A mass of heavy vapours, rising up against the wind, and arraying themselves like a host about to do battle, warned us not to linger long at so considerable a distance from home; and, profiting by the intimation of a coming storm, we started off at a gallop, to the increased astonishment of the Turkish women, who were still clustering like bees upon the wall. But our speed availed us nothing: we had not cleared the hills above Kahaitchana when the enemy was upon us; and a tempest of blended hail, rain, and wind bore us company for the remainder of the journey; and thus we were fairly drenched ere we reached Pera, notwithstanding our offerings at the shrine of the Virgin, and our pilgrimage to the Holy Well.
CHAPTER XXV.
Figurative Gratitude of the Seraskier Pasha—Eastern Hyperbole—Reminiscences of Past Years—A Vision Realized—Strong Contrasts—The Marriage Fêtes—Popular Excitement—Crowded Streets—The Auspicious Day—Extravagant Expectations—The Great Cemetery—Dolma Batchè—The Grand Armoury—Turkish Women—Tents of the Pashas—The Bosphorus—Preparations—Invocation—The Illuminated Bosphorus—A Stretch of Fancy—A Painful Recollection—Natural Beauties of the Bosphorus—The Grave-Yard—Evening Amusements—Well Conducted Population.
In a letter of thanks recently addressed by the Seraskier Pasha to the Sultan, in acknowledgment of some honour conferred upon him by his Imperial Master, he exclaims in an affected burst of enthusiastic gratitude:—“Your Sublime favour has been as a southern sun piercing even to the remote corner of my insignificance. Had I all the forest boughs of the Universe for pens, and the condensed stars of Heaven for a page whereon to inscribe your bounties, I should still lack both space and means to record them!”
Even in this style should he or she who undertakes to become their chronicler, shape the periods in which are detailed the marriage festivities of the Princess Mihirmàh. The pen should be tipped with diamond-dust, and the paper powdered with seed-pearl. All the hyperboles of the Arabian story-tellers should be heaped together, as the colours of the rainbow are piled upon the clouds which pillow the setting sun; and, as the gorgeous tail of the peacock serves to withdraw the eye from its coarse and ungainly feet, so should the glowing sentences that dilate on the glories of the show, veil from the vision of the reader the paltry details that would tend to dissolve the enchantment.
How often have I hung entranced over the sparkling pages of the “Hundred and One Nights.” How little did I ever expect to see them brought into action. When a mere girl, I remember once to have laid the volume on my knees; and, with my head pillowed on my hand, and my eyes closed, to have attempted to bring clearly before my mental vision the Caravan of the Merchand Abdullah, when he departed in search of the Valley of Diamonds.
Years have since passed over me, and that gorgeous description is no longer a mere dream. I have looked upon its realization—I have seen the flashing of the jewels in the sunshine—the prancing of the steeds impatient of a rider—the rolling of the fifty chariots—the gathering of the throng of princes—the eunuchs and the horsemen—winding their way over hill and through valley, under a sky of turquoise, along the bank of a clear stream; and within sight of a sea whose shore was studded with palaces, and upon whose blue bosom a fleet of stately ships were riding at anchor within an arrow’s flight of land.
But I have also seen more than this. I have seen not only the machinery at work, but the wheels that worked it; not only the brilliant effect, but the combination of paltry means used to produce it—the blending of the magnificent and the mesquin—a thousand minute details, unimportant in themselves, and yet operating so powerfully on the imagination, that they clipped the wings of Fancy, and wrung the wand from the grasp of the Enchanter.