Difficult as it may be to single out the Armenian at sight, there is no
such trouble about the Greek, who differs so essentially in character,
bearing, appearance, everything, from all the other subjects of the
Empire that he can be told at once without even looking at his dress.
To appreciate this diversity, or rather contrast, one need only watch
a Turk and a Greek who happen to be seated beside one another on board
a steamboat or in a café. They may be about the same age and rank,
both dressed in the European fashion, and even resemble each other
somewhat in feature, and yet it is quite impossible to mistake them.
The Turk sits perfectly motionless; his face wears a look of quietude
and repose, void of all expression, like a fed animal; if by any chance
some shadow of a thought appears, it seems to be a reflection as
lifeless and inert as his body; he looks at no one, and is apparently
quite unconscious that any one is looking at him, expressing by his
entire bearing an utter indifference to his surroundings, a something
of the resigned melancholy of a slave and the cold pride of a despot;
hard, closed, completed, he seems incapable of altering any resolution
once taken, and it would drive any one to the verge of madness who
should undertake the task of persuading him to any course. In short, he
appears to be a being hewn out of a single block, with whom it would
only be possible to live either as master or servant, and no amount
of intercourse with whom would ever justify the taking of a liberty.
With the Greek it is altogether different. His mobile features express
every thought that passes through his mind, and betray a youthful,
almost childish ardor, while he tosses his head with the free action of
an uncurbed and restive horse. On finding himself observed he at once
strikes an attitude, and if no one looks at him he tries to attract
attention; he seems to be always wanting or imagining something,
and his whole person breathes of shrewdness and ambition. There is
something so attractive and sympathetic about him that you are inclined
to give him your hand even when you would hesitate about trusting him
with your purse. Seen side by side, one can readily understand how it
is that one of these men considers the other a proud, overbearing,
brutal savage, and is looked down upon in his turn as a light
creature, untrustworthy, mischievous, and the cause of endless trouble,
and how they mutually despise and hate one another from the bottom of
their hearts, finding it impossible to live together in peace. And so
with the women. It is with a distinct feeling of gratification and
pleasure that one first encounters amid the handsome, florid Turkish
and Armenian types, appealing more to the senses than the mind, the
pure and exquisite features of the Greek women, illuminated by those
deep serious eyes whose every glance recalls an ode, while their
exquisite shapes inspire an immediate desire to clasp them in one’s
arms--with the object of placing them on pedestals, however, rather
than in the harem. Among them can still be occasionally found one
or two who, wearing their hair after the ancient fashion--that is,
hanging over the shoulders in long wavy locks, with one thick coil
wound around the top of the head like a diadem--are so noble-looking,
so beautiful and classic, that they might well be taken for statues
fresh from the chisel of a Praxiteles or a Lysippus, or for youthful
immortals discovered after twenty centuries in some forgotten valley
of Laconia or unknown island of the Egean. But even among the Greeks
these examples of queenly beauty are exceedingly rare, and are found
only in the ranks of the old aristocracy of the Empire, in the silent
and melancholy quarter of Fanar, where the spirit of ancient Byzantium
has taken refuge. There one may occasionally see one of these
magnificent women leaning on the railing of a balcony or against the
grating of some lofty window, her eyes fixed upon the deserted street
in the attitude of an imprisoned queen; and when a crowd of lackeys
is not lounging idly before the door of one of these descendants of
the Palæologi and the Comneni, one may, watching her from some place
of observation, fancy that a rift in the clouds has revealed for an
instant the face of an Olympian goddess.