“What is this?” said the pasha, when he had opened the parcel.
“Gloves, your excellency.”
“And what use are they?”
“When you go out in the sun, they will preserve the color of your hands (the pasha’s were very white), and when you are riding, they will prevent them from being blistered by the bridle.”
“But how do you put them on?”
The young man answered by putting one on the pasha’s hand.
“Now the other.”
This also was put on. Hussein then clapped his hands three times, and raised them above his head, just as the officers of his suite were entering the tent. Thanks to this pair of gloves, which were the admiration of the pasha and his staff the stranger was admitted into Hussein’s service. Now this stranger was no other than Latkes, now Omer Pasha.
Of his early life but little is known. His origin is Croatian; his native place Vlaski, a village in the district of Ogulini, thirteen leagues from Fiume, on the Adriatic Sea. He was born in 1801; the religion of his forefathers, and of his youthful years, was the Greek united faith, namely, that branch of the Greek worship subject to the Roman Pontiff. He received a liberal education. His father enjoyed the important charge of Lieutenant-Administrator of the district, and his uncle was invested with ecclesiastical functions. His instruction in mathematics and military engineering he received at the military school of Thurm, near Carlstadt, in Transylvania; and in 1822, when 21 years of age, after having distinguished himself in his studies, he entered the corps of Ponts et Chaussées in the Austrian service, with the rank of lieutenant, that body having just been organized by the government.
At twenty-nine he left the Austrian service; but the true cause of his taking this step has always remained a mystery. Many attributed it to a family misfortune; some to a quarrel he had with his superiors, followed by acts that would have subjected him to a court-martial.