Every Friday the Sultan says his prayers in some one of the mosques of
Constantinople.
[Illustration: Palace of Dolma Baghcheh.]
We saw him one day on his way to the mosque of Abdul-Mejid, which
stands on the European shore of the Bosphorus not far from the
imperial palace of Dolmabâghcheh. To reach this palace from Galata
you pass through the populous district of Top-Khâneh, between a
great gun-foundry and an immense arsenal, and, traversing the entire
Mussulman quarter of Fundukli, which occupies the site of the ancient
Aianteion, come out upon a spacious open square on the water’s edge,
beyond which and on the shore of the Bosphorus rises the famous
residence of the sultans.
It is the largest marble building reflected in the waters of the strait
from Seraglio hill to the mouth of the Black Sea, and can only be
embraced in a single view by taking a käik and passing along its front.
The façade, nearly a half (Italian) mile in length, looks toward Asia,
and can be seen at a great distance gleaming between the water’s blue
and deep green summits of the hills behind it. Properly speaking,
it can hardly be called a palace, since it is not the result of any
one architectural plan. The various parts are detached and present
an extraordinary mixture of styles--Arabic, Greek, Asiatic, Gothic,
Turkish, Romanesque, and Renaissance--combining the stateliness of
the royal European palaces with the almost effeminate grace and charm
of those of Granada and Seville. It might be called, instead of an
imperial palace, an imperial city, like that of the emperor of China,
and, more from the peculiarity of its arrangements than its great size,
looks as though instead of a single monarch, a dozen kings, friends
or brothers, might occupy it, dividing their time between amusement
and complete idleness. Seen from the Bosphorus, there are a series of
façades, looking like a row of theatres and temples, covered with an
indescribable mass of ornamentation, apparently, as a Turkish poet has
said, thrown broadcast by a madman’s hand, and which, like the famous
Indian pagoda, weary the eye out almost at the first glance. They seem
to be stone memorials of the mad caprices, loves, and intrigues of the
dissolute princes who have inhabited them. Rows of Doric and Ionic
pillars, light as the pole of a lance; windows framed in festooned
cornices and twisted columns; arches carved with flowers and foliage,
surmounting doors covered with fretwork; charming little balconies with
open-work sculpture; trophies, roses, vines, and garlands which knot
and intertwine with one another; delicate fancies in marble budding
forth in the entablatures, running along the balconies, surrounding
the windows; a network of arabesques extending from door to roof; a
bloom and pomp and delicacy of execution and richness of design which
lends to each one of the smaller palaces forming a part of the whole
the character of some masterpiece of the workman’s chisel; and so
impossible does it seem that the design could ever have emanated from
the brain of a placid Armenian architect that one is rather tempted to
ascribe its origin to a dream of some enamored sultan sleeping with his
head upon the breast of an ambitious lady-love. Before it stretches
a line of lofty marble pilasters connected by a gilded screenwork of
boughs and flowers intertwined with such marvellous delicacy that at
a little distance it has all the appearance of a lace curtain which
at any moment may be carried away by a puff of wind. Long flights
of marble stairs lead from the entrances to the water’s edge, and
disappear beneath the waves. Everything is white, fresh, and sparkling,
as though completed but yesterday. No doubt the eye of an artist would
detect a thousand minor errors in composition and taste; but the effect
as a whole of that vast and magnificent pile of buildings, that array
of palaces, white as the driven snow, set like so many jewels and
crowned with verdure, reflected in the shining waters below, is one of
power, of mystery, of luxurious pomp, and voluptuous pleasure which
almost supersedes that of the old Seraglio itself. Those who have
had the good fortune to see it affirm that the interior fully comes
up to the exterior of the building. Long suites of apartments, whose
walls are covered with brilliant and fantastic frescoes, open into
one another by doors of cedar and cassia-wood; corridors flooded with
soft radiance lead to other rooms lighted from crimson crystal domes,
and baths which seem to have been fashioned from a single block of
Paros marble; lofty balconies overhang mysterious gardens, and groves
of cypress and rose trees, from which, through long perspectives of
Moorish porticoes, the blue waters of the sea are seen sparkling in the
sunlight beyond; and windows, terraces, balconies, kiosks, everything,
brilliant with flowers, and everywhere cascades of water shooting
into the air to fall back in filmy showers upon green turf and marble
pavement; while in all directions there open up enchanting views of
the Bosphorus, the cool breezes from whose surface impart a delicious
freshness to every corner of the great building.
