The Pacha of Many Tales

Volume One–Chapter Five

The pacha had repeated his perambulations for many nights, without success; and Mustapha, who observed that he was becoming very impatient, thought it advisable to cater for his amusement.

Among those who used to repair to Mustapha when he exercised his former profession, was a French renegade, a man of considerable talent and ready invention, but a most unprincipled scoundrel, who, previous to the elevation of Mustapha, had gained his livelihood by daring piratical attempts in an open boat. He was now in the employ of the vizier, commanding an armed xebeque which the latter had purchased. She passed off as a government cruiser but was in reality a pirate. Selim, for that was the name which the renegade had adopted when he abjured his faith, condemned every vessel that had the misfortune to meet with him, taking out the cargoes, burning the hull, and throwing the crews overboard, with the privilege of swimming on shore if they could. By this plan he avoided the inconveniences attending any appeals from the jurisdiction of the High Court of Admiralty, which he had established upon the seas.

The consequence was, that his cruises were more successful than ever; and Mustapha, who was not content with pillaging the pacha’s subjects on dry land, was amassing a large fortune at their expense by his maritime speculations.

Occasionally, bales or packages would be recognised when landed as having the identical marks and numbers of those which had been shipped from the quay but a fortnight before; but the renegade could always give a satisfactory explanation to the vizier; and after a Jew, who could not bear the idea of parting with his property without remonstrance, had been impaled, people shrugged up their shoulders and said nothing.

Now it occurred to Mustapha, that Selim might be able to assist his views. He talked fast and loud, vaunted his own exploits, curled his whiskers as he swore to the most improbable assertions, and had become a general nuisance and terror since he had obtained the vizier’s protection.

Mustapha sent for him; and, as a preliminary question, inquired if ever he had read the Arabian Nights.

“Yes; vizier,” replied the renegade; “many years before I turned Turk.”

“Do you recollect the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor?”

“To be sure I do; he is the only man that could ever hold a candle to me in lying.”

“Well, then, his highness the pacha delights in such stories; and it is my wish that you prepare to recount your own voyages, as Sindbad has done before you.”

“But what am I to get for it?”

“My good-will and protection; besides which, his highness if pleased, will not fail to order you a handsome present.”

“Well,” replied Selim, “any man who can produce gold in this world will always be able to change it for base metal. I can coin lies in my mint faster than he can coin sequins in his; and since you wish it, and say that it will be profitable, why—I am very much at his service.”

“Then, Selim, observe my directions, for every thing must appear accidental.”

In pursuance to the orders received from Mustapha, the renegade remained that evening at the corner of a certain street, through which Mustapha took care that the pacha should pass in his disguise. When he perceived their approach, the renegade exclaimed, “Allah, Allah! when is the happy time to come, promised in my seventh and last voyage?”

“Who are you; and why do you call upon Heaven for happy times?” inquired the pacha.

“I am Huckaback the sailor,” replied the renegade, “who, after a life of danger and disaster, am anxiously awaiting the fulfilment of a promise from the Most High.”

“I must see this man to-morrow,” observed the pacha:– “Mustapha, as you value your life, see that he attends.”

The vizier bowed; and the pacha returned to the palace without further adventure.

The next day, as soon as the business of the divan had closed, the renegade was ordered in. Prostrating himself before the pacha, he then rose, and folding his arms over his breast, awaited his commands in silence.

“I have sent for you, Huckaback, to inquire the meaning of the words you made use of last night: and to know what was the promise made to you in your seventh and last voyage; but I will thank you to begin at the first, as I wish to hear the history of all your voyages.”

“May it please your highness, as I live but to obey you, all that has occurred in my eventful life shall, if you command it, be submitted to your ear. It will, however, be necessary that I should revert to my early days to enable your highness more fully to comprehend the whole.”

“Aferin! well said,” replied the pacha; “I don’t care how long a story it is, provided that it is a good one:” and Selim having obeyed a sign from his highness, intimating that he might sit down, commenced as follows:—

I am a native of Marseilles, your highness, where I was brought up to the profession of my father; a profession (continued the wily renegade) which, I have no hesitation to assert, has produced more men of general information, and more men of talent, than any other—I mean that of a barber.

“Wallah thaib; well said by Allah!” observed Mustapha.

The pacha nodded his approbation; and the renegade proceeded with his story.

I was gifted by nature with a ready invention, and some trouble and expense were bestowed upon my education. To the profession of a barber my father added that of bleeding and tooth-drawing. At ten years old I could cut hair pretty well. People did say, that those upon whom I had operated, looked as if their heads had been gnawed by the rats; but it was the remark of envy; and, as my father observed, “there must be a beginning to every thing.”

