THE DIVAN.
The gates of the seraglio were thrown wide open, the discordant,
clanging, and ear-piercing music was put to silence by a thundering roll
of drums, and twelve mounted cavasses with great trouble and difficulty
began clearing a way for the corps of viziers among the thronging crowd,
belabouring all they met in their path with stout cudgels and rhinoceros
whips. The indolent, gaping crowd saw that it was going to be flogged,
yet didn't stir a step to get out of the reach of the whips and
bludgeons.
The members of the Divan dismounted from their horses in the courtyard
and ascended the steps, which were guarded by a double row of
Janissaries with drawn scimitars, the blue and yellow curtains of the
assembly hall of the Divan were drawn aside before them, and the
mysterious inner chamber--the hearth and home of so much power and
splendour, once upon a time--lay open before them.
It was a large octagonal chamber without any of those adornments
forbidden by the Koran; its marble pavement covered by oriental carpets,
its walls to the height of a man's stature inlaid with mother-o'-pearl.
Along the walls were placed a simple row of low sofas covered with red
velvet and without back-rests, behind them was a pillared niche
concealing a secret door where Amurath was wont to listen unperceived to
the consultations of his councillors.
Through the parted curtains passed the members of the Council of the
Divan. First of all came the Grand Vizier, a tall, dry man with rounded
projecting shoulders; his head was constantly on the move and his eyes
peered now to the right and now to the left as if he were perpetually
watching and examining something. His brown, mud-coloured face wore an
expression of perpetual discontent; every glance was full of scorn,
rage, and morbid choler; when he spoke he gnashed his black teeth
together through which he seemed to filter his voice; and his face was
never for an instant placid, at one moment he drew down his eyebrows
till his eyes were scarce visible, at the next instant he raised them so
that his whole forehead became a network of wrinkles and the whites of
his eyes were visible; the corners of his mouth twitched, his chin
waggled, his beard was thin and rarely combed, and the only time he ever
smiled was when he saw fear on the face of the person whom he was
addressing; finally, his robes hung about him so slovenly that despite
the splendid ornaments with which they were plastered he always looked
shabby and sordid.
After the Grand Vizier came Kiuprile, a full-bodied, red-faced Pasha,
with a beard sprawling down to his knees; the broad sword which hung by
his side raised the suspicion that the hand that was wont to wield it
was the hand of no weakling; his voice resembled the roar of a buffalo,
so deep, so rumbling was it that when he spoke quietly it was difficult
to understand him, while on the battle-field you could hear him above
the din of the guns.
Among the other members of the Divan there were three other men worthy
of attention.
The first was Kucsuk Pasha, a muscular, martial man; his sunburnt face
was seamed with scars, his eyes were as bright and as black as an
eagle's; his whole bearing, despite his advanced age, was valiant and
defiant; he carried his sword in his left hand; his walk, his pose, his
look were firm; he was slow to speak, and rapid in action.
Beside him stood his son, Feriz Beg, the sharer of his father's dangers
and glory, a tall, handsome youth in a red caftan and a white turban
with a heron's plume.
Last of all came the Sultan's Christian doctor, the court interpreter,
Alexander Maurocordato, a tall, athletic man, in a long, ample mantle of
many folds; his long, bright, black beard reaches almost to his girdle,
his features have the intellectual calm of the ancient Greek type, his
thick black hair flows down on both shoulders in thick locks.
The viziers took their places; the Sultan's divan remains vacant;
nearest to it sits the Grand Vizier; farther back sit the pashas, agas,
and begs.
"Most gracious sir," said Maurocordato, turning towards the Grand
Vizier, "the poor Magyar gentlemen have been waiting at thy threshold
since dawn."
The Grand Vizier gazed venomously at the interpreter, protruding his
head more than ever.
"Let them wait! It is more becoming that they should wait for us than we
for them."
And with that he beckoned to the chief of the cavasses to admit the
petitioners.
The refugees were twelve in number, and the chief cavasse, drawing aside
the curtains from the door of an adjoining room, at once admitted them.
Foremost among them was Paul Beldi, the others entered with anxious
faces and unsteady, hesitating footsteps; he alone was brave, noble, and
dignified. His gentle, large blue eyes ran over the faces of those
present, and his appearance excited general sympathy.
Only the Grand Vizier regarded him with a look of truculent
indifference--it was his usual expression, and he knew no other.
"Fear not!--open your hearts freely!" signified the Grand Vizier.
