CHAPTER XXVII.
Season-Changes at Constantinople—Twilight—The Palace Garden—Mariaritza, the Athenian—A Love-tale by Moonlight—The Greek Girl’s Song—The Palace of Beglierbey—Interior Decorations—The Bath—The Terraces—The Lake of the Swans—The Air Bath—The Emperor’s Vase—The Gilded Kiosk—A Disappointment.
We had landed at Constantinople amid the snows of winter: we had danced through the Carnival at the Palaces of Pera: seen the early primroses spring in the Valley of the Sweet Waters, and the first violets blossom among the tombs in the Cemetery of Eyoub. We had hailed the brightening summer as it wrote its approach with flowery fingers amid the bursting roses of the terrace-gardens, whispered its gentle promises in the low murmuring breezes which curled lovingly the clear ripple of the Bosphorus, and made mystic music among the leafy plane-trees. We had glided over that ripple by moonlight in a fairy-bark, whose golden glitter flashed back the sweet light that touched it, and whose broad-bladed oars flung the light spray from them at every stroke, like mimic stars.
We had dropped down with the tide under the “hill of the thousand nightingales,” when they made night vocal with their melody. I shall never forget that hour! It was in the very heart of summer, and, in the West the twilight lingers lovingly upon the earth, as though it were loath to leave a scene of so much beauty: and, in the dim light the wanderer, who moves slowly among the sights and scents of the most luxurious of seasons, may see the chalices of the reviving flowers opening to receive the dew-offering poured forth as if in homage to their beauty; and the tinted lip of every orient blossom uplifted to the grateful touch of the tears of night.—It was at the last hour of daylight; but, in the East, the Giant Darkness overshadows the earth only for an instant in his approach, ere he lays his sable hand on the landscape, and effaces its outline.
I had been passing the day in one of the Palaces that skirt the channel. It was a season of festivity, and my father and myself had shared, with about fifty other guests, the princely hospitality of its owner; we had met early, and, after many hours of excitement and exertion, I felt that craving for mental repose always the most imperative after a lapse of time in which the spirit has been more taxed than the physical strength.
From the supper-room I accordingly strolled into the garden. Daylight was just looking its last over the waters; and already the shadows of the Asian hills were looming long upon their surface. I turned listlessly from the broad path which, overhung with trellised roses, divided the parterre almost in the centre; and, striking into a screened way hedged on either side by a deep belt of evergreens and flowering shrubs, retreated with a rapid step from the immediate neighbourhood of the illuminated saloons that gave upon the garden; and from whose open casements the light laughter and mirthful tones of the guests rang through the evening air. A slight dew was already falling, and the blossoming trees among which I passed were giving out a cool fresh scent as the moisture touched them;—an occasional tuft of violets nestling at their roots flung a rich perfume to the sky; and the faint odour of the far-off orangery which was already invisible in the fading light, came occasionally on the breeze like a gush of incense wafted by the hand of Nature in homage to her God.
Another breath! and down came the darkness, above and about me. The stern mountains were faintly pencilled against the horizon—the breeze sighed through the blossom-laden branches as though it mourned the loss of the daylight; and conjured, as it seemed, by that soft sound, up sprang a single star into the Heavens—clear, full, and glittering as though it had been formed of one pure and perfect diamond; and was reflected back from the calm bosom of the Bosphorus, in bright but tempered brilliancy.
It was a moment of enchantment! And as my eye became accustomed to the sudden gloom, the whole horizon appeared changed. It was not blackness that veiled the sky; night wore no sables; but a far-spreading vestment of deep dense blue, without a vapour to dim its intensity—And slowly, beautifully, into this empurpled vault, rose the soft moon, whose silver circle was almost perfect; casting, as she clombe her mysterious path, a long line of light across the channel which glittered like liquid gems.
I was still gazing on this glorious spectacle, motionless, and almost breathless, when I was startled by a deep sigh so near me that I involuntarily started back a pace or two; but, recovering myself on the instant, I looked earnestly in the direction whence it had appeared to come; and, detecting amid the branches the glimmer of a white drapery, I approached the spot, and found myself standing beside a dark-eyed girl, who, seated on a broken column under the overarching boughs of a magnificent cedar tree, was plucking to pieces a branch of orange-blossom which she had torn from her brow.
She was dressed in deep mourning, but over her head she had flung the long loose veil of soft white muslin common to her countrywomen—for Mariaritza was a Greek—I scarcely know how to describe her, and I quite despair of making my portrait a likeness, for her’s was not a face that words can mirror faithfully. I had heard much of her before we met—much which had excited alike my curiosity and my interest; and, although since our acquaintance had commenced, that interest had grown almost into affection, my curiosity still remained ungratified. She must have been about two and twenty; her stature was low, and her complexion swarthy; she was limbed like an Antelope; and her coal black hair was braided smoothly across a brow as haughty as that of an Empress. I am not quite sure that she had a good feature in her face, except her eyes; although there have been moments when I have thought her not only handsome, but even radiantly beautiful—And her eyes—they can be described like those of no other person—you could not look into them for a moment without feeling that you were thralled. They were as black as midnight; long, and peculiarly-shaped, set deeply into the head, and somewhat closer together than is usual.
