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ZISKA

THE PROBLEM OF A WICKED SOUL

BY

MARIE CORELLI




Other Books by the same Author

THE SORROWS OF SATAN BARABBAS A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS THE MIGHTY ATOM,
ETC., ETC.






TO THE PRESENT LIVING RE-INCARNATION OF ARAXES






ZISKA.

THE PROBLEM OF A WICKED SOUL.




PROLOGUE.


Dark against the sky towered the Great Pyramid, and over its apex hung
the moon. Like a wreck cast ashore by some titanic storm, the Sphinx,
reposing amid the undulating waves of grayish sand surrounding it,
seemed for once to drowse. Its solemn visage that had impassively
watched ages come and go, empires rise and fall, and generations of men
live and die, appeared for the moment to have lost its usual expression
of speculative wisdom and intense disdain--its cold eyes seemed to
droop, its stern mouth almost smiled. The air was calm and sultry; and
not a human foot disturbed the silence. But towards midnight a Voice
suddenly arose as it were like a wind in the desert, crying aloud:
"Araxes! Araxes!" and wailing past, sank with a profound echo into the
deep recesses of the vast Egyptian tomb. Moonlight and the Hour wove
their own mystery; the mystery of a Shadow and a Shape that flitted out
like a thin vapor from the very portals of Death's ancient temple, and
drifting forward a few paces resolved itself into the visionary
fairness of a Woman's form--a Woman whose dark hair fell about her
heavily, like the black remnants of a long-buried corpse's wrappings; a
Woman whose eyes flashed with an unholy fire as she lifted her face to
the white moon and waved her ghostly arms upon the air. And again the
wild Voice pulsated through the stillness.

   "Araxes!... Araxes! Thou art here,
  --and I pursue thee! Through life into
   death; through death out into life again!
   I find thee and I follow! I follow!
   Araxes!..."

Moonlight and the Hour wove their own mystery; and ere the pale opal
dawn flushed the sky with hues of rose and amber the Shadow had
vanished; the Voice was heard no more. Slowly the sun lifted the edge
of its golden shield above the horizon, and the great Sphinx awaking
from its apparent brief slumber, stared in expressive and eternal scorn
across the tracts of sand and tufted palm-trees towards the glittering
dome of El-Hazar--that abode of profound sanctity and learning, where
men still knelt and worshipped, praying the Unknown to deliver them
from the Unseen. And one would almost have deemed that the sculptured
Monster with the enigmatical Woman-face and Lion-form had strange
thoughts in its huge granite brain; for when the full day sprang in
glory over the desert and illumined its large features with a burning
saffron radiance, its cruel lips still smiled as though yearning to
speak and propound the terrible riddle of old time; the Problem which
killed!




CHAPTER I.


It was the full "season" in Cairo. The ubiquitous Britisher and the no
less ubiquitous American had planted their differing "society"
standards on the sandy soil watered by the Nile, and were busily
engaged in the work of reducing the city, formerly called Al Kahira or
The Victorious, to a more deplorable condition of subjection and
slavery than any old-world conqueror could ever have done. For the
heavy yoke of modern fashion has been flung on the neck of Al Kahira,
and the irresistible, tyrannic dominion of "swagger" vulgarity has laid
The Victorious low. The swarthy children of the desert might, and
possibly would, be ready and willing to go forth and fight men with
men's weapons for the freedom to live and die unmolested in their own
native land; but against the blandly-smiling, white-helmeted,
sun-spectacled, perspiring horde of Cook's "cheap trippers," what can
they do save remain inert and well-nigh speechless? For nothing like
the cheap tripper was ever seen in the world till our present
enlightened and glorious day of progress; he is a new-grafted type of
nomad, like and yet unlike a man. The Darwin theory asserts itself
proudly and prominently in bristles of truth all over him--in his
restlessness, his ape-like agility and curiosity, his shameless
inquisitiveness, his careful cleansing of himself from foreign fleas,
his general attention to minutiae, and his always voracious appetite;
and where the ape ends and the man begins is somewhat difficult to
discover. The "image of God" wherewith he, together with his fellows,
was originally supposed to be impressed in the first fresh days of
Creation, seems fairly blotted out, for there is no touch of the Divine
in his mortal composition. Nor does the second created phase-the copy
of the Divineo--namely, the Heroic,--dignify his form or ennoble his
countenance. There is nothing of the heroic in the wandering biped who
swings through the streets of Cairo in white flannels, laughing at the
staid composure of the Arabs, flicking thumb and finger at the patient
noses of the small hireable donkeys and other beasts of burden,
thrusting a warm red face of inquiry into the shadowy recesses of
odoriferous bazaars, and sauntering at evening in the Esbekiyeh
Gardens, cigar in mouth and hands in pockets, looking on the scene and
behaving in it as if the whole place were but a reflex of Earl's Court
Exhibition. History affects the cheap tripper not at all; he regards
the Pyramids as "good building" merely, and the inscrutable Sphinx
itself as a fine target for empty soda-water bottles, while perhaps his
chiefest regret is that the granite whereof the ancient monster is hewn
is too hard for him to inscribe his distinguished name