His lamentations
were heartrending. His quivering lips continually cried: "Where is
my daughter, where is my child?"
They roughly forced him to his feet, and with savage threats
demanded of the old man that he should deliver over to them their
master's slave, his daughter Masa. Aroused from his torpor, he
stares at them in amazement:
"Slave!" cried he. "And you call her Masa, and my daughter; and you
say it is she? Who calls Masa, daughter of the sheik, his slave?"
"Our master does," said they--"our master, Cousrouf Pacha."
"How can the stranger dare to call the daughter of a free man, a
free girl, his slave?"
"He dares do it because it is so," replied the eunuchs, shrugging
their shoulders; "Masa sold herself to his excellency, our gracious
master, to Cousrouf Pacha, when she procured your release by paying
the second tax. You thought it was done out of kindness. No, Masa
sold herself to our gracious master, Cousrouf Pacha, for one hundred
gold sequins."
"That is false; you lie, you wretches! You lie in all you say! You
lie!" cried the sheik. He now stood erect, regarding them
threateningly. "Do not dare to speak to me thus again! Justice and
law still live! No one can say that Masa, my daughter, is a slave;
and may he who says it stand accursed before Allah and the
prophets!"
The two eunuchs threw themselves upon him and held him fast.
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