View from Interior of the Seven Towers.
At the opposite end from Stambul, on the Seraglio Hill, was that terrible Tribunal of the Court, and hard by it the huge executioner’s machine, surmounted by seven great stone gallows, to which living victims were transported by sea and land to be offered up beneath the moon, and brought forth again into the sunlight, mere heads and trunks; from the heights of the tower beside it, in which he was to die, the lonely prisoner could see by night the brilliant lights of the Seraglio where the imperial kiosks were all illuminated for a fête. It gives one a positive sensation of pleasure to see that infamous pile so transformed, as though all its victims, unable to revenge themselves on man, had come to life again on purpose to rend and tear it with teeth and nails. The mighty monster, decrepit and disarmed, gapes with its hundred mouths of ruined doorways and disused loopholes, a mere empty scarecrow, while rats, snakes, and yellow scorpions eat like worms at its very vitals and swarm through its great spent body, and an insolent vegetation decks it out as if in mockery with leafy garlands and radiant bloom. After glancing in through several doorways, and seeing nothing but flying troops of rats, I mounted a grass-grown stair leading to one of the curtains on the western side, whence a view can be had of the entire building—a vast extent of ruined towers and battlements, stairways and ramparts, dark red or blackened with age, surrounding a mass of vivid green, and beyond them more towers and battlements, stretching on, on, on, belonging to the eastern walls of Stambul; so that by half closing the eyes one seems to be looking out over one prodigious abandoned fortress outlined against the blue waters of the Sea of Marmora: to the left a large part of Stambul is visible, cut up into long, winding streets, disappearing from view in the direction of the ancient triumphal way of the Byzantine emperors, which led from the Golden Gate by the forums of Arcadius and Constantine all the way to the royal palace. This broad and smiling view threw the dark, forbidding pile at my feet into sharp contrast. Leaning there against one of the battlements, warmed by the sun, bathed in the flood of vivid light, I gazed for a long time at the great uncovered sepulchre below with something of the same hesitating curiosity with which one looks at the scene of a recently-committed crime: everywhere there reigned a profound stillness; big lizards slid across the walls; below, in the ditch, a toad might occasionally be seen hopping about, and above the tower ravens were flying and cawing to each other. Clouds of insects rose from the damp ruins and buzzed around my head, and presently, as a light breeze stirred the air, my nostrils were saluted with the horrible odor of a dead horse thrown in the moat outside. A feeling of loathing and abhorrence seized me, yet I seemed rooted to the spot, as though detained there by magic. A dull sense of drowsiness crept over me; through the death-like noonday hush and the monotonous buzzing of the insects I seemed to hear the splash of each head as it fell into the Well of Blood; muffled dying cries rose from the dungeons, and the voice of Brancovano’s younger son shrieking, “My father! my father!” as he felt the halter about his neck; and, being weary and half blinded by the glare, my eyes gradually closed, and as I lost consciousness for a moment all these frightful fancies crowded into my brain with terrifying distinctness. Fortunately, at that instant I was aroused by a clear, piercing cry, and looking down I saw the muezzin of the castle mosque standing upon the balcony of the little minaret. That voice, so solemnly sweet, so tranquil, speaking to man of his God, heard in that spot and at that moment, stirred me to the very depths of my being: it seemed to proclaim in the name of all who had died within those walls that their sufferings had not been for nothing; that their tears had been caught, their miseries been rewarded; that since they had forgiven it became us to do the same; and that prayer and utter trust in God, even though the whole world may forsake you, are indeed the only paths to peace, while all outside the infinite love and pity is but worse than vain. And then, moved and touched, I left the castle.
Taking the road again and skirting the walls of Stambul, I walked toward the sea, passing close by the Adrianopolis station. Here several railroad lines cross each other, and I found myself among a number of long strings of dusty, travel-stained-looking cars. No one was in sight, and had I been one of those fanatic Turks hostile to all European innovations, I might easily have set fire, one after another, to all those cars, and then proceeded leisurely on my way quite unmolested. Starting to walk along the track, I expected every moment to hear the cry of some guard or other warning me off the premises, but nothing of the sort happened, and before long I reached the end of the land-walls, where I supposed I would be able to enter Stambul. In this, however, I was doomed to disappointment. The sea- and land-walls join each other on the shore without any sign of gateway; so, climbing a ruined mole which runs out into the water at this point, I seated myself on a large stone and proceeded to look about me. In front lay the Sea of Marmora, beyond which rose the mountains of Asia, and farther still the blue heights of Skutari, looking very far away indeed. The shore was utterly deserted, and I seemed to occupy the universe alone. The waves broke at my feet, dashing their spray up into my face. I sat there for some time, turning over all manner of vague fancies in my mind: first, I saw myself come out of the Caligarian Gate and proceed slowly down the deserted road between the towers and cemeteries—a lonely figure, which I followed with some curiosity as though it had been some one else; then I amused myself with trying to trace out Yunk through the mazes of the great city; then I watched the waves as one after another they broke upon the shore with a murmuring sound, and one after another melted away in silence, seeing in them a figure of all those peoples and armies which from age to age had successfully hurled themselves against the walls of Byzantium. The phalanxes of Pausanius and Alcibiades, the legions of Maximus and Severus, the Persian bands and hordes of Avars, and the Sclavs, Arabs, Bulgarians, and Croats, the armies of Michael Palæologus and Comnenus, and those of Bayezid Ilderim, of the second Murad, and of Muhammad the Conqueror, vanished one after another into the infinite silence of death, until I felt the same vague, oppressed sensation of melancholy as that which swept over the soul of Leopardi in the “Sera del di’ di Festa” when the solitary song of the laborer died away little by little, speaking to him with the voice of the ancient peoples, reminding him that everything on earth must pass away like the shadow of a dream.