Beldi stepped forward, and bowed before the Grand Vizier. One of the
Hungarians approached still nearer to the Vizier and kissed his hand;
the others were prevented from doing the same by the intervention of
Maurocordato, who at the same time beckoned to Beldi to speak without
delay.
"Your Excellencies!" began Beldi, "our sad fate is already well-known to
you, as fugitives from our native land we come to you, as beggars we
stand before you; but not as fugitives, not as beggars do we petition
you at this moment, but as patriots. We have quitted our country not as
traitors, not as rebels, but because we would save it. The Prince is
rushing headlong into destruction, carrying the country along with him.
His chief counsellor lures him on with the promise of the crown of
Hungary in the hope that he himself will become the Palatine. Your
excellencies are aware what would be the fate of Hungary after such a
war. A number of the great men of the realm joined me in a protest
against this policy. We knew what we were risking. For some years past I
have been one of those who disapproved of an offensive war--we are the
last of them, the rest sit in a shameful dungeon, or have died a
shameful death. Once upon a time, as happy fathers of families, we dwelt
by our own firesides; now our wives and children are cast into prison,
our castles are rooted up, our escutcheons are broken; but we do not ask
of you what we have lost personally, we ask not for the possession of
our properties, we ask not for the embraces of our wives and children,
we do not even ask to see our country; we are content to die as beggars
and outcasts; we only petition for the preservation of the life of the
fatherland which has cast us forth, and which is rushing swiftly to
destruction--hasten ye to save it."
Kucsuk Pasha, who well understood Hungarian, angrily clapped his hand
upon his sword, half drew it and returned it to its sheath again. Feriz
Beg involuntarily wiped away a tear from his eyes.
"Gracious sirs," continued Beldi, "we do not wish you to be wrath with
the Prince for the tears and the blood that have been shed; we only ask
you to provide the Prince with better counsellors than those by whom he
is now surrounded, binding them by oath to satisfy the nation and the
Grand Seignior, for none will break such an oath lightly and with
impunity; and these new counsellors will constrain him to be a better
father to those who remain in the country than he was to us."
When Beldi had finished, Maurocordato came forward, took his place
between the speaker and the Grand Vizier, and began to interpret the
words of Beldi.
At the concluding words the face of the interpreter flushed brightly,
his resonant, sonorous voice filled the room, his soul, catching the
expression of his face, changed with his changing feelings. Where Beldi
calmly and resignedly had described his sufferings, the voice of the
interpreter was broken and tremulous. Where Beldi had sketched the
future in a voice of solemn conviction, Maurocordato assumed a tone of
prophetic inspiration; and finally, when in words of self-renunciation
he appealed for the salvation of his country, his oratory became as
penetrating, as bitterly ravishing, as if his speech were the original
instead of the copy. Passion in its ancient Greek style, the style of
Demosthenes, seemed to have arisen from the dead.
The listening Pashas seemed to have caught the inspiration of his
enthusiasm, and bent their heads approvingly. The Grand Vizier
contracted his eyelids, puckered up his lips, and hugging his caftan to
his breast, began to speak, at the same time gazing around abstractedly
with prickling eyes, every moment beating down the look of whomsoever he
addressed or glaring scornfully at them. His screeching voice, which he
seemed to strain through his lips, produced an unpleasant impression on
those who heard it for the first time; while his features, which seemed
to express every instant anger, rage, and scorn in an ascending scale,
accentuated by the restless pantomime of his withered, tremulous hand,
could not but make those of the Magyars who were ignorant of Turkish
imagine that the Grand Vizier was atrociously scolding them, and that
what he said was nothing but the vilest abuse from beginning to end.
Mr. Ladislaus Csaky, who was standing beside Paul Beldi, plucked his fur
mantle and whispered in his ear with a tremulous voice:
"You have ruined us. Why did you not speak more humbly? He is going to
impale the whole lot of us."
The Vizier, as usual, concluded his speech with a weary smile, drew back
his mocking lips, and exposed his black, stumpy teeth. The heart's blood
of the Magyars began to grow cold at that smile.
Then Maurocordato came forward. A gentle smile of encouragement
illumined his noble features, and he began to interpret the words of the
Grand Vizier: "Worshipful Magyars, be of good cheer. I have compassion
on your petition, your righteousness stands before us brighter than the
noonday sun, your griefs shall have the fullest remedy. Ye did well to
supplicate the garment of the Sublime Sultan; cling fast to the folds of
it, and no harm shall befall you. Now depart in peace; if we should
require you again, we will send for you."
