"Ah, my dear mistress," said Nedjeb, "if Seigneur Kéraban would only break a leg or two before he leaves this place! Shall I see about it?"
But Amasia desired the maid to hold her tongue. Still, Nedjeb was quite capable of carrying out her threat, or of finding some other means to stop the intractable uncle.
Farewells were exchanged, the last kisses given; nearly every one present was more or less affected; even the Dutchman felt an accelerated movement of the heart. Kéraban alone saw nothing, and wished to see nothing, of the general sorrow and tenderness.
"Is the chaise ready?" he asked.
"The chaise is ready," replied Nizib.
"Come along, then. Ah! you new-fashioned Turks, who dress like Europeans, who do not even know how to get fat." (This was evidently an unpardonable sin in Kéraban's eyes.) "Ah! you renegades, who submit to the decrees of Mahmoud: I will show you that there is still one of the old believers left, of whom you will never get the better!"
No one contradicted him, yet he proceeded in a still more excited manner,—
"Ah! you pretend to monopolize the Bosphorus, do you? Well, I will get to the opposite side of it. That for your Bosphorus! I laugh at your Bosphorus. What did you say, Van Mitten?"
"I said nothing,” replied Van Mitten, who had taken very good care not to open his mouth.
"Your Bosphorus—their Bosphorus," continued Kéraban, shaking his fist towards the south. "Fortunately the Black Sea is there, and it has a coast-line not exclusively for caravans. I will follow that road. I will circum-ambulate it; and you will see the faces of your officials, when I appear upon the heights of Scutari, without having thrown my paras into the box of that set of administrative mendicants."
We must confess that Kéraban, when he reached this crowning invective, was really magnificent in his anger.
"Come, Ahmet; come, Van Mitten. Away, away, away!"
