Brins was now a merchant, living in affluence at Leucosia. His house was spacious and agreeable. Ali Bey had paid him a long visit during his stay at Leucosia. He spoke of that traveller as ill able to support the character of a Moslem, either by his exercise of the rites of the Mahometan religion, or by his general language and demeanour.
Let us now revert to the cause of the archbishop’s gloominess. About a week before this my second visit to Leucosia, a large sum of money, amounting to about twenty purses, or nearly £500, had been stolen in the night from the room where Andréa, the archbishop’s dragoman, sat every day for the purpose of transacting the business of the island between the governor and his master. In the bottom of the chest which was rifled, human ordure was left, as if to add insult to theft. It is to be observed that the palace of the governor, in which this room was situated, was enclosed in a quadrangular court, and had but one outlet.
At break of day, Andrea’s servant went, as was his custom, to put the room in order, when, finding the door forced and papers scattered in confusion on the floor, he ran back in dismay to inform his master, who hastened to see what had happened. The palace was soon in an uproar, and the extraordinary event of burglary committed in the very residence of the governor was considered as without a parallel.
When the first tumult was over, Andrea’s servant, the porter of the gate, who was a Turk, and three Christians, employed near these rooms, were apprehended. The tufenkgi bashi (or head of the police, whose apartment was immediately under the treasury, and where it was supposed no noise could have been made without his hearing it), was suspected; as was Signor Andrea himself. Over these two persons, though not imprisoned, a guard was set to see that they did not escape.
It is usual with the Turks, when suspicion rests on particular persons, to resort to torture for a confirmation of their doubts. Accordingly, after four or five days, persons, to the number of thirty-two, having been arrested, and all these but six having proved their innocence (which six were, the porter, Andrea’s servant, and three Greeks, with a woman, the wife of one of them), the suspected were confined in separate rooms, and the investigation was begun in the following manner. Meal barley, wetted, was made up into boluses of a large size, and one of these was given to each of the accused. If he swallowed it, he was innocent; if guilty, it was supposed to be impossible to do so. Let it not, however, be imagined that the Turks place more reliance on evidence of this sort than we do. But they know that guilt sometimes betrays itself in superstitious trials, where the regular process of justice would be balked. Andrea’s servant was most cruelly tormented. He was placed on a cross, like that on which we represent St. Andrew to have been crucified. His temples were screwed by the pressure of a diadem of what are vulgarly called knuckle bones. Hot stones were applied to his head, hot irons to his flesh. Inflammable matter was smeared on him, and then ignited; and he was prevented from sleeping by persons placed near him for that purpose. On the other Greeks and on the gatekeeper the same torture was exercised.[108]
For the woman, a mode of torture was resorted to which may be called a refinement on cruelty. The trousers worn by women in these countries are exceedingly large, and tied at the ancles and waist. The plan pursued with her was this. A cat was put into the trowsers, which, being pricked and beaten, and unable to escape, grows furious, and tears the thighs and legs of the sufferer with his teeth and claws.
It was in the midst of this dreadful investigation that I arrived at Leucosia; and, walking the next day by the palace, I was startled by the sight of a man dangling by the neck to the iron grating of one of the palace windows, from fifteen to twenty feet from the ground. This was the porter, who had been hanged in this way, just as he was about to expire from the tortures he had undergone. As the investigation advanced, it was rumoured that an Armenian seràf (banker to the governor, and the rival of Andrea’s influence among the Turks) had invented this nefarious plot for the purpose of ruining Andrea. The servant of the latter died soon afterwards of his sufferings.
In the mean time, Andrea himself was exposed to the greatest danger, for his enemies were powerful; and, although the proofs of his innocence were satisfactory at home, he knew that such representations might be made at Constantinople as would totally change the face of things. And the event justified his apprehensions; for, although the cause was still under investigation when I left Cyprus, and the certainty of the Armenian’s plot became every day more apparent, the affair was not finished without a great sacrifice of money on the part of the archbishop; whilst Andrea, to avert a continuance of the persecution, sold off his household furniture and pictures, which he had recently imported from Italy, and reduced his establishment and his dress to so humble a guise, that envious and malevolent people should not have it in their power to allege anything against him.[109]
I got back to Larnaka just before Easter day. It fell this year on the 6th of April, and to a dull Lent succeeded visiting and festivities. Mass was celebrated at midnight, and, this over, the ceremony of kissing the cheek and saluting each other with “Christ is risen,” began. By 10 o’clock, Mr. Vondiziano’s courtyard was filled with drums and dancers, whilst in the saloon was the bishop with a party of priests chanting.
A circumstance, however, somewhat interrupted the harmony of the inhabitants. On the restoration of Louis XVIII., and the arrival of a new ambassador at Constantinople, religion had again raised her head, and the Catholic priests attempted to resume the influence which they had once so extensively enjoyed, even in these distant colonies. The freemasons were supposed to have been the fomenters of all the insults which the priests had suffered for so many years during the revolution, and the anathemas of the preachers were now levelled principally against them.