I have often thought of those words. Every time I used to look at the useless luxury of our Turkish households, the Imam’s little modest dwelling and his kindly face rose up to reproach me.—Your affectionate
Zeyneb.
CHAPTER XII
THE STAR FROM THE WEST—THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE
Nice, Feb. 1907.
We have just returned from Cap Martin, where we have had the pleasure and honour of being introduced to the Empress Eugénie, the person of all persons I hoped to meet in Europe. Never will she know how much I have appreciated seeing her to-day, and all the charming past she called back to my memory.
Imagine actually seeing in the flesh, the heroine of your grandmothers’ stories; the Empress whose beauty fascinated the East, the Empress whose clothes the women copied, whose language they learnt, the woman who had, though perhaps she may not know it, the greatest influence on the lives of Turkish women. It seemed to me as I looked at the ex-Empress, that I was back in Constantinople again, but the Constantinople that my grandmother had known, the Constantinople where the Sultan Abdul-Aziz reigned and the life of the Turkish women was one of independence compared to ours.
The Empress remembered with great pleasure every detail of her visit to the East. She spoke of the persons she had known, and asked for news of them. Alas! so many were dead, and others scattered to the four corners of the Empire!
She remembered the town, the Palaces, and the marble Beylerbei which had been built specially for her. So kindly, too, did she speak of the Sultan Aziz, saying how welcome he had made her, and how his people loved him.