One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
ranks, who received us with great politeness. They were all smoking
cigarettes, chatting, laughing, playing chess or dominoes, and reading
the _Moniteur_ or _Charivari_, which last caricatured the Russians as
unmercifully as our good friend _Punch_ ever did.
Their gaiety and _etourdi_ fashion of quizzing the women who passed drew
many a scowl of wonder and reprehension from the turbaned, shawled, and
solemn Turks, for few of the believers took kindly to "the sons of
perdition who had come to aid them and the Vicar of God--the refuge of
the world--from the Muscovite dog," as one was heard to say; "and at the
behest of a queen--a woman--_Allah razolsum!_" he added, with special
reference to us.
"What a change all this is from our recent barrack life at Maidstone,"
said Studhome. "We see such strange scenes--a new world here."
"For our used-up guardsmen and hussars, who have been hitherto bored by
the mere aimlessness and emptiness of their lives, our friend, the
Emperor Nicholas, has certainly provided that which Sir Charles, in
_Used Up_, would call a 'new sensation,' and a little healthy
excitement."
A young sous-lieutenant of Zouaves was particularly vehement and droll
in describing a certain Egyptian magician, who had shown some wonderful
things to him and his friends. His words seemed to excite much
laughter, and, on drawing nearer, I discovered him to be Jules
Jolicoeur, the Zouave, who had now been promoted to the rank of
second-lieutenant in his regiment, in the ranks of which the cholera had
already made sad ravages.
"Monsieur Jolicoeur," said I; "a magician, do you say?"
"_Peste!_ you know my name," said he, smiling, while he pirouetted about
and twirled his moustache.
"I have to congratulate you on your promotion. Better this than poring
over Lemartiniere, Ambrose Pare, and so forth, at the Ecole de Medecin,
eh?"
"_Parbleu, monsieur!_ how do you come to know all this?" he asked, with
pardonable surprise.
"Perhaps I am a magician too," said I, laughing. "But this Egyptian of
whom you tell us--he is a juggler, I presume?"
"_Jouer--joueuse de gobelets_, you mean? Oh, no. In a little water or
ink, poured into the hollow of your hand, he will show you the face of
any friend you most desire to see. It is miraculous."
"_Diable!_" exclaimed Victor Baudeuf, a well-decorated captain of a
French line regiment; "then he shall show me Mogador."
The name of this well-known French dancer elicited a burst of laughter;
but Jolicoeur said--
"Monsieur, you should call her Madame la Comtesse de Chabrillan!"
"And where the devil is _monsieur le Comte_?" asked Baudeuf, with a
grimace.
"At the gold-fields, having spent his fortune twice on the girl."
"Well, to a wife in Paris a husband at the gold-fields is just as
valuable as no husband at all. _Tres bon_! I shall see pretty Mogador,
if your magician has any skill."
"And where does your magician hang out?" asked Studhome.
"Hang--hang--_il merite la corde_, you mean, monsieur?" asked the
puzzled Frenchman.
"No, no; where is he to be found?"
"_Monsieur le magicien_ holds a spiritual seance to-night," observed a
French hussar, whose gorgeous dolman was almost sword-proof with silver
lace.
"_Tres bon!_" exclaimed another; "there are twenty girls in Paris I want
to see."
"What is his time, Jules?"
"Eight o'clock."
"'Tis but twenty minutes from that now."
"We shall go too," said Studhome, "and have our fortunes told; it will
be as good a lark, monsieur, as any other."
"Lark--_aloutte_--oh, yes, _tres bon!_" replied Jolicoeur, with a
good-natured smile, though quite at a loss to understand why the bird
was referred to.
"My fortune has often been told me, Newton, by gipsies, at Maidstone and
Canterbury. By no two alike; but it was magnificent, according to the
fee I gave, and always droll. We shall see what this astrologer--a real
magician--has to show us."
"If he shows us Louisa Loftus, Jack, I'll forfeit a year's pay!"
"Come, messieurs, to the seance," shouted Jolicoeur, as he buckled on
his sabre. "I wish to see Mademoiselle Sophie of ours, who has gone to
Constantinople."
"And I Mogador," said Captain Baudeuf, "the delicious little dancer at
the Mabille."
"And I Rose Pompon!" exclaimed the hussar, tying the cords of his silver
dolman. "Rose, the heroine of a thousand flirtations."
"Mogador, the empress of ten thousand hearts," added the captain.
"Hearts such as thine, _mon camarade_," said the hussar, laughing.
"And Fleur d'Amour," added another heedless fellow, "the Queen of the
Tourlurous!"[*]
[*] Camp phrase for the French linesmen.
"_Ah, mon capitaine_," said Jules. "_Peste!_ what a _roue_ it is. He
has made as many conquests as our good friend Don Juan, in the
delightful opera which bears his name."
"Beware!" said the other, with a mock frown; "I'm an ace of diamonds man
with the pistol, Jules."
"Bah! Your pistol will never be levelled at me. Have a cigarette?"
"Thanks. As for Mogador, her silk tights were a study at the Mabille,
and the grace with which she showed her feet and ankles----"
"_Cordieu, mon ami!_ we haven't a man in the 2nd Zouaves who has not
appreciated that generous exhibition to the utmost. I hope she'll
appear in Baudeuf's hand as Diana, or the chaste Lucretia!" said
Jolicoeur.
These remarks elicited roars of laughter from the gay Frenchmen.
"By Jove, Newton," whispered Studhome, "our fair friends will be
conjured up in odd company. These fellows are naming the most notorious
_lorettes_ in Paris!"
