[14] The prescribed almsgiving.
[15] Voluntary almsgiving.
[16] Peter the Great. The allusion is to the Peace of the Pruth.
CHAPTER XII.
HUMAN HOPES.
A time will come when the star has risen so high that it can rise no higher, and perchance learns to know that before long it must begin its inevitable descent!...
All Halil Patrona's wildest dreams had been realised. There he stood at the very apex of sovereignty, whence the course of empires, the destiny of worlds can be controlled. Ministers of State were pulled down or lifted up at his bidding, armies were sent against foreign powers as he directed, princes were strengthened on their thrones because Halil Patrona wished it, and the great men of the empire lay in the dust at his feet.
For whole days at a time he sat reading the books of the Ottoman chroniclers, the famous Rashid and the wise Chelbizade, and after that he would pore over maps and charts and draw lines of different colours across them in all directions, and dot them with dots which he alone understood the meaning of. And those lines and dots stretched far, far away beyond the borders of the empire, right into the midst of Podolia and the Ukraine. He knew, and he only, what he meant by them.
The projects he was hatching required centuries for their fulfilment—what is the life of a mere man?