But all this is commonplace. It was not the form and fashion of Mariaritza’s eyes which made them so singular—it was their extraordinary and contradictory expression—I have seen them soft and liquid as those of infancy; and, an instant afterwards, almost fierce in their blinding brightness.
As I reached her side she looked up, and the flash of blended ire and bitterness was in those dark wild eyes, as she exclaimed, without changing her position: “Ha! Is it indeed you who are cheating yourself into a belief that you can love the silent night better than the laughter and the flatteries of yonder empty-hearted fools?” and she jerked her veiled head impatiently in the direction of the Palace: “You, the courted, and the caressed; whom they idolise and worship because you can record them and their’s, and make them subject for song and story in your own far-off land? Go, go—The night air may chill you—It is not for such as you to be abroad when the dew is on the earth.”
I saw that the dark mood was on her. I had known her thus more than once; and I only answered by drawing a part of her long veil over my own head, and sitting down on the earth beside her.
“Nay, if you will really forsake them awhile for my companionship,” she murmured, while the moonlight that streamed upon her face was not more soft than the gaze which met mine as I looked up at her: “let us free ourselves for a while from all risk of intrusion—I have been in the lime-avenue, but I had well nigh intruded on a love-tale; and when I would fain have taken refuge in the ruined temple, and found it tenanted by a Saraf and his pipe-bearer——”
“And I”—and as I spoke I raised her hand playfully to my lips; “I am to chace you hence?”
“You shall, if you so will it;” said Mariaritza: “and if you will trust yourself with me for a couple of hours——”
“Any where—everywhere——”
The young Greek answered only by rising, and moving hastily towards the house. In a moment I heard the clapping of her small hands; and in five minutes more her caïque awaited us at the terrace-gate which opened on the channel.
“The sternmost caïquejhe is deaf;” whispered Mariaritza; as we established ourselves on the yielding cushions at the bottom of the arrow-like boat, and wrapped the furred pelisses with which it was profusely supplied carefully about us—“we have but to converse in a low voice, and we shall be safe, even although we should whisper treason of Mahmoud himself!”
I answered with a similar jest; and we darted out into the centre of the channel, and on until we glided beneath the Asian shore. No! I shall never forget that night—and could I impart to my readers the tale to which I listened from that passionate Greek girl, in a flood of moonlight, and to the music of the myriad nightingales, as we crept along under the shadows of the mighty hills, I might spare the asseveration. That night I heard all her secret; and from that hour I loved her!
Mariaritza was an Athenian; proud of her unsullied descent, and of the loved land of her birth. She was on a visit to a rich relative at Constantinople; but she sighed for Greece as the captive sighs for liberty; and the rather that a wealthy suitor had presented himself, whom her friends persecuted her to receive.
“Did they know what is hidden here!” she exclaimed, as she alluded to this new lover, pressing her small hand over her heart while she spoke; “Could they guess the tale which I have confided to no ear save your’s—But you are weeping—your tears are bright in the moonlight—God forgive me! but I did not think that you knew how to weep.”
“Mariaritza!” I whispered reproachfully.
“Pardon! pardon!” murmured the wayward girl, winding her arm about my neck; “Our Lady have mercy on me! It is my fate ever to pain those I love. But I will talk of myself no more—Let us speak of Greece—my own beautiful Greece!—or, listen—I will sing to you a song that I ought long to have forgotten, for he wrote it—Did I tell you that he, too, was an Athenian?”
And without waiting for a reply, she warbled to a plaintive melody some Greek stanzas, of which the following is a free translation:
THE GREEK GIRL’S SONG.
My own bright Greece! My sunny land!
Nurse of the brave and free!
How bound the chords beneath my hand
Whene’er I sing of thee—
The myrtle branches wave above my brow,
And glorious memories throng around me now!
Thy very name was once a spell,—
A watchword in the earth—
With thee the Arts first deigned to dwell—
And o’er thy gentle hearth
The social spirit spread her gleaming wings;
And made it the glad home of pure and lovely things.
The snowy marble sprang to life
’Neath thy Promethean touch;
The breeze with sunny song was rife:
(Where now awakens such?)
All that was brightest, best, with thee was found,
And thy sons trod in pride thy classic ground.
The burning eloquence which dips
Its torch in living fire,
Flowed, like a lava-tide, from lips
That, from the funeral-pyre
Of by-past ages plucked a burning brand,
To shed new light o’er thee, thou bright and glorious land.
