Nobody was satisfied, which is indeed the invariable consequence of weakness, for the love of vulgar popularity was the weakness of our eminent chief, so deeply respected on other accounts. This same weakness caused him to end his days as a Deputy of the most colourless opinions.
I cruised for six months outside the Dardanelles, first with the Iena and afterwards with the Belle-Poule, which had joined the squadron and of which I had been given command—six months which offered nothing in the way of wild gaiety, beyond the routine of my duty. True, we saw the sun rise over Mount Ida every morning, but we never saw the shadow of a goddess. The utmost we did in the short breathing spaces between our drills and cruises between Cape Baba and the Isles of Tenedos, Lemnos and Imbro, was to land at the slaughter-house of the contractor to the squadron, irreverently styled Charognopolis, for an excursion to the ruins of Troy, to shoot snipe in the marshes of Simois, or get a hare on the tomb of Patroclus.
This monotony was broken, however, by the appearance of the Turkish fleet, which we saw issuing, forty strong, from the Dardanelles, sailing along in confusion, driving before a strong breeze—altogether a most stately sight.
We took station abreast of the squadron, saluting the Capitan Pasha, who on his side ordered his fleet to heave to—a manoeuvre which was performed amid a fine confusion. A steam launch at once came towards us. It bore the second in command of the fleet, Osman Pasha, sent by the Capitan Pasha to request an interview with Admiral Lalande. He consented and boarded the Turkish ship, taking me with him.
During our passage to the Capitan Pasha's flag-ship, Osman Pasha led us below, closed all the cabin doors with an air of mystery, and with the help of a young Armenian dragoman he told us a long story, which I will sum up in a few words. Constantinople, so he said, was being laid waste by fire and sword. On the death of Sultan Mahmoud, Kosrew Pasha, who was no better than a Russian agent, had seized the reins of power. He stuck at nothing, so long as he kept them. The real Turks, the faithful Mussulmans, were losing their heads by the hundred; the head of the faith himself, the Sheik el Islam, had not been spared. He refused to consecrate the new Sultan until he wore the venerated turban of Othman upon his head instead of the revolutionary fez, and for this he was strangled at midnight, with great pomp it is true, and amid the salvos of artillery due to his exalted rank (a poor consolation, I thought to myself!). The lives of Osman Pasha himself and of his chief, the Capitan Pasha, hung by a thread. Wherefore they had both resolved, instead of fighting against Mehemet Ali, as everybody believed they would, to make common cause with him, so as to unite all the Mussulman strength in one single alliance, and make one of those concentrated efforts which have been the dream of every period and every country which has been torn by revolution. In plain English, the two chiefs in command were carrying the unconscious fleet into an act of defection which was intended to save their own heads. They wanted the admiral's approbation, which he refused. Then they asked for a French warship to go with them as a sort of lifeboat, which he promised them, and above all, they begged that no word, glance, or gesture of ours, during the visit we were about to pay, might betray the secret confided to us. We then boarded the Capitan Pasha's flagship, where we had a reception that was truly oriental in its mingled pomp and duplicity—we alone, amidst the crowd of courtiers, officers, and foreign representatives surrounding this commander-in-chief, about to turn traitor, being possessed of his secret. Not to mention that as we went along the gun decks, we saw the Turkish gunners smoking their pipes beside the heaps of cartridges piled between the guns. A highly oriental sight also, and far from tranquillizing!
By evening the Turkish fleet had disappeared over the horizon, and the only other recollection my memory holds of this period is that of a reconnaissance along the northern coast of the Dardanelles, and the peninsula between Gallipoli and the Gulf of Saron, which reconnaissance I made with several other officers, under colour of a sporting expedition in a Turkish boat called a sakoleve and with a view to an ultimate military occupation of the peninsula. Mayhap the notes made during this expedition were of use when Gallipoli was occupied in 1854, at the beginning of the Crimean War.
In the course of the autumn, I beheld Constantinople, that most wonderful of landscapes, for the first time in my life. And to begin with, the thing which struck me most were the sunsets over the huge city. Nothing can give any idea of how magnificent they are, with the towers and thousand mosques of Stamboul standing out like a mysterious vision in the misty golden haze, an enchanted city of aerial palaces hanging in mid-air. In those days the soft evening mists I speak of were ideal in their transparence, which no smoke ever dimmed, for the factories and steamboats which now hang their black plumes over Constantinople were then unknown. Instead of steamers, there were only those delightful caiques, laden with brightly-dressed passengers, gliding silently along in their thousands, and leaving as it were tracks of glistening spangles in their wake. Nothing can ever efface that sight from my recollection.
Among the caiques, which are quite peculiar to the Bosphorus, was one I met many a time, and which was indeed well known to everybody. It belonged to a sister of the late Sultan Mahmoud, celebrated in Constantinople for her love affairs—a sort of Marguerite de Bourbon, for whose fleeting favours several people had paid with their heads. Three oarsmen, splendid white-skinned fellows with long fair moustaches, and athletic frames scarcely concealed beneath their white drawers and striped silk gauze shirts, sent their mistress's caique flying through the water. She was a tall woman, with piercing eyes and an aristocratic air—always seated between two lovely maids of honour. I say lovely, for the Turkish woman, when she is unobserved, when she knows her own beauty and meets eyes whose admiration she desires to rouse, always finds means of permitting her veil the most delightful if indiscreet revelations. Consequently I was always on the look-out to try and get a sight of the Sultana's caique. It must be remembered I was just off a cruise after long months spent in warlike solitude on board ship. So, though St. Sophia, with its size and its legend, had struck me as being the most profoundly devotional edifice I had ever seen—an impression which the sight of St. Peter's at Rome and of the Cathedral of Seville has never removed—my attention and curiosity were much more drawn to the earthly representatives of the houris promised to the faithful, than to the monuments of the Faith.
The curiosity I speak of led me on a certain Friday to the Sweet Waters of Asia. I found the loveliest of scenes lying before my eyes that delicious afternoon towards the end of August. Imagine an immense meadow, broken up by clumps of trees, sloping down to the swift blue waters of the Bosphorus, on the other side of which ran wooded hills dotted with mosques and minarets and gaily painted country houses. Close to the edge of the water stands a kiosk, and an elegantly-carved marble fountain. And around the kiosk is a sort of promenade shaded by huge plane-trees. Under these plane-trees a hundred, or thereabouts, gaily adorned and plumed arabas, now standing unharnessed in the meadow, had deposited an army of the smartest Turkish ladies. Some of them sat beside the water, others round the fountain, others again followed little pashas mounted on ponies led by eunuchs. What with the richness of the landscape, the truly oriental light, and the variety and splendour of the dresses, the whole sight was really fairy-like. We were very desirous of studying it in detail, and at close quarters. A line of soldiers cut off the portion of the grove of plane-trees reserved to women only. But our ambassadress and her daughters, who had come at the same time as ourselves, had a right to enter it, and we hurried after them. At first the officer commanding the guard tried to stop us. However, after a colloquy with the dragoman of our Embassy, he contented himself with begging us to go through quickly. The ladies of the Embassy having seated themselves among the Turkish ladies, we did likewise, and, in spite of the angry glances of the eunuchs, by dint of mutual curiosity and a little flirtation we spent several hours quite delightfully. Lots of pretty women, and forbidden fruit into the bargain. No more veils, no more feredjes. We could scrutinize the exquisite costumes at our leisure.
When I say "No more veils" I ought rather to say nothing but an excuse for a veil—a gauze chin covering leaving nose and eyes and eyebrows bare, and so transparent across the mouth, that where that mouth was a pretty one, to cover it at all was but an extra piece of coquetry.