Both remained thus, for a time, attentive; the noise was repeated, but did not increase. Djezzar became impatient, and, yielding to the feeling, struck his hands. “Have not my orders been executed?” he demanded of the Mangrebian slave who appeared. “They have, son of Ali; but in vain have we used on this Christian cords armed with lead and thongs of the skin of the hippopotamus; in vain have we moistened and sprinkled his gaping wounds with pimento and lemon juice; he has not uttered a cry or a groan.” “What does he, then?” asked the Pasha. “He prays,” replied the slave. “Has he revealed nothing!” “Nothing, son of Ali.” “If my chastisements cannot loose his tongue, my clemency may,” said Djezzar, with a sinister smile. “Let him be brought before me, and let Haïder come also. By Allah, I will myself teach him to speak.” When the Mangrebian had departed, Djezzar, alone with Baïla, became at once the man of the harem—the effeminate, the voluptuous pacha; he caused her to resume her seat on the divan, and he himself stretched at her feet, smoking his hooka, engaged, apparently alone, in watching the smoke from his Persian pipe escape on one side in massive clouds to remount from the other, purifying itself in a crystal flask full of perfumed water. He awaited, in this indolent posture, the arrival of his captive. This captive was named Ferdinand Laperre. Born at Paris, of a good family of the middle classes, of a character addicted to exaltation and revery, an orphan from his cradle, he had been unable to give a natural course to his sensibilities. Notwithstanding his university education, the religious sentiment had germinated and developed itself in him. In the want of those tender affections of which he was ignorant, holy and ardent belief had filled the void in his soul. He held a small employment in the office of the minister of foreign affairs, when one day at the close of a sermon, by the Abbé La Ardaire, he determined to become a priest. His only remaining relative, an uncle, recently appointed to a consulate in one of the important cities of Asia Minor, thought it best to take him with him in the capacity of a cadet. He hoped to divert him from his pious abstractions, to induce him to renounce his plans, and to lead him even to doubting, by the sight of those numerous sects of schismatic Christians who inhabit the east. The uncle was a philosopher. But faith was more brightly kindled in the heart of the neophyte as he approached those holy places in which evangelical truths had borne their first branches and produced their most savory fruits. The summits of Taurus were for him illuminated by the lightnings of Tabor and Sinai. More than ever strengthened in his first calling, he wore hair-cloth beneath his diplomatic dress, and promised himself, should the occasion offer, to accomplish, in despite of his relative, a novitiate signalized by apostolic labors.