We left them twisting. They had been going for half an hour, and it began to look very like perpetual motion. Unless their brains are addled, their devotion, during this dizzy performance at least, must be quite suspended. A man who could think of his Maker, while revolving so fast that his nose is indistinct, must have some power of abstraction.
The frigate was visited to-day by the sultan’s cabinet. The seraskier pacha came alongside first, in his state caique, and embraced the commodore as he stepped upon the deck, with great cordiality. He is a short, fat old man, with a snow-white beard, and so bow-legged as to be quite deformed. He wore the red Fez cap of the army, with a long blue frock-coat, the collar so tight as nearly to choke him, and the body not shaped to the figure, but made to fall around him like a sack. The red, bloated skin of his neck fell over, so as to almost cover the gold with which the collar was embroidered. He was formerly capitan pacha, or admiral-in-chief of the fleet, and though a good-humoured, merry-looking old man, has shown himself, both in his former and present capacity, to be wily, cold, and a butcher in cruelty. He possesses unlimited influence over the sultan, and though nominally subordinate to the grand vizier, is really the second if not the first person in the empire. He was originally a Georgian slave.
The seraskier was still talking with the commodore in the gangway, when the present capitan pacha mounted the ladder, and the old man, who is understood to be at feud with his successor, turned abruptly away and walked aft. The capitan pacha is a tall, slender man, of precisely that look and manner which we call gentlemanly. His beard grows untrimmed in the Turkish fashion, and is slightly touched with gray. His eye is anxious, but resolute, and he looks like a man of resource and ability. His history is as singular as that of most other great men in Turkey. He was a slave of Mohammed Ali, the rebellious Pacha of Egypt. Being intrusted by his master with a brig and cargo for Leghorn, he sold the vessel and lading, lived like a gentleman in Italy for some years with the proceeds, and as the best security against the retribution of his old master, offered his services to the sultan, with whom Ali was just commencing hostilities. Naval talent was in request, and he soon arrived at his present dignity. He is said to be the only officer in the fleet who knows anything of his profession.
Haleil Pacha arrived last. The sultan’s future son-in-law is a man of perhaps thirty-five. He is light-complexioned, stout, round-faced, and looks like a respectable grocer, “well to do in the world.” He has commanded the artillery long enough to have acquired a certain air of ease and command, and carries the promise of good fortune in his confident features. He is to be married almost immediately. He, too, was a Georgian, sent as a present to the sultan.
The three dignitaries made the rounds of the ship and then entered the cabin, where the pianoforte (a novelty to the seraskier and Haleil Pacha, and to most of the attendant officers), and the commodore’s agreeable society and champagne, promised to detain them the remainder of the day. They were like children with a holiday. I was engaged to dine on shore, and left them aboard.
In a country where there is no education and no rank, except in the possession of present power, it is not surprising that men should rise from the lowest class to the highest offices, or that they should fill those offices to the satisfaction of the sultan. Yet it is curious to hear their histories. An English physician, who is frequently called into the seraglio, and whose practice among all the families in power gives him the best means of information, has entertained me not a little with these secrets. I shall make use of them when I have more leisure, merely mentioning here, in connexion with the above accounts, that the present grand vizier was a boatman on the Bosphorus, and the commander of the sultan’s body-guard, a shoemaker. The latter still employs all his leisure in making slippers, which he presents to the sultan and his friends, not at all ashamed of his former vocation. So far, indeed, are any of these mushroom officers from blushing at their origin, that it is common to prefix the name of their profession to the title of pacha, and they are addressed by it as a proper name. This is one respect in which their European education will refine them to their disadvantage.