As by day Constantinople is the most brilliant, so by night it is the
gloomiest, city in Europe. Occasional street-lamps, placed at long
distances one from the other, hardly suffice to pierce the gloom of
the principal streets, while the others are as black as caves, and
not to be ventured into by one who carries no light in his hand.
Hence by nightfall the city is practically deserted: the only signs
of life are the night-watchmen, prowling dogs, the skulking figure of
some law-breaker, parties of young men coming out of a subterranean
tavern, and mysterious lights which appear and vanish again like _ignis
fatui_ down some narrow side-street or in a distant cemetery. This
is the hour in which to look at Stambul from the heights of Pera or
Galata. Each one of her innumerable little windows is illuminated,
and, with the lights from the shipping, reflections in the water and
the starry heavens, helps to light up four miles of horizon with a
great quivering sea of sparkling points of fire, in which port, city,
and sky melt imperceptibly one into another until they all seem to be
part of one starry firmament. When it is cloudy, and through a break
the moon appears, you see above the dark mass of the city, above the
inky blots which mark the woods and gardens, the glittering rows of
domes surmounting the imperial mosques, shining in the moonlight
like great marble tombs, and suggesting the idea of a necropolis of
giants. But most impressive of all is the view when there is neither
moon nor star nor any light at all. Then one immense black shadow
stretches from Seraglio Point to Eyûb, a great dark profile, the hills
looking like mountains and their many pointed summits assuming all
manner of fantastic shapes--forests and armies, ruined castles, rocky
fortresses--so that one’s imagination travels off into the region of
dreams and fairy tales. Gazing across at Stambul on some such night as
this from a lofty terrace in Pera, one’s brain plays all sorts of mad
pranks. In fancy you are carried into the great shadowy city; wander
through those myriad harems, illuminated by soft, subdued lights:
behold the triumphant beauty of the favorite, the dull despair of the
neglected wife; watch the eunuch who hangs trembling and impotent
outside the door; follow a pair of lovers as they thread some steep
winding byway; wander through the deserted galleries of the Grand
Bazâr; traverse the great silent cemeteries; lose yourself amid the
interminable rows of columns in the subterranean cisterns; imagine
that you have been shut up in the gigantic mosque of Suleiman, and
make its shadowy corridors echo again with lamentations and shrieks of
terror, tearing your hair and invoking the mercy of the Almighty; and
then suddenly exclaim, “What utter nonsense! I am here on my friend
Santoro’s terrace, and in the room below there not only awaits me a
supper for a sybarite, but a gathering of the most amusing wits in Pera
to help me eat it.”