My information was almost always received with approval and admiration. Turkey had just seen a good specimen of Europe in her Anglo-French allies who had come to her assistance against the Russians; the Turks were, therefore, eager to learn all the particulars having reference to the Western land, and if the descriptions of these excited now and then their envy, roused them to disapproval or called out their conceit, they were always listened to, and that with pleasure.
At the close of the lesson a well-prepared and abundant breakfast was always brought in, and I must own that from the very first the cooking of the better classes in Constantinople had enlisted my gastronomic partiality. It frequently happened, too, that we started immediately after breakfast for a ride on horseback, my pupil making his calls in my company; in short, I passed a considerable portion of the day in the society of Turks, and I used to return to Pera, that is, to European life, in the evening only.
My permanent stay amongst Turks dates, however, from the time when, at the recommendation of a countryman of mine, I was invited by Hussein Daim Pasha, general of a division, to enter his house as the teacher of his son, Hassan Bey.
I removed my quarters from Pera to the charmingly situated row of houses at Fyndykly; there I got a separate room, and enjoyed for the first time the amenities of Oriental quiet and Turkish comfort. The life in a strictly Mohammedan part of the town, in the vicinity of a mosque, from whose slender minaret the Ezan resounded with gloomy melancholy, affecting my ears with its weird-like sounds; the grand prospect from my window taking in the sea near by, with its thousand crafts, and the magnificent Beshikash palace; and the dignified and patriarchal air which pervaded the whole house—were all things which had the charm of novelty for me, and which I can never forget.
The figure of the major domo (Vekilkhardj), a gray-bearded Anatolian, however, has perhaps made the deepest impression upon my memory. The good man was particularly indulgent towards me upon all occasions when I happened to sin against the strictly Oriental customs; he took great pains to teach me how to sit decorously, that is, with crossed legs; he taught me to carry my head and to use my hands with propriety, and how I should yawn, sneeze, and so forth. His attention embraced the merest trifles.
"You are, for the first time, in a large city; you have just entered polite society," he benignly said, "and you must learn everything."
Of course the old man looked upon me as a person coming from the land of "black infidelity," a land to which, in his opinion, decency, good manners, and morals were utter strangers, and he seemed to think that a stranger hailing from those parts needed to be educated quite as much as a Turkish peasant from the neighbourhood of Kharput and Diarbekir.
HUSSEIN DAIM PASHA.The pasha himself, my chief, was a much more interesting personage. It was he who afterwards became known as the leader of the celebrated Kuleili conspiracy, a conspiracy whose object was nothing less than the removal of Sultan Abdul Medjid and of all his grandees; the conspirators flattering themselves with the belief that all the causes of the decay of Turkey would be thereby extirpated, and that, with one stroke, the old and infirm Ottoman Empire could be restored to its ancient power.
I was an inmate of his house at the time when this notorious conspiracy was being hatched and the plans for its consummation formed. AHMED EFFENDI.A mollah from Bagdad, by the name of Ahmed Effendi, a man of rare mental gifts, immense reading, ascetic life, and boundless fanaticism was the life and soul of the whole conspiracy. He had taken part in the whole of the Crimean war as a Gazi (a warrior for religion), bareheaded and barefooted, and clad in a garb whose austere simplicity recalled the primitive ages of Islam. His sword never left his lean loins, nor his lance the firm grasp of his clenched fist, either by day or by night, except when he said his prayers, five times a day. Through the snow, in the storm, in the thickest of the fight on the battlefield, during toilsome marches, everywhere could be discovered the ghost-like form of this zealot, his fiery eyes scattering flames, and always at the head of the division, under the command of my chief.
It was quite natural that such a man should please Hussein Daim Pasha. The acquaintance begun in the camp, had here grown into a sort of relationship by consanguinity; for the lean mollah, who was walking about barefoot in Constantinople, had the privilege of crossing even the threshold of the harem, where, under the protection of the sacredness of Turkish family life, unwelcome listeners could be most conveniently got rid of. There was something in the appearance of Ahmed Effendi which terrified me at first, and only, later, upon my allowing myself to be called by my pasha, for the sake of intimacy, Reshid (the brave, the discreet), came this terrible man near me, with some show of friendliness; he probably concluding, from my having adopted this name, that I was very near being converted to Islam. A very false inference! But I did not destroy the hopes of the zealot, gaining thereby his good-will, and getting him to give me instruction in Persian.