On the side facing toward Fundukli there is an imposing entrance,
covered with a mass of ornamentation, out of which the Sultan was
expected to appear and cross the square. Not another monarch upon
earth has such beautiful surroundings in which to issue in state from
his palace and show himself to his subjects. Standing at the foot of
the hill,--on one side is the entrance to the palace, looking like a
royal triumphal arch; on the other the beautiful mosque of Abdul-Mejid,
flanked by two graceful minarets; opposite is the Bosphorus; and
beyond rise the green hills of Asia dotted over with kiosks, palaces,
mosques, and villages of every variety of form and color, like some
great scattered city decked out for a fête; farther on is seen the
smiling beauty of Skutari, with her funereal crown of cypress trees;
and between the two banks a never-ending procession of sailing vessels;
men-of-war with flags flying; crowded steamboats, looking as though
their decks were heaped with flowers; Asiatic ships of strange,
obsolete design; launches from the Seraglio; princely barges; flocks of
birds skimming over the surface of the water--a scene at once so full
of peace and regal beauty that the stranger whose eye wanders over it
as he awaits the coming of the imperial cortége finds himself picturing
the fortunate possessor of all these things as endowed with angelic
beauty and the smiling serenity of an infant.
A half hour before the appointed time two companies of soldiers wearing
the uniform of zouaves stationed themselves in the square to keep the
way cleared for the Sultan’s passage, and before long the spectators
began to arrive in crowds. It is always amusing to take note of the
queerness and variety of the people who assemble on such occasions.
Here and there elegant private carriages were drawn up to one side,
filled with Turkish great ladies, the gigantic form of a mounted eunuch
standing guard at each door, immovable as pieces of marble; there were
hired open turnouts containing English ladies, groups of tourists with
opera-glasses hanging at their sides, among whom on this occasion I
recognized the languishing face of the irresistible youth from the
Hôtel de Byzance, come, no doubt, cruel charmer! to crush with one
triumphant glance his powerful but unhappy rival. A few long-haired
individuals wandering about the outskirts of the crowd with portfolios
under their arms I took to be artists animated by a faint hope of
being able to make a hasty sketch of the imperial features. Near the
band-stand was a strikingly beautiful French woman, whose conspicuous
dress and free, hardened bearing suggested a cosmopolitan adventuress
come hither to attract the eye of the Sultan himself, especially
as I seemed to read in her glance the “fearful joy of a mighty
enterprise.” There was also a sprinkling of those old Turks, fanatical
and suspicious subjects of the empire, who never fail to be present
whenever their Padishah appears in public, in order that they may be
assured by the evidence of their own senses that he is alive and well
for the glory and prosperity of the universe. It is, in fact, precisely
that his people may have this proof of his continued existence that
the Sultan thus shows himself every Friday, since it might easily
happen again, as it has before, that his death, brought about either
by violence or from natural causes, would through some intrigue of
the court be concealed from the populace. Then there were beggars,
and Mussulman dandies, and eunuchs out of employment, and dervishes,
among the last-named of whom I noticed one tall, old, lean specimen
who stood motionless gazing with fierce eyes and a most sinister
expression at the door of the palace, exactly as though he only awaited
the Sultan’s appearance to plant himself in his path and fling in his
teeth the words addressed by the dervish of the _Orientals_ to Pasha
Ali of Tepeleni: “Accursed one! you are no better than a dog.” But
such examples of inspired candor have gone out of fashion since the
famous sabre-thrust of Mahmûd. Then there were numbers of Turkish
women standing apart and looking like groups of masks, and the usual
gathering like a stage chorus which makes up a Constantinople crowd.
All the heads were thrown out in relief against the blue background of
the Bosphorus, and every mouth at that moment was probably whispering
the same thing. It was just then that rumors were beginning to be
circulated about the extravagant doings of Abdul-Aziz. For some
little time stories had been told of his insatiable greed for money.
People would say to one another, “Mahmûd had a passion for blood;
Abdul-Mejid for women; Abdul-Aziz has for gold.” All those hopes built
upon him when as prince imperial he felled an ox at a single blow,
exclaiming, “Thus will I destroy ignorance,” had died out some time
before. The tastes he had evinced in the early years of his reign for
a simple and severe mode of life, caring, as was said, for only one
woman, and cutting down with an unsparing hand the enormous expenses
of the Seraglio, were now but a distant memory. Probably it had been
many years as well since he had finally abandoned those studies in
legislation and military tactics and European literature about which he
had made as much noise as though the entire regeneration of the empire
was to be effected through them; now he thought only of himself, and
hardly a day passed that some new anecdote was not set in circulation
about his bursts of wrath against the minister of finance, who either
would not or could not give him as much money as he demanded. At the
least opposition he would hurl the first object on which he could lay
his hands at his unfortunate Excellency, repeating from beginning to
end and at the top of his voice the ancient formula of the imperial
oath: “By God, the Creator of heaven and earth, by the prophet
Mohammed, by the seven variations of the Koran, by the hundred and
twenty-four thousand prophets of God, by the soul of my grandfather
and by the soul of my father, by my sons and by my sword! give me money
or I will have your head stuck on the point of the highest minaret in
Stambul.” And by one means or another he always succeeded in getting
what he wanted, sometimes gloating over the money thus acquired like
a common miser over his hoard, at others scattering it to the winds
in the indulgence of all manner of puerile fancies. To-day he would
take a sudden interest in lions, to-morrow in tigers, and agents would
be despatched forthwith to India and Africa to purchase them for him;
then for a whole month five hundred parrots stationed in the imperial
gardens made them resound with one single word; then he was seized with
a mania for collecting carriages, and for pianos, which he insisted
upon having played supported upon the backs of four slaves; then he
took to cock-fighting--would witness the combats with enthusiastic
interest, and himself fasten a medal around the neck of the victor,
driving the vanquished into exile beyond the Bosphorus; then he had a
passion for play, then for kiosks, then for pictures: it was as though
the court had gone back to the days of the first Ibrahim.
