In covering this same route a few months later our train passed a ‘special’ stopped on a ‘siding.’ Aboard it was a staff of officers, their orderlies and servants. Sitting on the bench in the station yard, complacently sipping coffee, I recognised the Vali of Monastir. He, too, was now billeted for exile.
Among the many demands of the Russians at the assassination of their Consul at Monastir was the displacement of this Vali. The Sultan will comply with any demands the Russians make in earnest, but he has certain punishments which his subjects seek to win. To be exiled without the privilege of seeing Constantinople ‘for the last time’ is disgrace, but to be condemned via an audience with the Sultan spells ‘Thou good and faithful servant,’ and brings a substantial post in Asia, away from the interference of ‘infidel’ Powers and carrying with it a lordly pension.
CHAPTER VI
SALONICA AND THE JEWS
When ‘the voyager descends upon’ the Grand Hôtel d’Angleterre at Salonica, his attention is first drawn to the regulations as to the manner in which he shall conduct himself during his sojourn at the grand hotel. These regulations are printed in gaudy letters in Turkish, in Greek, and in French, and hang in gilded frames on the walls of each bedroom in the most conspicuous place. A literal translation from the French is in part as follows:
1. Messieurs the voyagers who descend upon the hotel are requested to hand over to the management any money or articles of value they may have.
2. Those who have no baggage must pay every day, whereas those who have it may only do so once a week.
3. Political discussion and playing musical instruments are forbidden, also all noisy conversations.
4. It is permitted neither to play at cards nor at any other game of hazard.
5. Children of families and their servants should not walk about the rooms.
6. It is prohibited to present oneself outside one’s room in a dressing-gown or other negligent costume.
9. Coffee, tea, and other culinary preparations may not be prepared in the rooms or procured from outside, as the hotel furnishes everything one wants.
10. Voyagers to take their repast descend to the dining-room, with the exception of invalids, who may do so in their rooms.
11. A double-bedded room pays double for itself, save the case where the voyager declares that one bed may be let to another person. It is, however, forbidden to sleep on the floor.
I should explain that no insult is meant to the French on the part of the hotel management by employing their language as one of the mediums of instructing its many-tongued guests in proper deportment. The management realises that of all Europeans Germans are most in need of lessons in deportment; but the hotel, for some reason, is rarely afflicted with Germans, and French is understood by all the people of the Near East of the class that patronise a hostelry like the d’Angleterre.
There are several hotels in Salonica which will not permit guests to sleep on the floor.
Salonica is the metropolis of Macedonia, and an important commercial centre. It is the Thessalonica of old, built by Cassander on the site of ancient Therma, and named by him after his wife, a sister of Alexander the Great. It is older than Constantinople, and has a history which just falls short of being great. Xerxes and his hosts camped on the plains between Therma and the Axius, now the Vardar, and the view of Mount Olympus across the bay inspired him to explore the course of the Peneus; and a short time before the Peloponnesian War the Athenians occupied Therma.