The palaces of the Sultan, on both banks of the Bosphorus, though externally showy, are [pg 335] very plain and simple in their interior arrangement. They are surrounded by high walls, and guarded by soldiery. The first block of buildings which the traveler approaches on visiting them, up the Bosphorus, are the apartments of the eunuchs; the second his harem, or female apartments; and the third those of the Sultan. Beyond this are the offices of his secretaries, guard, and band of music, all beyond the walls of the palace. The number of eunuchs is some sixty or eighty, and the females in the harem about 300 to 400. The Sultan never marries; all the occupants of his harem are slaves, and he generally selects from four to six ladies as his favorites, who bear children to him, and who succeed to his throne. The remainder of the females are employed as maids of honor, who attend upon his mother, his favorites, his brother's mother, favorite, if he has one, and upon his children. Many hold offices in the palace, and are charged with the maintenance of good order and regularity. Many of them are aged females, who have been servants to his father, his mother, and sisters, and brother, and have thus claims upon his kindness and protection. The only males who have the right of entrance to the imperial harem are the eunuchs, all of whom are black, and come mutilated from Egypt. The chief of their corps is an aged “gentleman of color,” possessing the Sultan's confidence in an eminent degree, and in official rank is higher than any other individual connected with the imperial palace. The eunuchs are assigned to the service of the different ladies of the harem, do their shopping in the bazaars, carry their messages, and accompany them on their visits. Indeed, their duties are much like those of well-bred gallants in our country, without any of the ambitious feelings which animate the latter, and certainly they never aspire to the possession of their affections. Some of them grow wealthy, possess much property, and slaves of both sexes, but as they can have no families, the Sultan is their legal heir. Eunuchs are possessed by many of the pachas and other officers of rank, for the purpose of serving their wives, sisters, and daughters: they cost four or five times as much as an ordinary black slave, and the highest officers seldom possess more than ten of them at once. From them much interesting information can at times be procured relative to the most sacred and least known of the Mussulman family system. They are generally of mild disposition, gentle and amiable; though this is not always the case, for they sometimes are petulant, cross, and confoundedly non-communicative.
The Sultan's palace is peculiarly his private home, and no officers of high rank occupy it with him. He has four private secretaries and as many chamberlains. He has also two aids-de-camp, who are generally in command of the body-guard, which has its quarters in the vicinity of the palace. He seldom, however, commands their attendance; their duties are to keep watch at the principal entrances, and to salute him or any other higher officers who may arrive at or leave the royal residence. The secretaries write out his orders, and the chief of their number receives all foreign functionaries or Turkish dignitaries who visit the palace on business. One of them is the Sultan's interpreter, and translates articles for his perusal from the many foreign papers received from Europe and America by the Sultan. All official documents are sent to the chief secretary by the different ministers of the Sublime Porte, and those received from the foreign embassies and legations are translated there, previous to being transmitted to the Sultan. No foreign legation ever transacts any official business directly with the Sultan, or through the chief (private) secretary; but the latter may be visited on matters relating to the sovereign personally. Documents from the Sublime Porte are always communicated through the Grand Vezir, who has a number of portfolios in which these are placed, and he sends them to the palace by certain functionaries charged especially with their conveyance. Of these the Vezir possesses one key, and the Sultan, or his chief secretary, another. The sultan passes several hours of the day, from eleven till three, in perusing these papers, and in hearing their perusal by the private secretary before him; and his imperial commands are traced on their broad margin, either by his own hand in red ink (as is customary in China), or he directs his secretary to do it for him. So very sacred are all manuscripts coming from his pen, that these papers seldom ever leave the bureaux to which they belong, except after his decease. It is only on such documents that the autograph of the Sultan is ever seen.
At about three o'clock the Sultan generally leaves the palace in a caïque or barge, which, being smaller than that used for official purposes, is called the incognito (tebdil), and visits the edifices that he may be erecting, calls upon his sisters, or spends the remainder of the day at one of the many delightful nooks on the Bosphorus or Golden Horn, where he possesses kiosks, or summer-houses. Sometimes he takes with him his brother or his sons; and he is strongly attached to them. It is said that he is having the latter instructed in the French language, in geography and mathematics. The elder is some ten years of age, but will not succeed his father to the throne until after the death of his uncle, who, by Mussulman law, is next in right to the reigning Sultan. Inheritance, in Islam lands, runs through all the brothers before it reverts to the children of the eldest son. Females can not succeed to the throne, and the house of Othman would consequently become extinct with its last male representative.
The Curse Of Gold. A Dream.