They tell me thou art nothing now—
I spurn the unholy thought!
The beam is yet upon thy brow
Which erst from Heaven it caught—
Let then the baneful, blighting mockery cease!
Still art thou beautiful, my own fair Greece!
Firm hearts and glowing souls remain
To love thee, glorious one!
And though no hand may clasp again
Thy once celestial zone,
Better to worship at thy ruined shrine,
Than bend the knee at one less proud and pure than thine!
But the wild-eyed Mariaritza has betrayed me into a digression in which I thought not to indulge when I commenced this chapter; and I must lead back my reader to the opening sentences, wherein I was noting the sweet season-changes that we had witnessed in the East. The summer, with its luxury of leaves and flowers, had passed away; and we saw the bright green of the Asian woods grow into gold beneath the touch of autumn. Our days of pilgrimage were numbered; and Stamboul, with its mosques and its minarets, its domes and its palaces, was soon to be only a gorgeous memory.
Already had we said our farewell to many a fond and valued friend, never, probably, to be looked upon again in life; and as we wandered amid scenes and sights to which we had become familiarised, we felt that indescribable sadness with which an object is ever contemplated for the last time. The heart may have been wrung, the spirit may have been pained, during a foreign sojourn; deep shadows may have fallen over the landscape; but there must ever be sunny spots on which the memory lingers, and to which the affections cling.
The freshness had passed away from the Valley of the Sweet Waters, and the turf had withered beneath a scorching sun; yet to me it was still beautiful. The sparkling Barbyses was shrunken to a silver thread; but in my mind’s eye I yet saw it filling its graceful channel, and gliding like a snake through the silent glen. The cemetery of Eyoub was glorious! The lordly trees which overhang the tombs were rainbow-like in their tints; and the gilded head-stones appeared to be over-canopied by living gems.
Every hour passed in the solemn Necropolis of Scutari was a distinct mine of thought—Its deep, dense shadows, its voiceless solitude, its melancholy sublimity—all remained as I had first felt them—The seasons effect no change on this City of the Dead—The long dim avenues of cypress put on no summer livery to flaunt in the garish sunshine—amid the snows of winter, and the skies of spring, they wear the same dark hues—the autumnal beams shed no golden tints over their dusky foliage; nor do the summer heats betray them into blossoming. The grave-tree, nourished by the mouldering remnants of mortality, dank with the exhalations of the tombs, and rooted in a soil fed with corruption, drinks not the dews, and revels not in the day-beam, like the changeful child of the sunshine, which flings its leafy and light-loving branches over a painted kiosk, or a marble fountain—It is dark and silent, as the dead above whom it springs; and the wind moans more sadly among its boughs, than when it sweeps through the leaves of the summer woods.
The very streets, narrow, difficult, and even plague-teeming as they were, acquired a new interest when we remembered that in a few weeks we should tread them no more. The columns of the Atmeidan—the “Tree of Groans” beside the mosque of Sultan Achmet—the gorgeous Fountain of Topphannè—each claimed a longer look than heretofore, as we felt that it was the last.
These were our chosen haunts; and the steam-vessel that was to convey us to the Danube, by which route we had decided on returning to England, already lay in the port, when an Officer of the Imperial Household bore to us the gracious permission of the Sultan to visit his palaces; coupled with the injunction that we were to be unaccompanied by any other Frank. Not a moment was to be lost! We had not a week to remain in the country; and we accordingly appointed the morrow for crossing to the gilded summer Palace of Beglierbey.
Our caïque was at the pier of Yeni-keuy at ten o’clock; and we shot athwart the channel which was steeped in sunshine, like wild birds. At the marble gate we were met by the courteous individual who was to act as our guide through the saloons of the Sultan; and, having made our bow to the Kiara, who was also awaiting us, we stepped across the threshold, followed by the gaze of the astonished guard; and skirting the rainbow-like garden, we passed along the line of gilt lattices which veil the seaward boundary of the pleasure-grounds; and entered the hall.
The first glance of the interior is not imposing. The double staircase, sweeping crescent-wise through the center of the entrance, contracts its extent so much as to give it the appearance of being insignificant in its proportions; an effect which is, moreover, considerably heightened by the elaborated ornaments of the carved and gilded balustrades and pillars. But such is far from being the case in reality; as, from this outer apartment, with its flooring of inlaid woods, arabesqued ceiling, and numerous casements, open no less than eight spacious saloons, appropriated to the Imperial Household.
Above this suite are situated the State Apartments; gorgeous with gilding, and richly furnished with every luxury peculiar alike to the East and to the West. The Turkish divans of brocade and embroidered velvet are relieved by sofas and lounges of European fashion—bijouterie from Geneva—porcelain from Sèvres—marbles from Italy—gems from Pompeii—Persian carpets—English hangings—and, in the principal saloons, six of the most magnificent, if not actually the six most magnificent, pier glasses in the world; a present to the Sultan from the Emperor of Russia, after the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi.
