Upon my leaving Algiers to go on my voyage to Barbary, being tired of the place, he embarked on board a vessel, and landed at Alexandria, from which soon after he was called to Cairo by the Greek patriarch Mark, and made Archimandrites, which is the second dignity in the Greek church under the patriarch. He too was well acquainted in the house of Ali Bey, where all were Georgian and Greek slaves; and it was at his solicitation that Risk had desired the patriarch to furnish me with an apartment in the Convent of St George.
The next day after my arrival I was surprised by the visit of my old friend Father Christopher; and, not to detain the reader with useless circumstances, the intelligence of many visits, which I shall comprehend in one, was, that there were many Greeks then in Abyssinia, all of them in great power, and some of them in the first places of the empire; that they corresponded with the patriarch when occasion offered, and, at all times, held him in such respect, that his will, when signified to them, was of the greatest authority, and that obedience was paid to it as to holy writ.
Father Christopher took upon him, with the greatest readiness, to manage the letters, and we digested the plan of them; three copies were made to send separate ways, and an admonitory letter to the whole of the Greeks then in Abyssinia, in form of a bull.
By this the patriarch enjoined them as a penance, upon which a kind of jubilee was to follow, that, laying aside their pride and vanity, great sins with which he knew them much infected and, instead of pretending to put themselves on a footing with me when I should arrive at the court of Abyssinia, they should concur, heart and hand, in serving me; and that, before it could be supposed they had received instructions from me, they should make a declaration before the king, that they were not in condition equal to me, that I was a free citizen of a powerful nation, and servant of a great king; that they were born slaves of the Turk, and, at best, ranked but as would my servants; and that, in fact, one of their countrymen was in that station then with me.
After having made that declaration publicly, and bona fide, in presence of their priest, he thereupon declared to them, that all their past sins were forgiven.
All this the patriarch most willingly and chearfully performed. I saw him frequently when I was in Cairo; and we had already commenced a great friendship and intimacy.
In the mean while, Risk sent to me, one night about nine o’clock, to come to the Bey. I saw him then for the first time. He was a much younger man than I conceived him to be; he was sitting upon a large sofa, covered with crimson-cloth of gold; his turban, his girdle, and the head of his dagger, all thick covered with fine brilliants; one in his turban, that served to support a sprig of brilliants also, was among the largest I had ever seen.
He entered abruptly into discourse upon the war between Russia and the Turk, and asked me if I had calculated what would be the consequence of that war? I said, the Turks would be beaten by sea and land wherever they presented themselves.
Again, Whether Constantinople would be burned or taken?—I said, Neither; but peace would be made, after much bloodshed, with little advantage to either party.
He clapped his hands together, and swore an oath in Turkish, then turned to Risk, who stood before him, and said, That will be sad indeed! but truth is truth, and God is merciful.