Mordant Lindsay threw off the long black crape scarf and hat-band which, in the character of chief mourner, he had that day worn at the funeral of his wife, as he entered one of the apartments at Langford, and moodily sought a seat. The room was spacious, and filled with [pg 336] every luxury which wealth could procure or ingenuity invent to add to its comfort or its ornament. Pictures, mirrors, silken curtains, and warm carpets; statues in marble and bronze were scattered about in rich profusion in the saloon, and its owner, in the deep mourning of a widower, sat there—grieving truly—thinking deeply; but not, as might have been supposed, of the lady who had that day been laid in the vault of his ancestors—no, he was regretting the loss of a much brighter spirit than ever lived in her pale proud face, or in the coldness of her calm blue eye. Mordant Lindsay was apparently a man of past fifty; his hair was streaked with gray, though its dark locks still curled thickly round his head; he bore on his face the marks of more than common beauty, but time had left its traces there, in the furrows on his brow; and even more deeply than time, care. As a young man, he had been very handsome, richly endowed by nature with all those graces which too often make captive only to kill; but fortune, less generous, had gifted him but with the heritage of a good name—nothing more—and his early life had been passed in an attempt, by his own means, to remedy the slight she had put upon him at his birth. The object of his ambition was gained—had been now for some years: he was wealthy, the possessor of all the fair lands stretched out before him as far as his eye could reach, and a rent-roll not unworthy of one in a higher station in life. Looked up to by the poor of Langford as the lord of the manor, courted by his equals as a man of some consequence. Was he happy? See the lines so deeply marked on his countenance, and listen to the sigh which seems to break from the bottom of his heart. You will find in them an answer.
How brightly the sun shines in through the windows of the room, gilding all around with its own radiance, and giving life and light to the very statues! It shines even on his head, but fails in warming his bosom; it annoys him, uncongenial as it is with his sad thoughts, and he rises and pulls down the blind, and then restlessly wanders forth into the open air. The day is close, for summer is still at its height, and Mordant Lindsay seeks the shade of a group of trees and lies down, and presently he sleeps, and the sun (as it declines) throws its shadows on nearer objects; and now it rests on him, and as it hovers there, takes the form of that companion of his childhood, who for long, with a pertinacity he could not account for, seemed ever avoiding his path, and flying from him when most anxiously pursued; and he sees again those scenes of his past life before him dimly pictured through the vista of many years, and his dream runs thus:
He is a child at play, young and innocent, as yet untainted by worldly ambition, and standing by him is a beautiful figure, with long golden hair, very bright, and shining like spun glass or the rays of the summer sun. Her eyes seem born for laughter, so clear, so mirthful, so full of joy, and her spotless robe flows around her, making every thing it comes in contact with graceful as itself; and she has wings, for Happiness is fickle and flies away, so soon as man proves false to himself and unworthy of her. She joins the child in his gambols, and hand in hand with him sports beside him, gathering the same flowers that he gathers, looking through his smiling eyes as she echoes his happy laughter; and then over meadow, past ditches, and through tangled bushes, in full chase after a butterfly. In the eagerness of the sport he falls, and the gaudy insect (all unconscious of being the originator of so many conflicting hopes and fears) flutters onward in full enjoyment of the sun and the light, and soon it is too far off to renew the chase. Tears, like dewdrops, fill the child's eyes, and he looks around in vain for his companion of the day. The grass is not so green without her; even the bird's song is discordant, and, tired, he sadly wends his way toward home. “Oh, dear mamma!” he exclaims, brightening up, as he sees his mother coming toward him, and running to her finds a ready sympathy in his disappointment as she clasps her boy to her bosom and dries his little tearful face, closely pressing him to a heart whose best hopes are centred in his well-being. Happiness is in her arms, and he feels her warm breath upon his cheek as she kisses and fondles him; and anon he is as cheerful as he was, for his playmate of the day, now returned with his own good-humor, accompanies him for all the hours he will encourage her to remain; sometimes hiding within the purple flower of the scented violet, or nodding from beneath the yellow cups of the cowslip, as the breeze sends her laden with perfume back to him again. And in such childish play and innocent enjoyment time rolls on, until the child has reached his ninth year, and becomes the subject and lawful slave of all the rules in Murray's Grammar, and those who instill them into the youthful mind. And then the boy finds his early friend (although ready at all times to share his hours of relaxation) very shy and distant; when studies are difficult or lessons long, keeping away until the task is accomplished; but cricket and bat and ball invariably summon her, and then she is bright and kind as of yore, content to forget old quarrels in present enjoyment; and as Mordant dreamed, he sighed in his sleep, and the shadow of Happiness went still further off, as if frightened by his grief.
