The ensigns and the subalterns—
Now aren’t these fellows clever?—
Feel sure a miracle like this
Can’t hope to last for ever!
There was something of the comic-opera order, not to say of Christmas pantomime, in this feature of life at the Palace. The transformation scene in “Cinderella” is not more kaleidoscopic in its changes. The obscure little pill-man, once happy at home in his strenuous vocation, passing his evenings in a beer-house, is suddenly called to Constantinople and driven about in a carriage and pair, dressed in a Turkish uniform “made in Germany,” with a jewelled bauble dangling from his collar. Just as suddenly the carriage and its black horses are gone, and the worthy doctor has to appeal to the law courts of Berlin for the salary owing to him by the dethroned Sultan.
Bobadil Pasha, Bombastes, Swashbuckler Pasha, Boule-qui-Roule Pasha (a French importation who was said to have owed his successful career to the sirenical attractions of Madame Boule-qui-Roule), Birra (beer) Pasha from the Fatherland—one and all of them enter upon the scene, play their little parts, and disappear through the trap-door exactly as in a pantomime. Alexander of Battenberg, the Prince of Bulgaria, is presented with an Arab steed by the Sultan, but goes away without it, for Marshal Bombastes, the Master of the Horse, who was entrusted with the task of its delivery, had lost or otherwise disposed of it. There were some truculent personages among these gentry.
Calling one day on Ibrahim Pasha, who had succeeded the late Munir Pasha as Grand Master of Ceremonies and Introducer of Ambassadors, I saw a tall, pompous personage in the uniform of a Turkish General engaged in conversation with his Excellency. To judge by appearances he was a very Bobadil, a swashbuckler sort of man, one of the grasping, cunning windbag variety which Abdul Hamid’s promiscuous generosity tempted from the barrack-room of his native country to a palace on the Bosphorus, to the dismay and disgust of many a loyal Turkish heart. Six feet of coloured cloth surmounted by an almost round bullet head, bobbing up and down mechanically as if set in motion by wires, the features of the man were commonplace, if not downright plebeian. A hectoring, flamboyant mien stamped the whole personage, breathing the soldier’s contempt for the civilian, which is one of the most ominous phenomena of contemporary Europe. And yet he was by no means one calculated to inspire fear: the sort of man that an American cowboy would throw out of a bar-room without taking his pipe out of his mouth.
Vorne mit Trompetenschall
Ritt der General Feldmarschall
Herr Quintilius Varus.[[15]]