The Greeks.
Difficult as it may be to single out the Armenian at sight, there is no such trouble about the Greek, who differs so essentially in character, bearing, appearance, everything, from all the other subjects of the Empire that he can be told at once without even looking at his dress. To appreciate this diversity, or rather contrast, one need only watch a Turk and a Greek who happen to be seated beside one another on board a steamboat or in a café. They may be about the same age and rank, both dressed in the European fashion, and even resemble each other somewhat in feature, and yet it is quite impossible to mistake them. The Turk sits perfectly motionless; his face wears a look of quietude and repose, void of all expression, like a fed animal; if by any chance some shadow of a thought appears, it seems to be a reflection as lifeless and inert as his body; he looks at no one, and is apparently quite unconscious that any one is looking at him, expressing by his entire bearing an utter indifference to his surroundings, a something of the resigned melancholy of a slave and the cold pride of a despot; hard, closed, completed, he seems incapable of altering any resolution once taken, and it would drive any one to the verge of madness who should undertake the task of persuading him to any course. In short, he appears to be a being hewn out of a single block, with whom it would only be possible to live either as master or servant, and no amount of intercourse with whom would ever justify the taking of a liberty. With the Greek it is altogether different. His mobile features express every thought that passes through his mind, and betray a youthful, almost childish ardor, while he tosses his head with the free action of an uncurbed and restive horse. On finding himself observed he at once strikes an attitude, and if no one looks at him he tries to attract attention; he seems to be always wanting or imagining something, and his whole person breathes of shrewdness and ambition. There is something so attractive and sympathetic about him that you are inclined to give him your hand even when you would hesitate about trusting him with your purse. Seen side by side, one can readily understand how it is that one of these men considers the other a proud, overbearing, brutal savage, and is looked down upon in his turn as a light creature, untrustworthy, mischievous, and the cause of endless trouble, and how they mutually despise and hate one another from the bottom of their hearts, finding it impossible to live together in peace. And so with the women. It is with a distinct feeling of gratification and pleasure that one first encounters amid the handsome, florid Turkish and Armenian types, appealing more to the senses than the mind, the pure and exquisite features of the Greek women, illuminated by those deep serious eyes whose every glance recalls an ode, while their exquisite shapes inspire an immediate desire to clasp them in one’s arms—with the object of placing them on pedestals, however, rather than in the harem. Among them can still be occasionally found one or two who, wearing their hair after the ancient fashion—that is, hanging over the shoulders in long wavy locks, with one thick coil wound around the top of the head like a diadem—are so noble-looking, so beautiful and classic, that they might well be taken for statues fresh from the chisel of a Praxiteles or a Lysippus, or for youthful immortals discovered after twenty centuries in some forgotten valley of Laconia or unknown island of the Egean. But even among the Greeks these examples of queenly beauty are exceedingly rare, and are found only in the ranks of the old aristocracy of the Empire, in the silent and melancholy quarter of Fanar, where the spirit of ancient Byzantium has taken refuge. There one may occasionally see one of these magnificent women leaning on the railing of a balcony or against the grating of some lofty window, her eyes fixed upon the deserted street in the attitude of an imprisoned queen; and when a crowd of lackeys is not lounging idly before the door of one of these descendants of the Palæologi and the Comneni, one may, watching her from some place of observation, fancy that a rift in the clouds has revealed for an instant the face of an Olympian goddess.