In some measure I am the last visitor of the Turkish Empire under its old customs. The revolutions which have everywhere immediately preceded, or followed upon, my footsteps have spread over Greece, Syria, Egypt. Is a new East about to be formed? What will it bring forth? Shall we receive our just punishment for having taught the modern art of warfare to nations whose social state is based upon slavery and polygamy? Have we carried civilization beyond our boundaries, or have we brought barbarism within the circle of Christianity? What will result from the new interests, the new political relations, the creation of the Powers which may spring up in the Levant? No one can tell. I do not allow myself to be dazzled by steam-boats and railways, by the sale of the produce of manufactures, and by the fortunes of a few French, English, German, Italian soldiers enrolled in a pasha's service: all that is not civilization. Perhaps we shall behold the return, through the aid of the disciplined troops of future Ibrahims, of the perils which threatened Europe at the time of Charles the Hammer[725], and from which we were saved by the generous Poland. I pity the travellers who shall succeed me: the harem will no longer hide its secrets from them; they will not have seen the old sun of the East and the turban of Mahomet. The little Bedouin called out to me in French, when I passed into the mountains of Judæa:
"Forward, march!"
The order was given, and the East marched.
*
MEMENTO MORI.
What became of Ulysses' companion, Julien? He asked, when handing me his manuscript, to be made concierge of my house in the Rue d'Enfer: this place was occupied by an old porter and his family, whom I could not send away. The wrath of Heaven having made Julien headstrong and a drunkard, I supported him for a long time; at last we were obliged to part. I gave him a small sum, and granted him a little pension on my privy purse, a somewhat light one, but always copiously filled with excellent notes mortgaged on my castles in Spain. I obtained Julien's admission, at his wish, to the Old Men's asylum: there he finished the last great journey. I shall soon go to occupy his empty bed, even as, in the camp of Etnir-Capi, I slept on a mat from which a plague-stricken Mussulman had just been removed. My vocation is positively for the almshouse, in which the old society lies. It pretends to live, but is none the less at death's door. When it has expired, it will decompose in order to be reproduced under new forms, but it must first succumb; the first necessity for peoples, as for man, is to die:
"When God bloweth, there cometh frost," says Job[726].
[649] This book was written in Paris in 1839, and revised in December 1846.—T.
[650] Diane de Poitiers (1499-1566) was the daughter of Jean de Poitiers, Seigneur de Saint-Vallier, and married in 1512 Louis de Brézé, Comte de Maulevrier, who died in 1531. Some years later she became mistress to Henry II., then Duc d'Orléans, who shortly after his accession created her Duchesse de Valentinois. She retained her empire over the King and her power in France until Henry's death, which occurred in 1559.—T.