But the feeling that remained on my mind was vague even to pain; I had seen St. Sophia, it is true, and seen it in all the glory of its million lamps; I had beheld it at a moment when no christian eye had ever heretofore looked on it; and when detection would have involved instant destruction. I had lifted aside the veil from the Holy of Holies—witnessed the prostration which followed the thrilling cry of “Allah Il Allah!”—and polluted, with the breath of a Giaour, the atmosphere of the True Believers—I had looked upon the Chèïk-Islam, as he stood with his face turned Mecca-ward, his pale brow cinctured with gold, and his stately figure draped in white cachemere—and I had stood erect when every head was bowed, and every knee bent at the name of the Prophet; but still I had no definite idea of the mosque of St. Sophia; on the contrary, the wish that I had formerly felt to visit it grew to a positive craving from the hour in which I found myself at midnight beneath its fire-girdled dome, and glanced out into the deep and mysterious darkness beyond; and it was not until months afterwards that it was satisfied, when the arrival of Count Bathiany, an Hungarian nobleman, brother to the Princess Metternich, gave an opportunity to the curious of indulging their lion-hunting propensities.
The party assembled at half-past ten in the morning at one of the gates of the city, near the Seraglio wall, known by the name of “The Gate of the Garden.” There were horsemen and pedestrians—ladies in arabas, and on foot—spruce attachés, grave elderly gentlemen, anxious antiquaries, officers of the navy, dragomen, foreign nobles, native servants, and a motley train of sailors and attendants, carrying the slippers of their several masters.
But if the eye were confused by the number of objects by which it was attracted as our party passed, procession-like, through the narrow streets, amid the comments and not unfrequently the scowls of the Turks, who bear but impatiently this licensed profanation of their temples; the ear was infinitely more so by the confusion of languages which assailed it on all sides; here, two Russians almost set your teeth on edge as they exchanged a few sentences—there, a couple of Germans deluded you for the first moment into a belief that they were conversing in English—on one side, a dark-eyed stranger begged your pardon in his low soft Italian, for an awkwardness of which you were not conscious, and thus gave himself an opportunity of addressing you during the morning, without rudeness—and on the other, two smart midshipmen laughed out in the lightness of their hearts words which told of home, because they were breathed in the language of your own land—while a constant chorus of Turkish, Greek, and Arab, was kept up by the attendants in the rear.
At length we reached St. Sophia; and I felt my heart beat quicker, as I once more traversed the flagged court, and passed the elegant fountain, at which the Faithful perform their ablutions; with its projecting octagonal roof, its marble basin, and its covering of close iron net-work, to protect the spring from the pollution of the birds.
At the entrance of the peristyle to which I have before alluded, we put on the slippers we had provided, and, as soon as we had all passed, the doors were closed.
How different was the aspect of every object around me from that which it wore on my last visit! Then, all was refulgent with light; and now, a sacred gloom hung upon the dark walls, and floated like a veil about our path. Few were they who did not pass on in silence; for there is a power and a sublimity in scenes like the one I am attempting to describe, which overawe for awhile even the most vulgar minds; while to the susceptible and contemplative the spell is deepened a thousand-fold.
One burst, rather of sound than speech—the wordless tribute of irrepressible admiration—heralded our passage across the block of porphyry upon which close the interior doors of the mosque; and in less than a moment the richly carpeted floor of marble, porphyry, jasper, and verd-antique, was mosaiced with groups of gazers throughout its whole extent. Some stood riveted to the spot on which they had first halted, as if touched by the wand of an enchanter, and scarcely stirring a limb in the excess of their absorbing contemplation; others hurried rapidly along, as though breathless with eager and impatient curiosity—one tall, pale man, with amber-coloured mustachioes and long thin fingers, was already taking notes, with his little red book resting against the boots that he carried in his hand; and a couple of antiquaries were just commencing a dispute sotto voce relatively to some pillars of Egyptian granite on the left hand side of the temple.
Nor were the Imams idle; for they had instantly detected the unhandsome intrusion of one traveller with his boots on; an insult so great, that no Moslem can tolerate it; and they were busily employed in compelling their removal: accompanying the ceremony with certain epithets addressed to the Giaour, with which, if he were unfortunate enough to understand them, he had no opportunity of feeling flattered.
Our party were not, however, the only tenants of the vast pile. A group of Ulemas were engaged in prayer as we entered, nor did they suffer our presence to interfere with their devotions; and almost in the centre of the floor knelt a party of women similarly engaged, while a couple of children, who had accompanied them, were chasing each other over the rich carpets.
An erroneous impression has obtained in Europe that females do not attend, or rather, I should perhaps say, are not permitted to enter, the mosques; this, as I have just shewn, is by no means the case; the entrance is forbidden to them only during the midnight prayer. And, in like manner, I had been taught to believe, before I visited the country, that the Turks denied to their women the possession of souls: this is as false a position as the other. It is true that the lordly Moslem claims a paradise apart; where Hourii are to wreathe his brow with ever-blooming flowers—pour his sherbet in streams of perfume into its crystal vase—and fill his chibouk with fragrance.[5] But, amid these voluptuous dreams, he does not quite overlook the eternal interests of his mere earthly partner; I do not believe that her future enjoyments are as clearly defined as those which he arrogates to himself—there is a little harem-like mystery flung over the destiny that awaits her; but, meanwhile, he does not altogether shut her out from the promise of a hereafter, from which he himself anticipates so full a portion of felicity.