Everyone breathed more easily. Beldi thanked the Vizier in a few simple
sentences, and they prepared to withdraw.
But Ladislaus Csaky, who was much more interested in his Sova property
than in the future of Transylvania, and to whom Beldi's petition, which
only sought the salvation of the fatherland, and said nothing about the
restitution of confiscated estates, appeared inadequate, scarce waited
for his turn to speak, and, what is more, threw himself at the feet of
the Vizier, seized one of them, which he embraced, and began to weep
tremendously. Indeed, his words were almost unintelligible for his
weeping, and Mr. Csaky's oratory was always difficult to understand at
the best of times, so that it was no wonder that the Grand Vizier lost
his usual phlegm and now began to curse and swear in real earnest; till
the other Magyar gentlemen rushed up, tore Csaky away by force, while
Maurocordato angrily pushed them all out, and thus put an end to the
scandalous scene.
"If you kneel before a man," said Beldi, walking beside him, "at least
do not weep like a child."
Before Beldi could reach the door he felt his hand warmly pressed by
another hand. He looked in that direction, and there stood Feriz.
"Did you say that your wife was a captive?" asked the youth with an
uncertain voice.
"And my child also."
The face of Feriz flushed.
"I will release them," he said impetuously. Beldi seized his hand. "Wait
for me at the entrance."
The Hungarian refugees withdrew, everyone of them weaving for himself
fresh hopes from the assurances of the Vizier. Only Ladislaus was not
content with the result, and going to his quarters he immediately sat
down and wrote two letters, one to the general of the Kaiser, and the
other to the minister of the King of France, to both of whom he promised
everything they could desire if they would help forward his private
affairs, thinking to himself if the Sultan does not help me the Kaiser
will, and if both fail me I can fall back upon the French King; at any
rate a man ought to make himself safe all round.
* * * * *
Scarce had the refugees quitted the Divan when an Aga entered the
audience-chamber and announced:
"The Magyar lords."
"What Magyar lords?" cried the Grand Vizier.
"Those whom the Prince has sent."
"They're in good time!" said the Vizier, "show them in;" and he at once
fell into a proper pose, reserving for them his most venomous
expression.
The curtains were parted, and the Prince's embassy appeared, bedizened
courtly folks in velvet with amiable, simpering faces. Their spokesman,
Farkas Bethlen, stood in the very place where Paul Beldi had stood an
hour before, in a velvet mantle trimmed with swan's-down, a bejewelled
girdle worthy of a hero, and a sword studded with turquoises, the
magnificence of his appointments oddly contrasting with his look of
abject humility.
"Well! what do ye want? Out with it quickly!" snapped the Grand Vizier,
with an ominous air of impatience.
Farkas Bethlen bent his head to his very knees, and then he began to
orate in the roundabout rhetoric of those days, touching upon everything
imaginable except the case in point.
"Most gracious and mighty, glorious and victorious Lords, dignified
Grand Vizier, unconquerable Pashas, mighty Begs and Agas, most potent
pillars of the State, lords of the three worlds, famous and widely-known
heroes by land and sea, my peculiarly benevolent Lords!"
All this was merely prefatory!
Kiuprile began to perspire; Kucsuk Pasha twirled his sword upon his
knee; Feriz Beg turned round and contemplated the fountains of the
Seraglio through the window.
"Make haste, do!" interrupted Maurocordato impatiently; whereupon Farkas
Bethlen, imagining that he had offended the interpreter by omitting him
from the exordium, turned towards him with a supplementary compliment:
"Great and wise interpreter, most learned and extraordinarily to be
respected court physician of the most mighty Sultan!"
Kiuprile yawned so tremendously that the girdle round his big body burst
in two.
Farkas Bethlen, however, did not let himself be put out in the least,
but continued his oration.
"Our worthy Prince, his Highness Michael Apafi, has been much distressed
to learn that those seditious rebels who have dared to raise their evil
heads, not only against the Prince but against the Sublime Porte also,
as represented in his person, in consequence of the frustration of their
plans, have fled hither to damage the Prince by their falsehoods and
insinuations. Nevertheless, although our worthy Prince is persuaded that
the wisdom of your Excellencies must needs confute their lying words,
your goodwill confound their devices, and your omnipotence chastise
their audacity, nevertheless it hath also seemed good to his Highness to
send us to your Excellencies in order that we may refute all these
complaints and accusations whereby they would falsely, treacherously and
abominably disturb the realm ..."
