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قراءة كتاب Arethusa
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ARETHUSA
ARETHUSA
BY
F. MARION CRAWFORD
AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "A LADY OF ROME,"
ETC., ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
GERTRUDE DEMAIN HAMMOND
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1907
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1906, 1907,
ByTHE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING CO.
Copyright, 1907,
ByF. MARION CRAWFORD.
Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1907.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
THE STORY-TELLER OF THE BAZAAR
DEDICATES
THIS TALE OF CONSTANTINOPLE
TO HIS DEAR DAUGHTER
ELEANOR
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| Arethusa | Frontispiece |
| FACING PAGE | |
| He was talking with an old beggar woman. | 30 |
| She tenderly kissed the wrinkled face. | 44 |
| 'Yes,' replied the negress. 'Rustan is very affectionate. He says that I am his Zoë, his "life," because he would surely die of starvation without me!' | 66 |
| 'Tell me your story,' he said in a lower tone. 'Do not be afraid! no one shall hurt you.' | 88 |
| 'Forty ducats!' cried Omobono, casting up his eyes, and preparing to bargain for at least half an hour. | 94 |
| All sorts of confused thoughts crowded her brain, as Zeno sat down on a seat beside the divan. | 108 |
| There was something so oddly fixed in his look and so dull in his voice that Omobono began to fear that he might be a lunatic. | 128 |
| 'I know them,' Zoë answered. 'If I am not telling you the truth, sell me in the market to-morrow.' | 164 |
| 'I did not mean to love you!' | 194 |
| The captain's wife obeyed, less frightened than she had been at first. | 218 |
| Saw her sink down there exhausted, and draw a heavy silk shawl across her body. | 240 |
| 'Tell me what you see,' she said to the maids. | 262 |
| 'Yes!' roared the Tartar. 'Ten thousand ducats! And if I do not find the money in the house, you two must find it in yours! Do you understand?' | 274 |
| Then, all at once, he felt that she had received one of those inspirations of the practical sense which visit women who are driven to extremities. | 310 |
| 'Am I not your bought slave?' she asked. 'I must obey.' | 352 |
CHAPTER I
Carlo Zeno, gentleman of Venice, ex-clerk, ex-gambler, ex-soldier of fortune, ex-lay prebendary of Patras, ex-duellist, and ex-Greek general, being about twenty-nine years of age, and having in his tough body the scars of half-a-dozen wounds that would have killed an ordinary man, had resolved to turn over a new leaf, had become a merchant, and was established in Constantinople in the year 1376.
He had bought a house in the city itself because the merchants of Genoa all dwelt in the town of Pera, on the other side of the Golden Horn. A Venetian could not have lived in the same place with Genoese, for the air would have poisoned him, to a certainty; and besides, the sight of a Genoese face, the sound of the Genoese dialect, the smell of Genoese cookery, were all equally sickening to any one brought up in the lagoons. Genoa was not fit to be mentioned within hearing of polite Venetian ears, its very name was unspeakable by decent Venetian lips; and even to pronounce the syllables for purposes of business was horribly unlucky.
Therefore Carlo Zeno and his friends had taken up their abode in the old city, amongst the Greeks and the Bokharians, the Jews and the Circassians, and they left the Genoese to themselves in Pera, pretending that they did not even exist. It was not always easy to keep up the pretence, it is true, for Zeno had extremely good eyes and could not help seeing those abominations of mankind on the other side of the Golden Horn when he sat in his balcony on spring evenings; and his only consolation was to dream of