Upwards of twelve feet in height, and about six feet in width, of one single plate, and enclosed in a deep frame of silver gilt, bearing the united arms of the two empires; these costly glasses reflect in every direction the ornaments of the apartment; and produce an effect almost magical. While the highly elaborated ceiling, richly ornamented with delicate wreaths of flowers; and the bright-patterned carpet covering the floor, combine to fling over the vast saloon an atmosphere of light and gladness, which is increased by the dazzling glories of the parterre spread out beneath the windows; with its flashing fountain, golden orangery, and long line of gleaming lattices.
The Reception-Room is small, and remarkable only for the comfortably-cushioned divan on which the Sultan receives his visitors; and the noble view that it commands of the channel, from the Seraglio Point to the Castle of Mahomet.
The Banquetting Hall is entirely lined with inlaid woods of rare and beautiful kinds finely mosaiced; the ceiling and the floor being alike enriched with a deep garland of grapes and vine-leaves, flung over groups of pine-apples of exquisite workmanship.
Hence, a long gallery conducted us to the private apartments of the Sultan; and on every side were graceful fountains of white marble, whose flashing waters fell with a musical sound into their sculptured basins. In one, the stream trickled from a plume of feathers wrought in alabaster; and so delicately worked that they almost appeared to bend beneath the weight of the sparkling drops—in another, the stream gushed forth, overflowing a lotus-flower, upon whose lip sported a group of Cupids. The private apartments, which separated the harem from the state wing of the Palace, were the very embodiment of luxurious comfort; two of them were lined with wicker-work painted cream colour; the prettiest possible idea, executed in the best possible style.
The harem was, of course, a sealed book; for, as the ladies of the Sultan’s household have never been allowed to indulge their curiosity by a survey of that portion of the Palace appropriated to Mahmoud himself, it can scarcely be expected that any intruder should be admitted beyond the jealously-barred door forming their own boundary.
The Bath was beautiful. As we passed the crimson door with its crescent-shaped cornice, we entered a small hall in which two swans, the size of life, and wrought in pure white marble, were pouring forth the water that supplies the cold stream necessary to the bathers. The cooling-room was richly hung with embroidered draperies; and the mirror was surmounted by the Ottoman arms wrought in gold and enamel. The Bath itself realized a vision of the Arabian Nights, with its soft, dreamy twilight, its pure and glittering whiteness, and its exquisitely imagined fountains—and the subdued effect of our voices, dying away in indistinct murmurs in the distance, served to heighten the illusion.
Altogether, the Summer Palace of Sultan Mahmoud is as fair within, as without; and I have already said that it is the most elegant edifice on the Bosphorus.
The gardens, which rise to the summit of the steep height immediately behind the Seraï, are formed into terraces, each being under the direction of a foreign gardener, and laid out in the fashion of his own land. Thus there are a Spanish, an Italian, an English, a German, and a French garden. The deepest terrace is occupied by a fine sheet of water, called the Lake of the Swans, on which about thirty of these graceful birds, the Sultan’s peculiar favourites, were disporting themselves in the clear sunshine. Weeping willows, and other graceful trees, were mirrored in its calm bosom, and a couple of gaily-painted pleasure-boats were moored under the shadow of a magnificent magnolia.
About fifty yards from the water, stands a graceful edifice of white marble denominated the “Air Bath;” in which his Sublime Highness passes many a delicious hour during the summer heats. The saloon is paved, roofed, and lined with marble; and exquisitely imagined fountains fling their waters from the lotus leaves that are carved on the cornice of the apartment, through a succession of ocean-shells, fantastically grouped, and delicately chiselled, which divide the stream into a hundred slender threads, and ultimately pour their volume into the basins, whence it escapes to the lake without, keeping up a continual current of cool air, and murmur of sweet sound, which produce an effect almost magical. In the centre of this saloon, whence several inferior apartments branch off on either side, stands a magnificent vase of verd-antique, about eight feet in height; a present to the Sultan from the Emperor Nicholas.
The hill is crowned by a gilded kiosk, glittering among cypresses and plane trees; and the whole establishment is more like a fairy creation, than the result of human invention and labour.
On the morrow, we decided on paying another visit to the Seraï Bournou; as the following day was that fixed for our departure. But alas! when that morrow came, we had reason to congratulate ourselves on having already penetrated beyond the “Golden Gate;” for the waves of the channel were running mountain high, and the opposite coast was lost in a dense vapour of sleet and rain. The disappointment was extreme; but, as there was no alternative, we were compelled to submit. For once “our star was bankrupt;” and we were fain to console ourselves with the reflection that our last day in Asia had been so worthily spent.