But with it all the unfortunate prince was unable to find peace; he
was moody and taciturn, and only succeeded in alternating between
utter weariness of soul and the most wretched state of apprehension.
As though with an uneasy foreboding of the tragic fate awaiting him,
he would sometimes be possessed with the idea that he was going to
be poisoned, and for a while, mistrusting every one about him, would
refuse to eat anything but hard-boiled eggs. Then, again, he would be
haunted by such a dread of fire that he would have everything in his
apartments, made of wood, removed, to the very frames of the mirrors;
it was even said that at these times he would read at night by the
light of a candle placed in a basin of water. And yet, notwithstanding
all these follies, which were supposed to have their origin in a cause
of which there is no necessity to speak here, he preserved to the full
the original strength of his indomitable will, and knew how to make
himself both obeyed and feared by the most independent spirits around
him. The only person who exerted any influence over him at all was his
mother, a vain, foolish woman, who in the early years of his reign used
to have the streets through which he must pass on his way to the mosque
spread with brocaded carpets, which she would give away the following
day to the slaves who were sent to take them up.
In the midst of all the turmoil of his restless life Abdul-Aziz found
time as well for the most trivial whims, such as the having a door
painted after a particular design, combinations of certain fruits and
flowers, and, after giving the most minute directions, would spend
hours watching every stroke of the artist’s brush, as though that were
the main business of life.
All these eccentricities, exaggerated--who knows to what extent?--by
the thousand tongues of the Seraglio, were in every one’s mouth; and
possibly from that time on the threads of the conspiracy which two
years later was to hurl him from the throne were woven more and more
closely about the unhappy prince. According to the Mussulmans, his
fall had already been determined upon and judgment passed upon him
and upon his reign--a judgment which does not differ in any essential
point from that applicable to any other one of the later sultans.
Imperial princes, attracted toward a European civilization by a
liberal but superficial education, their youthful imaginations all on
fire with dreams of reform and glory, before mounting the throne they
indulge in visions of the great changes they are to bring about, and
form resolutions, no doubt perfectly sincere at the time, to dedicate
their entire lives to that end, leading an existence of struggle and
self-denial. Then they come to the throne, and after some years of
ineffectual resistance, confronted by thousands of obstacles, hemmed
in by customs and traditions, balked and opposed by men and things,
appalled at the immensity of the undertaking, of which they had formed
no true idea, they become discouraged, lapse into indolence, grow
suspicious, and finally turn to pleasure-seeking and self-indulgence
for that distraction which seems to be denied them in the successful
carrying out of their designs, and, leading an utterly sensual life,
lose little by little even the memory of their early ambitions, as well
as the consciousness of their own deterioration. Thus it happens that
every new reign is ushered in with the most hopeful prognostications,
and not without reason; only these are as invariably succeeded by
disappointment.
