"Hear him call your prime minister and your agents a set of thieves and robbers!" exclaimed Captain Eaton.
"Mercy! Forbearance!" cried Famin.
"Yes, thieves and robbers! This is the man of your confidence!" the consul went on. Then I heard him tell the Bey that Famin had blabbed all his secrets to a woman, who had repeated them to others, so that all the town knew that he was playing a double game with the Americans, and increasing the misunderstandings that had arisen between the American envoy and the court.
Famin trembled as if in a fit, and began an address in Arabic.
"Speak French!" said the Bey, frowning.
The ruler was at last convinced of the Frenchman's guilt. As we quitted the place we heard the Bey say to his court:
"The American consul has been heated, but truly he has had reason. I have found him a very plain, candid man; and his concern for his fellow-citizens is not a crime."
On one occasion, while Captain Eaton was in the palace, I paid a visit to the executioner, who occupied a lodge at the entrance to the palace. I went with an interpreter, a friend of the executioner, but even under the circumstances I felt timid when the official took down from its place on the wall a long curved scimitar and began to feel its edge as a reaper feels the blade of his scythe.
"It is a good blade—it has never failed me," he said, "even though I have had to slice off as many as twenty heads in a day."
If one is disposed to think that the ancient cruelty of these Turkish rulers has been decreased, let him think of these cruelties which we saw enacted in spite of our attempts to stop them.