In a coffee-house at Paris, Cécile chanced to see in the "Gazette de France," an account of the misfortunes that had overtaken her father, Achmet III. This was in 1730, when that weak and imbecile voluptuary, who had viewed with indifference the Hungarian troubles and the wars of the north, after being involved in a contest with Russia, by which he lost in succession the cities of Asoph and Belgrade, and the provinces of Temesvar, Servia and Wallachia, on the discomfiture of his arms by Persia, had an insurrection among his own subjects, and was compelled by the Janissaries to abdicate in favour of his nephew, Mustapha III., who threw him into a prison, where he passed a life of mortification and shame, "after he had," as Voltaire has it, "sacrificed his vizier and his principal officers, in vain, to the resentment of the nation."
On reading of all these things, Cécile registered a vow that she would visit Turkey, seek out her father, and endeavour to console him in his misfortunes; and the death of her guardian, Emilia, about this time, together with the annoyance she experienced from the old Prince, who, presuming on her friendless, dubious, and false position, daily "became more urgent and less respectful," hastened her departure.
Alone she set out for Fontainebleau to solicit a passport as a French subject, and to return thanks for the protection afforded her by the court of Louis XIV; but in returning to Paris, her carriage was stopped at night in the forest, which then covered thirty thousand acres of hill and valley, and there ensued an episode, which, by its coincidences, seems too evidently romance, though truth at times is stranger than fiction.
A handsomely-attired chevalier—who proved to be the Prince—requested her to alight and enter a voiture, which stood there with six horses, pleading that she would do so, "without compelling him to use violence."
On this, she uttered a cry for help; and ere long another voiture dashed up, and there leaped out a gentleman sword in hand. He proved to be the young Duke de ——, her Roman admirer, and he had barely time to recognize Cécile, when her betrothed, the Knight of Malta, also appeared on the scene, which thus becomes so melo-dramatic as to throw ridicule on the story.
"The Duke is about to deprive you of your mistress," said the cunning old Prince to his son; "let us jointly use our swords against him in defence of your dearest interests."
So thereupon the cavalier of Malta ran the poor Duke through the body in the most approved fashion; bore off the fainting Cécile to Paris, and placed her in the hotel of his father. There the renewed, but secret, addresses of the latter so greatly alarmed her, that on one occasion she had to protect herself by an exhibition of pistols, after which she escaped with Salmoni and the Knight, who urged that she should, in fulfilment of her vow, visit her captive father, while he once more strove, at the feet of Pope Clement's successor, to get the oath of celibacy absolved.
In Turkey, some unruly Janissaries slew Salmoni, and were about to offer some violence to Cécile, despite her French passport, when she displayed before them the fetfa! This, we are told, was a piece of yellow silk on which was embroidered, in golden letters, the names of the Sultan, of her mother Aski, and herself, with the day and hour of her birth, together with certain passages from the Koran: "The children of the Sultans are bound with the fetfa immediately after birth; and this document is deemed a sacred proof of their royal descent; and at the sight of it every Mohammedan must bow himself to the ground, and defend with his life the wearer of it."
By this time her cousin Mustapha III. was dead, and his successor, her kinsman, Mohammed V., on hearing of her story, and, more than all, of her beauty, conceived a passion for her, and sent his chief friend and confident, the Beglerbeg of Natolia, to inform her of the honour that awaited her. Being informed that it was the fame of her wonderful hair that had first excited the curiosity and admiration of the Sultan, she cut it entirely off, and, tossing it to the messenger—
"Go," said she, "and give your master this—the object of his love—and tell him, that a woman capable of such a sacrifice, knows no master but Heaven and her own heart!"