they
lit upon horrors--strange, terrifying objects appeared before me; and,
although, twelve torches were burning, darkness was still all around.
And it seemed to me as if this darkness was not vapor or thick smoke,
but a black mass of human beings all wedged together, who raised their
eyelids every now and then. After that I saw Ali Pasha sitting in a
red velvet chair with golden tiger feet, and as he sat cross-legged,
after the Turkish manner, it looked as if the tiger feet were his own
feet. Many terrifying shapes passed before me, and at last a young man
and a young woman were all who remained in the room, and to every
question put to them they replied, 'I curse thee!' Ali Pasha said to
the damsel, 'Love me!' and she replied, 'I curse thee!' And
immediately the head of the youth began rolling from one end of the
marble floor to the other, right up to my feet; and a drop of blood
dripped from it on to my slipper, and, strange to say, the drop of
blood was still there when I awoke. Look, is that really a drop of
blood, or is it only my imagination?"

And therewith Eminah put out her pretty little foot, which hitherto
she had kept hidden beneath the folds of her garment, and showed it to
the Greek girl. Then the girl fell weeping at her feet and kissed the
slipper. But it was not the foot of her mistress that she kissed--no,
no; what she kissed was the drop of blood that had dropped upon the
slipper.

"Look! that drop of blood has burned right through the morocco leather
of my shoe! What will it do, then, to the soul on which it has
fallen?"

And with that she withdrew her hair from the pasha's face and looked
at him with loathing. Yet he slept as calmly as if he were sleeping
the sleep of the just.

For nine and seventy years he had lived happily, joyously,
triumphantly, beloved by angels; and all the curses, all the murders,
that were upon his aged head were unable to carve one wrinkle on his
forehead, or distort a feature of his face, or cut off one day of his
life, or even to disturb one of his dreams; and there he lies on one
and the same couch with the head of his victim, the only difference
being that his head lies on the pillow, while the head of the murdered
man lies beneath it.

Eminah bent over him and bared the breast of the sleeper, who slept
calmly and regularly all the time.

"On that table lies an enamelled dagger," said she to the girl; "bring
it hither."

The girl darted away for the dagge