Maurocordato here took advantage of a pause made by the orator to take
breath after this exordium, and before he was able to proceed to the
subject-matter of his address, began straightway to interpret what he
had said so far for the benefit of the Grand Vizier, being well aware
that the Vizier would not allow anyone to speak a second time before he
had spoken himself.
The speech of the interpreter was this time dry and monotonous. All
Farkas Bethlen's homiletical energy was thrown away in Maurocordato's
drawling, indifferent reproduction.
The Grand Vizier replied with flashing eyes, his face was twice as
venomous as it had been before, and his gestures plainly indicated an
intention to show the envoys the door.
Maurocordato interpreted his reply.
"The Grand Vizier says that not those whom ye persecute but you
yourselves are the rebels who have broken the oath ye made to the
Sublime Porte, inasmuch as your ambitious projects aim at the separation
of Transylvania from its dependence on the Porte and at the conquest of
Hungary--both sure ways of destruction for yourselves. Wherefore the
Grand Vizier gives you to understand that if you cannot sit still and
live in peace with your own fellow-countrymen, he will send to you an
intermediary, who will leave naught but tears behind him."
The Hungarian gentlemen regarded each other in astonishment. Not a trace
of simpering amiability remained on the face of Farkas Bethlen, who was
furious at the failure of the speech he had so carefully learnt by
heart. He bowed still deeper than before, and sacrificing with
extraordinary self-denial the remainder of his oration, especially as he
perceived that any further parleying would not be permitted, he had
resort to more drastic expedients.
"Oh, sir! how can such accusations affect us who have always been
willing faithfully to fulfil your wishes? We pay tribute, we give gifts,
and now also our worthy Prince hath not sent us to you empty-handed,
having commanded Master Michael Teleki not to neglect to provide us with
suitable gifts, who has, moreover, sent to your Excellencies through me
two hundred purses of money,[20] as a token of his respect and homage,
beseeching your Excellencies to accept this little gift from us your
humble servants."
[Footnote 20: Equivalent to 100,000 thalers.]
With these words the orator beckoned to one of the deputation, at whose
summons, four porters appeared carrying between them, suspended on two
poles, a large iron chest, which Farkas Bethlen opened, discharging its
contents at the feet of the Grand Vizier.
The jingling thalers fell in heaps around the Divan, and the sound of
the rolling coins filled the room. The features of the Grand Vizier
suddenly changed. Maurocordato stepped back. Bethlen's last words had
needed no interpreter; the Vizier could not keep back from his face a
hideous smile, the grin of the devil of covetousness. His eyes grew
large and round, he no longer clenched his teeth together, he was
rather like a wild beast eager to pounce upon his prey.
Farkas Bethlen humbly withdrew among his colleagues; the Vizier could
not resist the temptation, he descended from the Divan, rubbing his
hands, tapping the shoulders of the last speaker, smiling at all the
deputies, and even going so far as to extend his hand to one or two of
them, which those fortunate beings hastened to kiss, and spoke something
to them in Turkish, to which they felt bound to reply with profound
obeisances.
During this scene Maurocordato had quitted the Divan, and as in default
of an interpreter the envoys were unable to understand the words of the
Vizier, and could only bow repeatedly, Kiuprile, who had learnt
Hungarian while he was Pasha of Eger, arose and roared at them in a
voice which made the very ceiling shake:
"The Vizier bids you go to hell, ye dogs of Giaours, and if we want you
again we will send for you!" Whereupon he gave a vicious kick at a
thaler which had rolled to his feet, while the deputies, after
innumerable salutations, left the Divan.
* * * * *
On the departure of the Prince's envoys, the Grand Vizier immediately
sent for Beldi and his comrades. When the refugees entered the Divan,
not one of them yet knew that the envoys of the Prince had been there
and brought the money which they saw piled up before them, though they
could not for the life of them understand what the Grand Vizier and
themselves had to do with all that money; and inasmuch as Maurocordato
had also departed, and the cavasses sent after him could not find him
anywhere, the Hungarians, in the absence of an interpreter, stood there
for some time in the utmost doubt, striving to explain as best they
could the signification of the peculiar signs which the Grand Vizier
kept making to them from time to time, pointing now at the heaps of
money and now at them, and expounding his sayings with all ten fingers.
