Coming out of the cemetery, we passed once more close to the base of
the Galata Tower and took the principal street of Pera. Pera lies
more than three hundred feet above the level of the sea, is bright
and cheerful, and overlooks both the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus.
It is the “West End” of the European colony, the quarter where are
to be found the comforts and elegancies of life. The street which we
now followed is lined on both sides with English and French hotels,
cafés of the better sort, brilliantly lighted shops, theatres, foreign
consulates, clubs, and the residences of the various ambassadors,
among which towers the great stone palace of the Russian embassy,
commanding Galata, Pera, and the village of Fundukli on the shore of
the Bosphorus, for all the world like a fortress.
The crowds which swarm and throng these streets are altogether unlike
those of Galata. Hardly any but stiff hats are to be seen, unless we
except the masses of flowers and feathers which adorn the heads of the
ladies: here are Greek, Italian, and French dandies, merchant princes,
officials of the various legations, foreign navy officers, ambassadors’
equipages, and doubtful-looking physiognomies of every nationality.
Turkish men stand admiring the wax heads in the hairdressers’ windows,
and the women pause open-mouthed before the showcases of the milliners’
shops. The Europeans talk and laugh more loudly here than elsewhere,
cracking jokes in the middle of the street, while the Turks, feeling
themselves, as it were, foreigners, carry their heads less high than in
the streets of Stambul.
As we walked along my friend suddenly called my attention to the
view, behind us, of Stambul. Sure enough, there lay the Seraglio
hill, St. Sophia, and the minarets of the mosque of Sultan Ahmed, all
faintly veiled in blue mist--an altogether different world from the
one in which we stood. “And now,” said he, “look there!” Following
the direction of his finger, I read the titles of some of the books
displayed in the window of an adjacent stationer’s shop--_La Dame
aux Camelias_, _Madame Bovary_, _Mademoiselle Giraud ma Femme_--and
experienced so curious a sensation at the rapid and violent contrast
thus presented that for some moments I was obliged to stand quite still
in order to adjust my ideas. At another time I stopped my companion to
make him look in a wonderful café we were passing. It was a long, wide,
dim corridor, ending in a large open window, through which we beheld,
at what seemed to be an immense distance, Skutari flooded with sunlight.
When we had proceeded for some distance along the Grande Rue de Pera
and nearly reached the end, we were startled by hearing a voice,
quite close at hand, exclaiming in tones of thunder, “Adèle, I love
thee! I love thee better than life itself! I love thee even as much
as it is given to men to love upon earth!” We gazed at one another in
astonishment. Where on earth did the voice come from? Looking about
us, we discovered on one side of the street a wooden fence through the
cracks of which a large garden could be seen filled with benches, and
at the farther end a stage on which a troupe of actors were rehearsing
the performance for the evening. A Turkish lady not far from us stood
peeping in as well, and laughed with great enjoyment at the scene,
while an old Turk, passing by, shook his head disapprovingly. Suddenly
with a loud shriek the lady fled down the street; other women in the
neighborhood echoed the shriek and turned their backs rapidly. What
could have happened? Turning around, we beheld a Turk about fifty years
old, well known throughout all Constantinople, who elected to go about
the streets clad with the same severe simplicity which the famous monk
Turi was so anxious to impose upon all good Mussulmen during the reign
of Muhammad IV.; that is, stark naked from head to foot. The wretched
creature advanced, leaping on the stones, shouting and breaking forth
into loud bursts of laughter, followed by a crowd of ragamuffins making
a noise like that of the infernal regions. “It is to be devoutly hoped
that he will be promptly arrested,” said I to the doorkeeper of the
theatre. “Not the smallest likelihood of anything of the sort,” replied
he; “he has been going about like that for months.” In the mean while I
could see people all the way down the street coming to the doors of the
shops, women getting out of the way, young girls covering their faces,
doors being shut, heads disappearing from the windows. And this thing
goes on every day, and no one so much as gives it a thought!
* * * * *
On issuing from the Grande Rue de Pera we find ourselves opposite
another large Mussulman cemetery shaded by groves of cypress trees and
enclosed between high walls. Had we not been informed later on of the
reason for those walls, we should certainly never have guessed it. They
had evidently been quite recently erected, to prevent, it would seem,
the woods consecrated to the repose of the dead from being converted
into a trysting-spot where the soldiers from the neighboring artillery
barracks were wont to meet their sweethearts. A little farther on we
came upon the barracks, a huge, solid, rectangular structure, built
by Shalil Pasha in the Moorish style of the Turkish Renaissance, its
great portal flanked by light columns and surmounted by the crescent
and golden star of Muhammad, and having balconies and small windows
ornamented with carving and arabesques. In front of the barracks
runs the Rue Dgiedessy, a continuation of the Grande Rue de Pera, on
the other side of which stretches an extensive parade-ground; beyond
that, again, are other suburbs. During the week this neighborhood
is buried in the most profound silence and solitude, but on Sunday
afternoons it is crowded with people and equipages, all the gay world
of Pera pouring out to scatter itself among the beer-gardens, cafés,
and pleasure-resorts which lie beyond the barracks. It was in one of
these cafés that we broke our fast--the café _Belle Vue_, a resort of
the flower of Pera society, and well deserving its name, since from
its immense gardens, extending like a terrace over the summit of the
hill, you have, spread out before you, the large Mussulman village of
Fundukli, the Bosphorus covered with ships, the coast of Asia dotted
over with gardens and villages, Skutari with her glistening white
mosques--a luxuriance of color, green foliage, blue sea, and sky all
bathed in light, which form a scene of intoxicating beauty. We arose
at last unwillingly, and both of us felt like niggards as we threw our
eight wretched sous on the counter, the bare price of a couple of cups
of coffee after having been treated to that celestial vision.