At fifteen, I entered upon the rudiments of shaving; and after having nearly ruined my father’s credit, from the pounds of flesh which I removed with the hair of my customers, who were again consoled by his observing, that “there must be a beginning to every thing,” I became quite expert. I was subsequently initiated into the higher branches of tooth-drawing and bleeding. In the former, at first I gave great dissatisfaction, either from breaking the decayed tooth short off, and leaving the stump in the socket, or from mistaking the one pointed out, and drawing a sound engine of mastication in its stead. In the latter, I made more serious mistakes, having more than once cut so deep as to open the artery, while I missed the vein; in consequence of which I was never afterwards employed, except by a husband to relieve a scolding wife, or by nephews who were anxious about the health of an everlasting uncle. But, as my father wisely observed, “there must be a beginning to every thing;” and, as I could only practise upon living subjects, “individuals must suffer for the good of the community at large.” At the age of twenty I was an accomplished barber.

But rapid as was my career, I was not fated to continue in it long. Like the shot propelled from the mouth of the cannon, which, in its extreme velocity, is turned from the direction which has been given it by glancing along the weakest substance, so was my course of life changed from its direction by meeting with a woman.

My father had a good customer; he had shaved him every morning for years, had extracted every tooth in his head, and was now winding up his long account by bleeding him daily, under the direction of an ignorant apothecary. I was often at the house,—not to bleed him, for my father either thought him too valuable, or was too grateful for past favours to trust him in my hands;—but I held the basin, procured water, and arranged the bandages. He had a daughter, a lovely girl, whom I adored in secret; but her rank in life was too far above mine to allow me to express my feelings. I was then a handsome young man, although Time has since exerted his utmost, through jealousy, to make me appear almost as old and ill-favoured as himself. The young lady took a fancy to me, complained of the tooth-ache, and asked for remedies. I offered to extract the tooth; but either having heard of my reputation, or not wishing to remove the excuse for our interviews, or, what is still more probable, having no tooth-ache whatever, she would not consent.

The death of her mother, which had taken place when she was a child, had left her without guidance,—and the helpless situation of her father, without protection. Naturally of a warm temperament, and yielding to the impulse of her feelings, she carried on an intimacy which could only end in her disgrace; and, at the expiration of a year, her situation could no longer be concealed. I was now in a dilemma. She had two brothers in the army, who were returning home, and I dreaded their vengeance.

I loved her very much, but I loved myself more; so, one evening, I packed up all that I could call my own, and all that I could lay my hands on belonging to my honoured parent, and shipped on board a Genoese vessel, which was then standing out of the harbour. She was a large ship, mounting twelve long guns, with a complement of sixty men; being what is termed in European countries a “letter of marque.” This implies that she fights her way without convoy, capturing any of the enemy’s vessels she may happen to fall in with, who are not strong enough to resist her. We had cleared out for Genoa with a cargo of lead, which lay at the bottom of the hold, and which merely served for ballast.

I soon found out, by the conversation of the crew, that we were not to proceed to Genoa direct; in fact, your highness, she was a pirate, manned by a most desperate set of men. As soon as my qualifications were made known, I had the honour to remove the beards of sixty of the greatest villains that ever were permitted to exist, receiving nothing but blows and curses for my trouble. I certainly improved very much in my profession; for it was as much as my life was worth to draw blood, although they made no scruple of carrying on a conversation during the whole time of the operation. We had taken the cargoes out of several vessels, all of which were added to the “manifest” by our correct captain; when one day, we were chased by an English frigate. I never met the English on shore, but I must say that, afloat, they are the most impertinent people that swim on the seas. They cannot be content with minding their own business, although they have plenty on their hands, but they must interfere in that of others. They board you, and insist upon knowing where you come from, whither you are bound and what you have on board; examining you with as much scrutiny as if they had been the delegated custom-house officers of the whole world.

Now it did not exactly suit our captain to submit to such a rigorous search; he therefore made all sail for an island about seven miles distant, and anchored under the protection of a battery. Austria—the nation to whom the island belonged—was not at war with England; she was preserving what is called an “armed neutrality.”

“Pray what is the meaning of an armed neutrality?” demanded the pacha.

“It varies according to circumstances, your highness, but, generally speaking, it means a charge of bayonets.”

The frigate followed; and being prevented by the shallowness of the water from approaching sufficiently near to us herself, sent her boats to examine us: but as there were six of them full of men, and each mounting a gun at her bow, our captain thought it advisable to refuse them permission to come on board. As a hint that he disapproved of their measures, he poured his whole broadside of round and grape into them, when they were about a quarter of a mile distant: upon which they gave three cheers, and were obstinate enough to pull faster towards us than ever.