Returning thence by the way I had come, I entered the city through the gate of the Seven Towers, in order to skirt along the entire outer edge of Stambul on the shore of the Sea of Marmora. To tell the truth, I was pretty well tired out by this time, but on these long excursions which have some settled object a kind of dogged obstinacy usually comes to the rescue and revives one’s flagging energies. I can see myself now, walking, walking, walking along that lonely high-road, beneath the burning sun, in a sort of waking dream crowded with familiar Turin friends, characters in novels, views of distant countries, and vague reflections upon human life and the immortality of the soul, and, crowning them all, the round dinner-table of the Hôtel de Byzance, brilliant with crystal and lights, afar off on the heights of a city many times the size of Stambul, and already half buried in the shades of evening. Crossing a large Mussulman quarter, apparently uninhabited, and which breathed something still of the sadness and desolation of the Castle of Seven Towers, I came to the vast Psamatia quarter, inhabited by Greeks and Armenians, also quite deserted and forlorn. A long, winding, wretched-looking street, from which the black battlemented walls could be seen below on the right standing out against the water’s vivid blue, brought me to the Psamatia Gate, emerging from which I again found myself in a Mussulman quarter, among grated windows, closed doors, little mosques, walled gardens, moss-grown cisterns, and abandoned fountains. I crossed the open space formerly the Cattle Forum: below me, on the right, was the same unbroken line of wall and tower, tower and wall, around me the same solitude and apparent desertion; occasionally a dog would stop and eye me suspiciously, or a youngster seated on the ground stare at me round-eyed, revolving some piece of impertinence in his mind, or the sudden opening and shutting of a window close by reveal for an instant a hand or the edge of a woman’s sleeve. Making a circuit around the large Vlanga gardens, which surrounded the ancient Theodosian Gate, I came upon a vast tract of desolate-looking ground showing traces of a recent fire. Then the city seemed to fade and die away in spots and melt into country. Dervish convents, Greek churches, and queer little open squares broke up the line of the streets; occasionally an old Turk would be seated beneath the shade of a great plane tree, dozing with the mouthpiece of the narghileh clasped between his fingers. Proceeding on my way, I came to a Turkish café, and stopped to get a glass of the water which I could see displayed in the window, but, after calling and knocking for some time in vain, I gave it up and went on.
Next I came to the Greek quarter of Yeni Kapu, then to another Mussulman quarter, then back again among the Greeks and Armenians of the Kuni Kapu quarter, but all the time never losing sight of the dark battlements and blue sea on my right, and never meeting any living creatures but dogs, beggars, and boys. At last the voice of the muezzin sounded through the lonely streets announcing the hour of sunset, and before long the shadows began to deepen and evening set in, but still the never-ending succession of little houses, melancholy mosques, ugly, deserted streets, and the dark openings of side lanes and byways continued, until I began to feel my strength giving out, and was just on the point of deciding to throw myself down on the mat before the next café I came to, when, quite unexpectedly, the huge mass of St. Sophia loomed up before me through the gloom. Oh joyful sight! My spirits rose at once, my strength revived, and, quickening my steps, I soon reached the harbor, crossed the bridge, and, behold! there before the brightly illuminated entrance to the principal café of Galata, were Yunk, Rosasco, Santoro, all my little Italy, coming to meet me with beaming faces and outstretched hands; and I heaved as long and deep a sigh of satisfaction as ever filled the lungs of a tired, hungry man.
THE OLD SERAGLIO.
At Granada one feels as though his sightseeing had hardly begun until he has been to the Alhambra, and it is the same way at Constantinople so long as the interior of the Old Seraglio has not been explored. Twenty times a day, wherever you may be on sea or land, that hillside covered with vivid green starts into view, tantalizing you with suggestions of what it has to disclose, forcing itself upon your attention, riveting the mind upon itself when you would fain think of other things—an unsolved enigma, a haunting mystery, which gives you no peace until at last you yield and go there before the appointed day, more to have done with it than for the purpose of enjoying the sight.
There is, in fact, not another spot of earth in Europe whose mere name calls into life such an extraordinary mixture of awful and pleasing associations, about which so much has been talked and thought and written and guessed, which has given rise to so many vague and contradictory rumors—been the object of so much insatiate curiosity, of so many stupid mistakes and extravagant tales. Now-a-days any one can go there, and many who do so come away quite unimpressed; but of one thing we may be quite certain, and that is that when centuries shall have elapsed, when possibly the Ottoman power will be only a memory in Europe, and that exquisite hill be crowned by the busy streets of a new and populous city, no traveller will pass through them without seeing again, in fancy, the imperial kiosks of former days, and thinking enviously of us in the nineteenth century who can still behold the speaking, breathing records of that storied habitation of the Ottomans. Who knows how many archæologists will concentrate their painstaking research upon the identification of a doorway or portion of a wall discovered in the courtyard of some modern building—how many poets will break forth into verse over a few heaps of stones scattered along the shore? On the other hand, it may be that hundreds of years from now those walls will still be jealously preserved, and scholar, lover, and artist, flocking to see them, that strange picturesque life which was led there for four hundred years be resuscitated and spread over the entire surface of the globe in hundreds of volumes and pictures.