With a prodigious clatter of swords and spurs, we all quitted the
restaurant together for the residence of the magician; and Lieutenant
Jolicoeur, who seemed disposed to fraternize with us, informed me that
this personage, who was making so much noise in Varna, was a native of
Al Kosair, on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, and that he was now
chief hakim, or senior surgeon, of the 10th Battalion of Egyptian
Infantry, which formed a portion of the Viceroy's contingent with the
Turkish army. So we looked forward with some interest to the interview,
as he had a high reputation among the Osmanlees for the marvels he
produced, and was faithfully believed.
After an interview, this magician strongly reminded me of the Sooltan
described by Lane, in his "Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians."
If in England, at this hour, so many persons believe implicitly in
table-turning, spirit-rapping, mesmeric slumber, and mesmeric mediums,
and many other outrageous whim-whams, it can surely be no wonder that
the poor, ignorant soldiers of the Turkish and Egyptian armies should
believe in the magic powers of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig, who, by the
medium of another human soul, could show them whether their friends,
their fathers, and mothers, at Gaza, at Cairo, or on the banks of the
Nile, were still in the land of the living, as clearly as if they peeped
through the magical telescope of the favoured prince in the fairy tale.
It was just about the period of which I write that the public of the
modern Athens--that happy city of bibacious saints and briefless
Solons--was electrified by a series of letters which appeared in one of
her journals, signed by a tolerably well-known historian, occupying,
however a lucrative legal position, to the effect that "he possessed a
peculiar medium," of whose person and spirit he had such entire mesmeric
control that he had sent the latter to the Arctic regions, in search of
Sir John Franklin, whom she saw, accoutred with cocked hat and quadrant,
seated sorrowfully on a heap of snow; next, that he had sent her on a
visit to one of Her Majesty's ships in the West Indies, where she pryed
into the savoury secrets of the midshipmen's berth; and, not content
with these wonderful voyages, he actually announced that he sent her
spirit to heaven to visit his friends, and a much warmer climate to
visit his enemies; and this blasphemous rubbish and mid-summer madness
found believers in the Scottish capital, though it excited the laughter
of the masses; but one night the fair medium, "being hot with the Tuscan
grape, and high in blood," or having imbibed over much alcohol, fairly
unmasked the would-be Northern Balsamo as a dupe and fool, by forgetting
to play her assumed character.
"_Allons, mes camarades!_" said Jules, placing his arm through mine and
Studhome's; "we shall all face this Cagliostro together--one for all,
and all for one, like Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, in 'Les Trois
Mousquetaires.'"
It was impossible not to be pleased with the gaity and winning manner of
this young Frenchman. His bearing and uniform, half Parisian and half
Oriental, gave him somewhat of the aspect of a dandy brigand; but that
bearing is peculiar to all the officers and men of the regiments of
Zouaves.
Evening was approaching, and the shadows were falling eastward. Those
of the tall minarets, and the rows of cypress-trees that guard "the City
of the Dead," were cast to a great distance, over the flat ground on
which Varna stands. Many "true believers" were awaiting the shrill,
boyish voice of the muezzin to call them to prayer; and the tambours of
the French troops were gathering at their places of arms, and bracing up
their drums, preparatory to beating the evening retreat, as we passed
along the strangely-crowded streets, towards the Armenian church.
At a coffee-house, the whole front of which was open, we passed several
of the Colonel Hadjee Mehmet's soldiers, all drowsy with tobacco or
bang, and seated like so many tailors, each on a scrap of tattered
carpet. Some were idling over the chequers of a chess-board, and others
were listening to the wild fairy tale of an itinerant dervish, to whom,
from time to time, they tossed a quarter piastre (about a halfpenny) as
it waxed more and more exciting.
Passing through a street which had just been named the Rue des Portes
Franchises--a corporal of sappers being in the act of nailing up that
title on the rickety mansion of a wondering and indignant emir--we
reached the temporary residence of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig, near which
several Turkish women in long caftans, a few hawk-nosed Greeks, and
squalid Jews were loitering, as if pondering whether they dared tempt
his skill by unwisely seeking to probe the future.
To the street the house presented nothing but a small door, having a
curved arch, like a horseshoe, and a low, whitewashed wall.
Passing through, we found ourselves in a cool, shady courtyard,
surrounded, as usual, by those inexplicable Turkish sheds, a well in the
centre, a few rose-trees in tubs, and a few flowers and tiny shrubs
forcing their way up between the slabs of pavement.
The mansion was almost entirely built of wood, and painted saffron and
blue. We were ushered in by a little tawny Egyptian servant-boy, clad
in baggy blue breeches and a scarlet tarboosh, and whom, to our disgust,
we discovered to be tongueless--a mute!--and found ourselves in the
_divan hanee_, or principal apartment; and now the hitherto ceaseless
gabble and merriment of our French friends became hushed into
comparative silence, as the hakim, who had been smoking his chibouque,
with its long cherry-stick, rose from a luxurious pile of silken
cushions to welcome us.
He was a little man, with Arab features, and a complexion of mahogany.
His bushy beard was of a great amplitude. Time had long since dyed that
appendage white, but the proprietor had turned it to a rich brown. He
wore a green turban, a long, flowing coat, fashioned like a
dressing-gown, of bright blue cloth, elaborately braided on the breast
and seams with scarlet cord; his vest and trousers were of white linen,
girt by a sash of green silk. Round his neck hung a comboloio, or