Veli Pasha, Governor of the Morea, passed through Athens a short time ago in a palankin of gold, while the country is in misery.
The Greeks, cringeing blackguards as they are, have often a sort of pride of their own. One of our servants, who received a piastre a day (1s.), has just left us. His amorosa, who lived close by, saw him carrying water and performing other menial offices and chaffed him, so he said he could stand it no longer and threw up a place the like of which he will not find again in Athens.
I went into the council of the Greek primates. There I saw the French proclamation on the birth of the Roi des Romains: 'The Immortal son of Buonaparte is born! Rejoice, ye people, our wishes are accomplished!' The primates, however, soberly objected that none but God was ἁθἁνατος [Greek: athanatos]. What took me there was to back an Englishman who had got into a quarrel with a neighbour, a Greek widow, about 'ancient lights' which were blocked by a new building he was putting up. The woman maintained her cause with much spirit and choice expressions: 'You rascal, who came to Athens with your mouth full of dung! I'll send you out without a shoe to your foot.' Our man retorted 'putana,' equally irrelevantly, and the affair ended in his favour.
One morning by agreement we rose at daybreak and walked to Eleusis, intending to dig, but we found the labourers very idle and insolent; and after a few days, discovering no trace of the temple, we gave it up. The better sort of Greeks have some respect for the superior knowledge of Franks as evinced in my drawings; one man, a papa or priest, asked me whether I thought the ancients, whom they revere, can have been Franks or Romaics.
An awkward incident occurred during our stay. We had in our service a handsome Greek lad to whom the cadi took a fancy and insisted on his taking service with him. The boy, much terrified, came and wept to us and Papa Nicola, with whom we lodged. We started off at once to the cadi, and gave him a piece of our mind, which considerably astonished and enraged him. He was afraid to touch us, but vowed to take it out of old Nicola, and the next day went off to Athens. One night, the last of our stay, arrived a man from the zabeti, or police, of Athens to take up Nicola to answer certain accusations brought against him by the cadi. This soldier, who was a fine type of the genuine Athenian blackguard, swaggered in and partook freely of our wine, having already got drunk at the cadi's. He offered wine to passers-by as if it was his own, boasted, called himself παλικαρ [Greek: 'palikar,'] roared out songs, and generally made himself most objectionable. He began to quiz a respectable Albanian who came in; and when the latter, who was very civil and called him 'Aga,' attempted to retort, flew into a rage, said he was a palikar again, and handled his sword and shook his pistols. I could stand it no longer at last, and said this was my house and no one was aga there but myself; that I should be glad to see him put his pistols down and let me have no more of his swaggering; otherwise I had pistols too, which I showed him, and would be ready to use them. I then treated our poor Albanian with great attention and him with contumely. This finished him and reduced the brute to absolute cringeing as far as his conduct to me went. The wretched papa he bullied as before, and when he got up to go he and all the rest were up in an instant; one prepared his papouches, another supported him, a third opened the door, and a fourth held a lamp to light him out. But he had not yet finished his evening. Soon I heard a noise of singing and roaring from another house hard by, and received a message from him to beg I would sup with him, for now he had a table of his own and could invite me. The table was provided by some wretched Greek he was tyrannising over. Of course I did not go, but I moralised over the state of the country. Next day he carried off Nicola.
Another instance of the tyranny of these scoundrels was told me as having occurred only a few days before. A zabetis man had arrived and pretended to have lost on the way a purse containing 80 piastres. All the inhabitants were sent to search for it, and if they did not find it he said it must be repaid by the town—and it was.
Among the people we met at Eleusis was a Greek merchant, a great beau from Hydra, at this time the most prosperous place in Greece; but away from his own town he had to cringe to the Turks like everyone else. On our way back to Athens we overtook him carrying an umbrella to shade his face, and with an Albanian boy behind him. When he saw our janissary Mahomet the umbrella was immediately lowered.
The population of Greece is so small now[23] that large spaces are left uncultivated and rights to land are very undefined. In the neighbourhood of towns there is always a considerable amount of cultivated ground, but although the cultivator of each patch hopes to reap it, there is nothing but fear of him to prevent another's doing it, so far as I can see. A field is ploughed and sown by an undefined set of people, and an equally or even less defined set may reap it. And in point of fact people do go and cut corn where they please or dare. We met a lot of Athenians on our way back, going to cut corn at Thebes."
By the middle of July the Æginetan Marbles had been thoroughly overhauled and pieced together, and it was pressing that something should be done about them. The schemes of selling them to Lord Sligo and Messrs. Knight and Fazakerly had fallen through, and it had come to be seen that the only fair way for all parties was to sell them by public auction. To do this they must first be got out of the country, and various schemes for effecting it were considered and abandoned.
As the proprietors meanwhile were in daily fear of their being pounced upon by the Turkish authorities, they agreed at length to put the whole matter into the hands of one Gropius, a common acquaintance. He was half a German, but born and bred amongst Orientals, and being conversant with their ways and languages, and a sharp fellow besides, they felt he was more likely than themselves, unassisted, to carry the business through successfully. They accordingly appointed him their agent, and settled that the collection should be got to Zante, as the nearest place of security.