The library of out-of-copyright texts at Project Gutenberg throws up another find, from “Prince Zilah” by the nineteenth-century French author Jules Claretie.
A young Price is recalling stories told to him by his father, who had described:
“when the beautiful dark girls of Transylvania danced, their tears burning their cheeks, under the lash of the Osmanlis.
At first, cold and motionless, like statues whose calm looks silently insulted their possessors, they stood erect beneath the eye of the Turk; then little by little, the sting of the master’s whip falling upon their shoulders and tearing their sides and cheeks, their bodies twisted in painful, revolted spasms; the flesh trembled under the cord like the muscles of a horse beneath the spur; and, in the morbid exaltation of suffering, a sort of wild delirium took possession of them, their arms were waved in the air, their heads with hair dishevelled were thrown backward, and the captives, uttering a sound at once plaintive and menacing, danced, their dance, at first slow and melancholy, becoming gradually active, nervous, and interrupted by cries which resembled sobs.”
That must be the hottest (indeed, only) 126-word sentence I’ve ever read.
More Balkan history! Thanks for sharing!