"If only you could bring the child up!" he cried; "but you will not live long enough to do that. Men like you, Halil, never live long, and I don't want to survive you. You will see me die, if see you can; and when you die, your child will be doubly an orphan."
With such words did he trouble them. They were always relieved when, at last, he would creep into a corner and fall asleep from sheer weariness, for his anxiety made him more and more somnolent as he grew older.
But again the door opened, and there entered the Kadun-Kiet-Khuda, the guardian of the ladies of the Seraglio, accompanied by two slave-girls carrying a splendid porcelain pitcher, which they deposited at the sick woman's bed with this humble salutation:
"The Sultana Validé greets thee and sends thee this sherbet!" The Sultana Validé, or Dowager, used only to send special messages to the Sultan's favourite wives when they lay in child-bed; this, therefore, was a great distinction for the wife of Halil Patrona—or a great humiliation for the Sultana.
And a great humiliation it certainly was for the latter.
It was by the command of Sultan Mahmud that the Sultana had sent the sherbet.
"You see," said Halil, "the great ones of the earth kiss the dust off your feet. There are slaves besides those in the bazaars, and the first become the last. Rejoice in the present, my princess, and catch Fortune on the wing."
"Fortune, Halil," said his wife with a mournful smile, "is like the eels of the Bosphorus, it slips from your grasp just as you fancy you hold it fast."
And Halil believed that he held it fast in his grasp.
The highest officers of state were his friends and colleagues, the Sultan himself was under obligations to him, for indeed Halil had fetched him from the dungeon of the Seven Towers to place him on the throne.