And now Ali Pasha arose from his place and said, with a smile, to his sons:
"Methinks that neither the storms of ocean, nor the swollen waters, nor the breath of the simoon will now appear so terrible to you as they did a few hours ago. Depart now with all speed. When you return you will find new harems here, which will make you forget the old ones." And with that he quitted them.
Sulaiman and Mukhtar immediately went their way. Woe to whomsoever shall now give them a pretext for wreaking their vengeance upon him!
But Vely Bey remained there looking out upon the water, and as the evening grew darker he thought upon Ali Pasha. His brothers had loaded their father with curses; he had not said a word. They will soon make their peace with their father—he never will.[8]
[8] It is a fact that Ali drowned the harems of his sons in the lake of Acheruz because he feared their excessive influence.—Jókai.
CHAPTER IV
GASKHO BEY
The lightning strikes to the earth the man that flies from it. Ill luck is a venomous dog, which runs after him who would escape it.
Ali Pasha's band of Albanians, on arriving at Stambul, began to make inquiries about Gaskho Bey.
He turned out to be a good honest man, by profession an inspector of the ichoglanler of the Seraglio, and a particularly mild and peaceful Mussulman to boot. In temperament he was somewhat phlegmatic, with a leaning to melancholy. A palmist would have told you that the sympathetic line on the palm of his hand was so little prominent as to be scarcely visible, whereas on Tepelenti's palm there was such an abundant concourse of sympathetic lines that they even ran over on to the back of the hand. In those days the Mussulmans frequently diverted themselves with such superstitious games as palmistry.