Forty mounted negroes appointed to her household followed, like demons of darkness, on the footsteps of the flashing treasure which I have just described; and I can safely declare that I never beheld so hideous an assemblage of human beings. The diamonds were quite secure, I should imagine, from all depredators, under the charge of these frightful guardians—these gnomes, gloating over the produce of the “dark gold mines,” where no light could intrude in which they might mirror their own ugliness; and His Sublime Highness, or rather his Master of the Ceremonies, appeared to have been of the same opinion; for although a guard preceded the procession, none followed it; and the termination of the pageant came so abruptly upon me after its greatest splendour, that I felt as though some accident had detained the remaining actors in the show, and that something more must follow; but as, after the lapse of a moment, I discovered that all was really over, there was nothing for it but a steeple chase “over bank, bush, and briar,” in order to get once more in advance of the procession, and thus secure a second view.
On this we accordingly determined; and after a gallop over ploughed fields, and a few leaps over sundry intervening fences and ditches, we found ourselves on the height above Arnautkeui, just as the gorgeous train was beginning to descend the hill.
CHAPTER XXIX.
The Bridal Day—Ceremony of Acceptance—The Crowd—The Kislar Agha and the Court Astrologer—Order of the Procession—The Russian Coach—The Pasha and the Attachés—The Seraskier—Wives of the Pashas—The Sultan and the Georgian Slave.
The morrow was the bridal day, when the fortunate Saïd Pasha was to receive his Imperial Bride beneath his own roof, and to look upon her for the first time. As yet he had not had even a glimpse of her through her yashmac, their only interview having taken place on his arrival from the Dardanelles, when he had been summoned to the palace to throw himself at her feet, and to return thanks for the honour she was about to confer upon him. This interview, if such indeed a meeting may be termed in which one of the parties only has a sight of the other, is one of the ceremonies à la rigeur in the Imperial marriages of the East.
The bridegroom elect is led into a room, at whose upper extremity a door stands ajar; and behind this sits the lady splendidly habited, and surrounded by a train of slaves. A small portion of her embroidered antery is suffered to pass the opening of the door; and a side lattice, veiled with thin gauze, enables her to take a view of her suitor as he approaches; which he does slowly, and upon his knees, the whole length of the apartment. On arriving near the “Door of Light” that conceals the Princess, he thrice bows his forehead to the earth, ere he ventures to implore a ratification of his hopes. The officious Kislar Agha replies for the bride; and after a second prostration, the Pasha returns thanks “in a neat speech;” and with the permission of the same personage, he then raises to his lips the hem of the Imperial garment, and retires in the same humble posture in which he entered.
The on dit at the Palace whispered the disappointment of the bride on the present occasion, that the choice of her Imperial father had not fallen on Mustapha Pasha of Adrianople, whom she had once seen by accident, and by whose personal beauty she had been much attracted. It is, nevertheless, possible that this glimpse of her destined bridegroom reconciled her to her destiny; for, as it is the appearance only to which Turkish females generally attach any importance in their husbands, the young Pasha of the Dardanelles could safely compete with all his rivals, being really a very handsome and intelligent-looking person.
Had I not known that such a thing was altogether impossible, I should have said, when I pulled up my panting horse on the height above the palace, that the same groups occupied the same spots where I had seen them on the previous day. The scene did not appear to have altered in a single feature. I saw the same smiling faces, and received the same kindly greetings; laughed at the same dirty, stupid-looking sentinels, and bought a cool draught from the same water-vender for a twenty para piece; and, altogether, I had some difficulty in persuading myself that I had really talked politics with a hot-headed Englishman, theology with a Greek Papas, and nonsense with a Sardinian Secretary, and moreover had slept through a long night, since I last stood upon that sunny hill, and looked far and wide upon the same wilderness of human beings.