Every time he glanced at the money he could not restrain his disgusting,
hyaena-like smile.
"Don't you see," whispered Csaky to Beldi, "the Grand Vizier intends all
that money for us?"
Beldi could not help smiling at this artless opinion.
At last, as the interpreter did not come, Kiuprile was constrained, very
much against the grain, to arise and interpret the wishes of the Grand
Vizier as best he could.
"Worthy sirs, this is what the Grand Vizier says to you. The Prince's
deputies have been here. They ought to have their necks broken--that's
what _I_ say. They brought with them this sum of money, and they said
all sorts of things which are not true, but the money which they brought
is true enough. Having regard to which the Grand Vizier says to you that
he recognises the justice of your cause and approves of it, but the mere
recognition of its justice will make no difference to it, for it will
remain just what it was before. But if you would make your righteous
cause progress and succeed, promise him seventy more purses than those
of the Prince's envoys, and then we will close with you. We will then
fling _them_ into the Bosphorus sewn up in sacks, but you we will bring
back into your own land and make you the lords of it."
A bitter smile crossed the lips of Paul Beldi, he sighed sorrowfully,
and looked back upon his comrades.
"You know right well, sir," said he to Kiuprile, "that we have no money,
nor do I know from whence to get as much as you require, and my
colleagues are as poor as I am. We never used the property of the State
as a means of collecting treasures for ourselves, and what little
remained to us from our ancestors has already been divided among the
servants of the Prince. We have no money wherewith to buy us justice,
and if there be no other mode of saving our country, then in God's name
dismiss us and we will throw ourselves at the feet of some foreign
Prince, and supplicate till we find one who must listen to us. God be
with you; money we have none."
"Then I have!" cried a voice close beside Beldi; and, looking in that
direction, they saw Kucsuk Pasha approach Paul Beldi and warmly press
the right hand of the downcast Hungarian gentleman. "If you want two
hundred and seventy purses I will give it; if you want as much again I
will give it; as much as you want you shall have; bargain with them, fix
your price; I am here. I will pay instead of you."
Feriz Beg rushed towards his father, and, full of emotion, hid his face
in his bosom. Beldi majestically clasped the hand of the old hero, and
was scarce able to find words to express his gratitude at this offer.
"I thank you, a thousand times I thank you, but I cannot accept it; that
would be a debt I should never be able to repay, nor my descendants
after me. Blessed are you for your good will, but you cannot help me
that way."
Kiuprile intervened impatiently.
"Be sensible, Paul Beldi, and draw not upon thee my anger; weigh well
thy words, and hearken to good counsel. To demand so much money from
thee as a private man in exile would be a great folly, but assume that
thou art a Prince, and that this amount, which it would be impossible to
drag out of one pocket, could easily be distributed over a whole kingdom
and not be felt. Do no more then than promise us the amount; it is not
necessary that thou shouldst pay us before we have made thee Prince."
Beldi shuddered, and said to Kiuprile with a quavering voice:
"I do not understand you, sir, or else I have not heard properly what
you said."
"Then understand me once for all. If it be true what thou sayest--to
wit, that the present Prince of Transylvania rules amiss, why then,
depose him from his Principality; and if it also be true what thou
sayest--to wit, that thou dost love thy country so much and seest what
ought to be done--why then, defend it thyself. I will send a message to
the frontier Pashas, and they will immediately declare war upon this
state, seize Master Michael Apafi and all his counsellors, clap them
into the fortress of Jedikula, and put thee and thy comrades in their
places. Thou art only to promise the Grand Vizier two hundred and
seventy purses, and he will engage to make thee Prince as soon as
possible, and then thou wilt be able to pay it; which, if thou dost
refuse, of a truth I tell thee, that I will clap thee into Jedikula in
the place of Michael Apafi."
The heart of Paul Beldi beat violently throughout this speech. His
emotion was visible in his face, and more than once he would have
interrupted Kiuprile if the Hungarian gentlemen had not restrained him.