We received them with all the honours of war, in the shape of cutlasses, pistols, and boarding pikes but they were very determined. As soon as one was knocked down, another jumped up in his place; and somehow or another they had possession of the ship in less time than I have been telling the story. I was on the poop when an English sailor, with a pigtail as thick as a cable, made a cut at me; I ran back to avoid the blow, and, in so doing, came with such force against another of their men, that we both tumbled overboard together. I lost my cutlass, but he had not parted with his; and as soon as we rose to the surface, he seized me by the collar, and presented the point to my breast. It seemed to be all the same to him whether he fought on the deck or in the water. Fortunately I shifted a little on one side, and he only drove it through my jacket. I recollected that I had my razor in my pocket, which I took out under the water unperceived, and, closing with him before he could repeat his thrust, I cut his throat from ear to ear, and then made for the shore as fast as I could. As I swam remarkably well, I had no great difficulty in reaching it. As soon as I landed, I looked back, and observing that the English boats were towing our vessel out, I made all the haste I could to the fort, which was close at hand. There I was hospitably received; and we sat up till past midnight, drinking, smoking, and abusing the English.

The next morning, a felucca anchored to procure some water; and, as she was proceeding to Toulon, I requested a passage. We sailed with a fine breeze; but a heavy gale came on, which tossed us about for many days, and the master of the vessel had no idea to where she had been driven. He consoled us, however, by asserting that we could never go to the bottom, as there was a lady of great sanctity passenger in the cabin, who had been sent for to assume the office of lady abbess of a convent near Marseilles, and whom the saints would indubitably preserve.

This was some comfort, although fine weather would have been greater. The gale continued; and the next morning we thought that we descried land on the lee beam. The following night we were certain of our conjectures having been correct, for the vessel was thrown on shore, and in a few minutes went to pieces. I had the good fortune to save myself upon a part of the wreck, and lay half-dead upon the beach until the morning. When the day broke, I looked around me: there were the fragments of the vessel strewed upon the beach, or tossed in mockery by the surge; and close to me lay the dead body of the lady, whose sanctity the captain had assured us would be a safeguard to us all. I then turned from the beach to look at the inland country, and perceived, to my astonishment, that I was not three miles from my native city, Marseilles. This was a horrid discovery; for I knew that I should receive no mercy, and could not proceed a mile without being recognised. What to do was now the subject of my thoughts; and at last, as I viewed the body of the dead lady, it occurred to me that I might pass myself off for her.

I stripped it of its outer garment; and having then hauled my own clothes upon the corpse, and covered it over with sea-weed, I dressed myself in the religious habit which she had worn, and sat down awaiting the arrival of the people, which I knew must soon take place. I was then without a symptom of beard; and from the hardship and ill-treatment which I had received on board of the Genoese, was thin and sallow in the face. It was easy in a nun’s dress to mistake me for a woman of thirty-five years of age, who had been secluded in a cloister. In the pockets of her clothes I found letters, which gave me the necessary clue to my story, and I resolved to pass myself off as La Soeur Eustasie, rather than he put in prison, or run through the body.

I had scarcely time to finish reading these documents when a party, attracted by the fragments on the beach, came up to me. I narrated the loss of the vessel, the death of the whole crew, my name and condition, my having come over at the request of the bishop to assume the guidance of the convent of St. Therese; and added, that I had called upon the Virgin in my distress, who had come to my aid, and floated me on shore with as much care and comfort as if I had been reposing on cushions of down. The report was spread, and credited; for the circumstance of a helpless woman being the sole survivor of a whole crew was miracle enough in itself.

The bishop’s carriage was sent for me, and I was conducted into the town, followed by a concourse of priests, monks and common people, who were anxious to kiss even the ground that had been trod upon by a personage so especially under the protection of Heaven. I was conducted to the bishop’s palace, where I held a sort of court, being visited by deputations from the official bodies, the governor, and all the people of consequence. After a sojourn of three days, I removed to the convent of which I was the supposed abbess, and was enthusiastically received by the nuns, who flocked round me with mingled veneration and delight.

On the second day of my establishment as abbess, the two elder sisters, who could with difficulty he got rid of even when I retired to bed the night before, introduced the whole of the nuns in rotation, beginning with the elder, and ending with those who last took the vow of chastity. I felt little interest, I must confess, at the commencement of my levee; but as it came near to a close, many beautiful countenances attracted my attention, and I gave the kiss of peace with more zest than prudence would have justified. The last of the sisterhood came forward, and was introduced as Soeur Marie. Gracious Heaven! it was the poor girl whom I had deserted. I started when I saw her advance: her eyes were bent upon the ground, as if in reverence to my acknowledged sanctity. As she knelt before me to receive the kiss, she raised them up. Love can pierce through all disguises.—At the moment, she thought that she beheld her fugitive lover, and caught her breath in amazement—but recollection pointed out to her the utter impossibility of the fact, and she sighed at the uncommon likeness, as she received the kiss from those lips which had indeed been so often pressed to hers before.