn on one's face at once in order not to suffocate. Broken bones hurt afterwards as a rule, more than at first, but it is a curious sensation to have one's collar bone smashed by a blow from a two-handed sword——'
'Good heavens!' cried Zoë. 'What a catalogue! How do you know how each thing feels?'
'I can remember,' Zeno answered simply. ”

“ Tocktamish has cleared the house as the thunderstorm clears the hot air from the valley! Drink, my pretty nightingale, and the golden wine shall warm your speech in your little throat, as the morning sunshine melts the icicles in my beard when I have been hunting all night in winter! Drink, my fawn, my spring lamb, my soft wood-pigeon, my white bunny rabbit! Drink, sweet one!'
The Tartar's similes were in hopeless confusion, possibly because he translated them into Greek, but he was convinced that he was eloquent, and he was undeniably as strong as a bear. ”

“ On the whole the two elderly merchants ate with a better appetite in his absence.
But Giustina was inconsolable, and the good things did not appeal to her, neither the fresh sturgeon's roe from the Black Sea, nor the noble palamit, nor the 267 delicate quails, nor even the roasted peacock, whose magnificent tail rose out of a vast silver dish like a rainbow with spots on it.
She was a big, sleepy creature with quantities of handsomely dyed hair, as Lucilla had told Zoë. She had large and regular features, a perfectly colourless white skin, and a discontented mouth. ”

“ Then there was a change for the better in her own state; she breathed more freely, her heart beat more steadily, the weight that lay like lead on her chest, just below her throat, was lightened. When a woman sees that a man is shy with her, she is sure that sooner or later he will turn at her will; and though she is sometimes mistaken, the chances are that she is right.
Zeno had never been shy before; but now, when he wished to speak, he could find nothing to say, and Zoë knew it, and would not help him. ”

“ Gorlias Pietrogliant was a man of resources, but the problem completely baffled him.
He stood silent and in thought at Zoë's window; she sat quite motionless on the great divan, watching him and thinking too. Her knees were drawn up almost to her chin, and her folded hands clasped them while she looked straight at the astrologer's back with unwinking eyes. Neither he nor she knew how long they kept silence; it might have been five minutes, or it might have been half an hour. Time plays queer tricks when people are in great danger or in great distress. ”

“ Yet while she was thinking, she suddenly wondered whether Gorlias had spoken the truth about Giustina Polo. Was she really thirty, and was her face pitted like a cheese-grater, as Gorlias had told her? If she was ugly, why did Zeno go to Polo's house so often? For Zoë had no doubt but that he went there every time he was rowed up the Golden Horn in his pretty skiff. He was always carefully dressed when he stepped into his boat; it was not for old Polo that he wore such fine clothes. ”

“ And the fairest living woman is twice beautiful when gladness or love or anger or sorrow rises in her eyes, for then her soul is in her face. As Omobono looked through the window and watched the beggar girl leaning over her dying mother, he hardly saw the perfect line of the cheek, the dark and sweeping lashes or the deep brown eyes—the firm and rounded chin, the very tender mouth, the high-bred nostrils or the rich brown hair. ”

“ Kyría Agatha loved her own children better, as any mother would, and as any children would have a right to expect when they were old enough to reason. She had not been unkind to Zoë, still less had she conceived a dislike for her; but she had grown indifferent to her and had looked forward with pleasure to the time when the girl should marry and leave the house. Then the great catastrophe had come, and loss of fortune, and at last beggary and actual starvation ”

“ Gorlias steadied the end below, keeping one foot on the block lest it should thrash about on the stones and make a noise. He could feel each of Zeno's movements along the rope; and though he had seen many feats in his life, he wondered at the wind and endurance of a man who could make such an ascent without once crooking his leg round the rope to rest and take breath. But Carlo Zeno never stopped till his feet were on the slight projecting moulding of the highest story, and his hands on the stone sill. ”

“ Am I anything but a slave, a bath-woman? Why will the beautiful Kokóna not let me wait on her?'
Zoë turned her eyes and saw the change, and suddenly her objection vanished; for Rustan's wife looked precisely like the black slave-women who used to attend the ladies in the Roman bath in Rhangabé's palace. The association of ideas was so strong that the young girl could not help smiling faintly. ”

“ The little secretary had never been unkind to any one in his life, but once or twice, when the master had been out and he had been on his dignity, he had found the slave-girls loitering on the stairs and had threatened them with the master's displeasure and with a consequent condign punishment if they were ever again caught doing nothing outside their mistress's apartment; and it was therefore delightful to know that he was shut up with Tocktamish, in terror of his life, and that his tremendous dignity was all gone to pieces in his fright.
'You are a clever girl,' said Zoë. ”

“ Zoë did not expect that rare good fortune, for Rustan was not a man to run any risks in his business.
As she lay among her cushions, dreading the end of the journey, but gradually wearying of the future, her thoughts went back to the first cause of all her misfortunes, of Michael Rhangabé's awful death, of all the suffering that had followed them. One man alone had wrought that evil and much more, one man, the reigning Emperor Andronicus. Zoë was not revengeful, not cruel, very far from bloodthirsty ”

“ Whether he knew them or not, he was ready to act at last, and the deed on which hung the destinies of Constantinople was to be attempted that very night. Before dawn Michael Rhangabé's death might be avenged, and Kyría Agatha's wrongs with Zoë's own.
'I want to help you,' she said, when he let her speak. 'Tell me how you are going to do it.'
'With a boat and a rope,' he answered.
'Take me! I will sit quite still in the bottom. I will watch; no one has better eyes or ears than I.'
'More beautiful you mean!'
He shut her eyes with his lips and kissed the lobe of one little ear. ”

“ I do not know why no man believes a woman when she says that she is not hungry. Zeno was annoyed, and by way of showing his displeasure he himself began to eat more than he wanted. Zoë looked on in silence while he finished another bird and all the salad he had made. She would not have been a woman if she had not seen that he felt a little shy, all at once, as the most fearless and energetic men may before a woman they do not understand. ”

“ Zeno laughed gaily.
'You are a good man, Omobono,' he said. 'You could not deceive a child. Do you happen to have heard that Rustan has what Messer Marco wants?'
But Omobono shook his head and grew still redder.
'Indeed, sir,—I—I do not know what your friend wants—I only guessed——'
'A very good guess, Omobono. If I could guess the future as you can the present, I should be a rich man. Yes, send for Rustan. I believe he will do better for me than the Jew or the Mohammedan.'
'They say here that it takes ten Jews to cheat a Greek, and ten Greeks to cheat a Bokharian, sir,' said Omobono. ”

“ And now, all you who stop and gather round the story-teller in this world's great bazaar, to listen, if his tale please you, and to find fault with him if it does not, you cry out that if Carlo Zeno was really the hero history describes him to have been, he would have been very, very grieved at being asked to do anything so inhuman as to buy a pretty slave abroad to be sent home to a friend, even though the latter protested that the girl was to be trained as a companion for his wife. ”

“ He would not answer, but he patted her wrist kindly, trying to soothe her anxiety. He seemed quiet enough at that moment, but he felt the slow, full beat of his own heart and the rush of the swelling pulse in his throat. He had not guessed before to-night that she loved him; he was too simple, and far too sure that he himself could not love a slave. ”