f the lofty Lithanizza he would perceive inside it a fairy
palace, with walls of colored marble protected by silver trellis-work,
with blue-painted, brazen cupolas, with golden half-moons on their
pointed spires. One tower there, the largest of all, has a roof of red
cast-iron, and this one roof stands out prominently from among all the
other buildings of the inner fortress. The colored kiosks are
everywhere wreathed with garlands of flowers, and the spectator
perched aloft would plainly discern cradles for growing vines on the
top of the bastion. He might also, in the dusk of the summer evenings,
distinguish seductive shapes bathing in the basins of the fountains,
and lose his reason while he gazed; or it might chance (which is much
more likely) that Ali Pasha's patrols might come upon him unawares and
cast him down from the mountain-top.

This wondrous retreat was Ali's paradise. Here he grouped together the
most beautiful flowers of the round world--flowers sprung from the
earth or from a human mother. For maidens also are flowers, and may be
plucked and enjoyed like other flowers. But the most beautiful among
so many beautiful flowers was Eminah, Tepelenti's favorite damsel, the
sixteen-years-old daughter of the Pasha of Delvino, who gave her to
Ali just as so many eminent Turks are wont to give their daughters. On
the day of their birth they promise to give them to some powerful
magnate, and by the time the _fiancee_ is marriageable the _fiance_
has already one foot in his grave.

A pale, blue-eyed flower was she, looking as if she had grown up
beneath the light of the moon instead of the light of the sun; her
shape, her figure, was so delicate that it reminded one of those
sylphs of the fairy world that fly without wings. Her voice was
sweeter, more tender, than the voices of the other damsels; and, wiser
than they, she could speak so that you felt rather than heard what she
said. Ali loved to toy with her light hair, unwind the long folds of
her tresses, cover his face with their silken richness, and fancy he
was reposing in the shades of paradise.

And the child loved the man. Ali was a handsome old fellow. His beard
was as glossy and as purely white as the wing of a swan; the roses of
his cheeks had not yet faded; when he smiled he was no longer a tiger,
but revealed a row of teeth even handsomer than her own. And, in
addition to that, he was valiant--a hero. Even in old men love is no
mere impotent desire w