I shall willingly hurry over all that followed in this strange episode of social life in the East.
Poor Steriopoli came back next day to a desolate house—a degraded and broken home! He was full of rage and despair, for his daughter was the pride, the idol of his heart; and suspecting justly the Hadjee Mehmet, he discovered that this celebrated warrior had gone to Alexi, the very town from which he, Steriopoli, had returned.
There he traced his daughter, only to find that she had been most cruelly and shamefully treated. She was lodged in the house of the cole-agassi, or major of Mehmet's regiment—a wretch who had originally been a channator aga, or chief of the black eunuchs; and on the pretext that she had renounced Christianity and embraced Islamism, he refused to give her up. In compliance with the wish of her sorrowing father, and the indignant old Bishop of Gallipoli, she was brought before the vaivode of the district. She appeared the wreck of her former self, and, though not present, I afterwards heard that a most affecting scene took place.
On beholding Steriopoli, whose once coal-black hair was now thickly seamed with grey, she broke away from the Turkish slaves who held her, and cast herself into his arms, in a passion of grief, exclaiming—
"My father! oh, my father! after what has taken place, I am no longer worthy to be in your house, or to pray at my mother's grave. We can no longer be anything to each other."
"Oh, Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy)!" groaned the unfortunate Greek.
Despite her solemn protests that she was still a Christian, the vaivode would not yield her to her father; but opening the Koran, closed the case by reading a passage from the sixteenth chapter thereof—a passage revealed to the Prophet at Medina:—"O Prophet! when unbelieving women come unto thee, and plight their faith unto thee, that they will not associate anything with God, nor steal, nor commit sin, nor kill their children, nor come with a calumny which they have forged between their hands and feet, nor be disobedient to thee in that which shall be reasonable: then do plight thy faith unto them, and ask pardon for them, of One who is inclined to forgive and be merciful. O true believers! enter not into friendship with a people against whom God is incensed; they despair of pardon and the life to come, even as infidels despair of the resurrection of those who dwell in the grave."
"La-Allah-illah-Allah-Mohammed resoul Allah!"[*] shouted the people.
[*] "There is but one God, and Mahomet is his Prophet."
The poor miller and his daughter were torn asunder, and the former was driven by blows from the house of the vaivode; while Magdhalini, whom he was never more permitted to see, was taken again to the house of the cole-agassi. By Turkish law, such as it is, any commissioned officer who kills a man is liable to five years' slavery in chains, and service as a private hereafter; but the abduction of a Greek girl, though a rajah, or Christian subject of the Porte, was a very trivial affair—much less than stealing a terrier in the streets of London. The foreign Consuls took up the matter, and redress was sought of the Stamboul effendi, or chief of the police at Constantinople, but sought in vain. The Bishop of Gallipoli applied to the Skeik Islam, also without avail.