When, however, Kiuprile had finished his speech. Paul Beldi took a step
forward, and proudly raising his head so that he seemed to be taller
than usual, he replied in a firm, strong voice:
"I thank you, gracious sir, for your offer, but I cannot accept it. A
sacred oath binds me to the present Prince of Transylvania, and if he
has forgotten the oath which he swore to the nation it is no answer to
say that we should also violate ours, nay, rather should we remind him
of his. I have raised my head to ask for justice, not to pile one
injustice upon another. Transylvania needs not a new Prince, but its old
liberties; and if I had only wanted to make war upon the Prince, the
country would rise at a sign from me, the whole of the Szeklers would
draw their swords for me, but it was I who made them sheath their swords
again. I do not come to the Porte for vengeance, but for judgment; not
my own fate, but the fate of my country I submit to your Excellencies. I
do not want the office of Prince. I do not want to drive out one
usurper only to bring in a hundred more. I will not set all Transylvania
in a blaze for the sake of roasting Master Michael Teleki, nor for the
sake of freeing a dozen people from a shameful dungeon will I have ten
thousand dragged into captivity. May I suffer injustice rather than all
Transylvania. Accursed should I be, and all my posterity with me, if I
were to sell my oppressed nation for a few pence and bring armies
against my native land. As to your threats--I am prepared for anything,
for prison, for death. I came to you for justice, slay me if you will."
Kiuprile, disgusted, flung himself back on his divan; he did not count
upon such opposition, he was not prepared for such strength of mind. The
other gentlemen who, from time to time, had fled to the Porte from
Transylvania had been wont to beg and pray for the very favour which
this man so nobly rejected.
The Grand Vizier, perceiving from the faces of those present the
impression made on them by Beldi's speech, turned now to the right and
now to the left for an explanation, and dismay gradually spread over his
pallid face as he began to understand. Beldi's colleagues, pale and
utterly crushed, awaited the result of his alarming reply; while
Ladislaus Csaky, unable to restrain his dismay, rushed up to Beldi,
flung himself on his neck in his despair, and implored him by heaven and
earth to accept the offer of the Grand Vizier.
If the offer had been made to him he would most certainly have accepted
it.
"Never, never," replied Beldi, as cold as marble.
The other gentlemen knelt down before him, and with clasped hands
besought him not to make himself, his children, and themselves for ever
miserable.
"Arise, I am not God!" said Beldi, turning from his tearful colleagues.
The Grand Vizier, on understanding what it was all about, leaped
furiously from his place, and tearing off his turban, hurled it in
uncontrollable rage to the ground, exclaiming with foaming mouth:
"Hither, cavasses!"
"Put that accursed dog in chains!" he screeched, pointing with bloodshot
eyes at Beldi, who quietly permitted them to load him with fetters
weighing half-a-hundredweight each, which the army of slaves always had
in readiness.
"Wouldst thou speak, puppy of a giaour?" cried the Vizier, when he was
already chained.
"What I have said I stand to," solemnly replied the patriot, raising his
chained hand to Heaven. "God is my refuge."
"To the dungeon with him!" yelled Kara Mustafa, beckoning to the
drabants to drag Beldi away.
Just as a hard stone emits sparks when it is struck, so Beldi turned
suddenly upon the Vizier and said, shaking his chains, "Thine hour will
also strike!"
Then he suffered them to lead him away to prison.
* * * * *
Immediately afterwards, the Grand Vizier sent for the envoys of the
Prince, and commending them and those who sent them, gave each of them a
new caftan, and with the most gracious assurances sent them back to
their native land, where nevertheless Master Farkas Bethlen had never
been accounted a very great orator.
In the gates of the Seraglio the dismissed envoys encountered Master
Ladislaus Csaky. The worthy gentleman at once perceived from their
self-satisfied smiles and the new caftans they were wearing that they
had been sent away with a favourable reply; whereupon, notwithstanding
that he had already agreed with Paul Beldi to render homage to the
French and German Ministers, he did not consider it superfluous to pay
his court to Master Farkas Bethlen also, and offer to surrender himself
body and soul if the Prince would agree to pardon him and restore his
estates.
Farkas Bethlen accepted the proposal and not only promised Csaky an
amnesty, but high office to boot if he would separate from Beldi; nay,
he rewarded on the spot that gentleman who had thus very wisely fastened
the threads of his fate to four several places at the same time, so that
if one of them broke he could still hold on to the other three.
* * * * *
"Beldi has ruined his affairs utterly," said Kucsuk Pasha to his son, as
they retired from the Divan; "I give up every idea of saving him."
"I don't," sighed Feriz. "I'll either save or perish with him."
"Let us go to Maurocordato, he may perhaps advise us."
After an hour's interview with Maurocordato, Feriz Beg, with fifty armed
Albanian horsemen, took the road towards Grosswardein.