The picture changes: and now more than twenty years are past since the time when the boy first saw the light, and he is sitting in the room of a little cottage. The glass door leading to the garden is open, and the flowers come clustering in at the windows. The loveliness of the child has flown, it is true, but in its place a fond mother gazes on the form of a son whose every feature is calculated to inspire love. The short dark curls are parted from off his sunburnt forehead, and the bright hazel eyes (in which merriment predominates) glance quickly toward the door, as if expecting some one. The book he has been pretending to read lies idly on his lap, and bending his head upon his hand, his eyes had [pg 337] shut in the earnestness of his reverie, he does not hear the light footstep which presently comes stealing softly behind him. The new-comer is a young and very pretty girl, with a pale Madonna-looking face, seriously thoughtful beyond her years. She may be seventeen or eighteen, not more. Her hands have been busy with the flowers in the garden, and now, as she comes up behind the youth, she plucks the leaves from off a rose-bud, and drops them on his open book. A slight start, and a look upward, and then (his arms around her slight form) he kisses her fondly and often. And Happiness clings about them, and nestles closely by their side, as if jealous of being separated from either, and they were happy in their young love. How happy! caring for naught besides, thinking of no future, but in each other—taking no account of time so long as they should be together, contented to receive the evils of life with the good, and to suffer side by side (if God willed it) sooner than be parted. They were engaged to be married. At present, neither possessed sufficient to live comfortably upon, and they must wait and hope; and she did hope, and was reconciled almost to his departure, which must soon take place, for he has been studying for a barrister, and will leave his mother's house to find a solitary home in a bachelor's chambers in London. Mordant saw himself (as he had been then) sitting with his first love in that old familiar place, her hand clasped in his, her fair hair falling around her, and vailing the face she hid upon his shoulder, and even more vividly still, the remembrance of that Happiness which had ever been attendant on them then, when the most trivial incidents of the day were turned into matters of importance, colored and embellished as they were by love. He saw himself in possession of the reality, which, alas! he had thrown away for the shadow of it, and he longed for the recovery of those past years which had been so unprofitably spent, in a vain attempt at regaining it. The girl still sat by him; they did not seem to speak, and throughout that long summer afternoon still they sat, she pulling the flowers (so lately gathered) in pieces, and he playing with the ringlets of her hair. And now the door opens, and his mother enters, older by many years than when she last appeared to him, but still the same kind smile and earnest look of affection as she turns toward her son. Her hand is laid upon his arm (as he rises to meet her), and her soft voice utters his name, coupled with endearment. “Mordant, dearest, Edith and myself wish to walk, if you will accompany us?” “Certainly,” is the reply, and the three set out, and the dreamer watched their fast receding forms down a shady lane, until a turn lost them to his sight, and the retrospective view had vanished, but quickly to be replaced by another.
Again he sees the same youth, this time impatiently walking up and down a close, dismal room. The furniture is smoke-dried and dusty, once red, now of a dark ambiguous color. The sofa is of horse-hair, shining (almost white in places) from constant friction. On the mantlepiece hangs a looking-glass, the frame wrapped round with yellow gauze to protect it from dirt and here and there a fly-catcher, suspended from the ceiling, annoys the inmate of the dusky room by its constant motion. It is a lodging-house, ready furnished, and the young man, who has not left his home many months, is not yet accustomed to the change, and he is wearied and unhappy. He has just been writing to Edith, and the thought of her causes him uneasiness; he is longing to be with her again. Restlessly he paces up and down the narrow chamber, unwilling to resume studies, by the mastery of which he could alone hope to be with her again, until a knock at the hall-door makes him pause and sit down; another knock (as if the visitor did not care to be kept waiting). Mordant knew what was coming; he remembered it all, and felt no surprise at seeing in his dream a friend (now long since dead) enter the apartment, with the exclamation of “What, Lindsay! all alone? I had expected to find you out, I was kept so long knocking at your door. How are you, old fellow?” and Charles Vernon threw himself into a chair. “We are all going to the play,” continued he, “and a supper afterward. You know Leclerque? he will be one of the party—will you come?” and Vernon waited for an answer. The one addressed replied in the affirmative, and Mordant saw (with a shudder) the same figure which had lured him on in Pleasure to seek lost Happiness, now tempting the youth before him. The two were so like each other in outward appearance, that he wondered not that he too was deceived, and followed her with even more eagerness than he had ever done her more retiring sister. And then with that gay creature ever in mind, Mordant saw the young man led on from one place of amusement to another—from supper and wine to dice and a gambling-table—until ruin stared him in the face, and that mind, which had once been pure and untarnished, was fast becoming defaced by a too close connection with vice.