CHAPTER XIII
THE STOOL OF REPENTANCE
Early in March 1677 Mohammed IV. returned to Constantinople, followed three weeks later by his Vizir; and behold, all of a sudden, the government which hitherto had been a model of mildness took on a face such as “the Oldest Man here never saw.”[188] Of this metamorphosis the representatives of foreign States became aware when they asked to be permitted to offer the new Grand Vizir their felicitations.
Before this epoch Christian envoys had often been subject to contumely, violence, and outrage at the hands of the Grand Signor’s curious Ministers. But no attempt had ever been made to treat them systematically as pariahs. To Kara Mustafa—“an embitterd’ enemy to all Christians,” as Sir John calls him—belongs the credit of evolving out of those desultory essays in truculence a regular system of calculated indecency—a system which was to endure for more than a hundred years, becoming, in course of time, as established things do, respectable, consecrated, all but decent. He it was who collected every planless affront, threat of rage, artifice of greed—every caprice of a decrepit despotism,—and wove them all together into one net of humiliation out of which only force could liberate its victims.
The process was inaugurated with the representative of France, the excitable Marquis de Nointel, who, eager for precedence, hastened to seek the first audience, and after a month’s solicitations secured an appointment. His Dragomans then, according to custom, asked to have the number of kaftans which were to be bestowed upon the Ambassador fixed; but they were told that the Ambassador was to expect none. This was only a slight prelude to what was to follow: “where,” as Sir John sententiously remarks, “the Preface speaks innovations, the body of the discourse will have them at large.”
On arriving at the Porte on the appointed day (Sunday, April 22nd), Nointel had to wait three whole hours in the room of the Kehayah—a surly Turk—without conversation or any other entertainment; and when at last he was called in, he found the narrow corridor that led to the Audience Chamber crowded with chaoushes who jostled him most rudely. Truth to tell, this rudeness, at all events, was not premeditated. The poor chaoushes had come in the turbans of ceremony worn on such occasions, but had been ordered by the Vizir to go and exchange them for their ordinary headgear: hence their hurry to get back to their places before the Ambassador made his entry. Nointel, however, whose nerves were already on edge with the long waiting, saw in their behaviour a fresh insult, and he elbowed his way down the passage fiercely flinging the chaoushes to right and left against the walls. In this temper he entered the Audience Chamber, and there he observed something at which his resentment reached the height of exasperation: the stool destined for him was not upon the Soffah, but on the floor below! He ordered his Dragoman to set it where it should be; one of the Vizir’s pages brought it down again. Then the Ambassador, in a towering rage, seized the stool with his own hand, carried it to the Soffah, and sat upon it.
When this act was reported to the Vizir, who was in an adjoining apartment, he sent for the Ambassador’s Dragoman and commanded him to tell his master that he must move his seat back where he had found it. The trembling Dragoman delivered the message and was bidden by the angry Ambassador to hold his tongue. Next the Vizir sent his own Dragoman, Dr. Mavrocordato, with whom Nointel maintained the closest friendship. In vain did the Greek try to soothe the enraged Frenchman, imploring him to moderate his temper and yield gracefully to the inevitable. Nothing could prevail over M. de Nointel’s obstinacy: the pride of the wig was pitted against the pride of the turban, and it must be remembered that both wigs and turbans were then at their zenith. In the end, Mavrocordato, finding argument useless, changed his tone and said, in Italian: “The Grand Vizir commands the chair to be placed below.” Nointel replied: “The Grand Vizir can command his chair: he cannot command me.” At that moment the Chaoush-bashi burst into the room, roaring, “Calder, calder—Take it away, take it away!”—and before he knew what was happening, Nointel found the stool snatched from under him. In an access of fury, his Excellency dashed out of the room, sword on shoulder, pushed his way through the throng, and, ordering the presents which he had brought to follow him, mounted his horse and departed, exciting, as he boasted, by his firmness, “the astonishment of the Turks and the joy of the French.” Kara Mustafa alone remained calm. His comment, when he heard that the Ambassador was gone, was one word: “Gehennem” (Let him go to Hell).[189]
One barbarous word, that can be shown to be authentic, is worth volumes of descriptive writing.
Such was the beginning of the celebrated “Affaire du Sofa”—a quarrel which drew the attention of all Europe and nearly led to a rupture between France and Turkey. The question arises: was Nointel justified in resenting so violently Kara Mustafa’s innovation? Here, more fitly perhaps than afterwards, we may discuss this question, and try to obtain that true perspective of things, without which there can be no true understanding of our story, nor any appreciation of the agitations and mortifications which its chief character underwent from that day onward for about eight months to come.
Much ridicule has been poured by modern English writers upon the vanity of seventeenth-century French courtiers—a foible which made the most insignificant trifles swell in their minds to matters of the highest moment. What, indeed, could be more puerile than for the representative of a great monarch to quarrel with the head of the Government to which he was accredited about the position of a stool? But we, wise democrats of to-day, ought not to be surprised that frivolous nobles of the old régime displayed such childish folly and petulance: these are the natural characteristics of every monarchical régime, of every hereditary aristocracy, melancholy features of a state of things which has now happily passed away.