Alcide and Blount mingled therefore in the crowd, so as to lose no
detail of a festival which ought to supply them with a hundred good
lines for an article. They admired the magnificence of Feofar-Khan,
his wives, his officers, his guards, and all the Eastern pomp,
of which the ceremonies of Europe can give not the least idea.
But they turned away with disgust when Ivan Ogareff presented
himself before the Emir, and waited with some impatience for
the amusements to begin.
"You see, my dear Blount," said Alcide, "we have come too soon,
like honest citizens who like to get their money's worth.
All this is before the curtain rises, it would have been better
to arrive only for the ballet."
"What ballet?" asked Blount.
"The compulsory ballet, to be sure. But see, the curtain is going
to rise." Alcide Jolivet spoke as if he had been at the Opera,
and taking his glass from its case, he prepared, with the air
of a connoisseur, "to examine the first act of Feofar's company."
A painful ceremony was to precede the sports. In fact,
the triumph of the vanquisher could not be complete without
the public humiliation of the vanquished. This was why several
hundreds of prisoners were brought under the soldiers' whips.
They were destined to march past Feofar-Khan and his allies
before being crammed with their companions into the prisons
in the town.
In the first ranks of these prisoners figured Michael Strogoff.
As Ogareff had ordered, he was specially guarded by a file of soldiers.
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