Abdul-Aziz did not keep us waiting: at the hour fixed there was a
flourish of trumpets, the band struck up a warlike march, the soldiers
presented arms, a company of lancers made their appearance suddenly in
the gateway, and after them the Sultan on horseback, advancing slowly
and followed by the members of his court. He passed so close in front
of me that I had an excellent opportunity of examining his features
attentively, and of finding how singularly incorrect was the picture
I had formed of him in my mind. The “king of kings,” the prodigal,
violent, capricious, imperious Sultan, then about forty-four years old,
had the air of an extremely good-natured Turk who had found himself
a sultan without quite knowing why. He was stout and robust, with
good features, large calm eyes, and a short, close-cut beard, already
somewhat grizzled: his countenance was open and placid, his bearing
easy, almost careless, and in his calm, indifferent expression no
trace of consciousness of the thousand eyes fixed upon him could be
discovered. He rode a handsome gray horse with gold-mounted trappings,
led by the bridle by two gorgeous grooms. The long distance at which
the retinue followed would have pointed him out as the Sultan if
nothing else had. He was very plainly dressed, wearing a simple fez,
long dark coat buttoned close up under the chin, light trousers,
and leather shoes. Advancing very slowly, he looked around on the
spectators with an expression of mingled benevolence and weariness, as
though saying, “Ah, if you did but know how sick of it all I am!” The
Mussulmans all bowed profoundly, and many Europeans raised their hats,
but he took no notice of any one’s salutation. Passing in front of us,
he gave a glance at a tall officer who saluted with his sword, another
at the Bosphorus, and then a much longer look at two young English
ladies who were watching him from a carriage, and who turned as red as
cherries. I noticed that his hand was white and well formed: it was, by
the way, the right hand, the same with which two years after he opened
the vein in the bath. After him followed a crowd of pashas, courtiers,
and prominent officials on horseback, for the most part sturdy,
black-bearded men, simply dressed, and as silent, grave, and taciturn
as though they were part of a funeral cortége: then came a group of
grooms leading splendid-looking horses; then more officers, these on
foot, their breasts covered with gold braid: when these last had
passed the soldiers lowered their muskets, the crowd began to scatter
over the square, and I found myself standing gazing at the summit of
Mt. Bulgûrlû, revolving in my mind the extraordinary situation in which
a sultan of Stambul must find himself now-a-days.
He is, said I, a Mohammedan monarch, and his royal palace stands in
the shadow of a Christian city, Pera, which towers above his head.
He is an absolute sovereign, holding sway over one of the largest
empires in the world, and yet here in his capital and not far away
there live in those great palaces which overlook his Seraglio four or
five ceremonious foreigners who lord it over him in his own house, and
who in their intercourse with him conceal under the most respectful
language a constant menace, which he acknowledges and fears. He has
power over the life and property of millions of his subjects, and the
means of gratifying every whim, no matter how extravagant, and yet
could not, if he wanted to, alter the fashion of his own headgear.
Surrounded by an army of courtiers and body-guards, who, if required,
would kneel down and kiss his footprints, he stands in constant fear
of his life and that of his sons. Absolute master of a thousand among
the most beautiful women on earth, he alone among all Mussulmans in
his dominions cannot bestow his hand in marriage upon a free woman,
can only have sons of slaves, and is himself termed “the son of a
slave” by the same people who call him “the shadow of God.” The sound
of his name is feared and reverenced from the farthermost confines of
Tartary to the uttermost bounds of Maghreb, and in his own capital
there is an ever-increasing number of persons over whom he can claim no
shadow of control, and who laugh at him, his power, and his religion.
Over the entire surface of his immense domain, among the most wretched
tribes of the most distant provinces, in the most isolated mosques and
monasteries of the wildest regions, fervent prayers are constantly
ascending for his safety, health, and honor, and yet he cannot make a
journey anywhere in his empire that he does not find himself surrounded
by enemies who execrate his name and call down the vengeance of God
upon his head. In the eyes of that part of the world which lies outside
his palace-gates he is one of the most august and imposing monarchs
upon earth; to those who wait at his elbow he seems the weakest, most
pusillanimous, and wretched being that ever wore a crown. A resistless
current of ideas, beliefs, and forces, all directly opposed to the
traditions and spirit upon which his power rests, sweeps over him,
transforming before his very eyes, underneath his feet, all about him,
customs, habits, laws, the very men and objects themselves, without
his assistance or consent. And there he is between Europe and Asia,
in his huge palace washed by the sea-waves as though it were a ship
ready to set sail, in the midst of an inextricable confusion of ideas
and things, surrounded by fabulous luxury and misery unspeakable,
_neither two nor one_--no longer a real Mussulman, nor yet a complete
European; reigning over a people changed, though only in part,
barbarians at heart, with a whitewash of civilization; two-faced like
Janus; worshipped like a god, watched like a slave; adored, deceived,
beguiled, while every day that passes over his head extinguishes a
ray of the halo that surrounds him and removes another stone from
the pedestal upon which he stands. It seems to me, were I in his
place, weary of such a condition of things, satiated with pleasure,
disgusted with adulation, and outdone with the constant surveillance
and suspicion to which I was subjected, I would lose all patience
with a sovereignty so onerous and unstable, a rule over conditions so
hopelessly at war with themselves, and some time at night, when the
entire Seraglio was buried in slumber, would jump in the Bosphorus like
a fugitive galley-slave, and, swimming off to Galata, pass the hours
till dawn in some mariners’ tavern, with a glass of beer and a clay
pipe, shouting the Marseillaise in chorus.
[Illustration: Palace of the Sultan on the Bosphorus.]
A half hour later the Sultan returned, driven rapidly by, this time in
a closed carriage, followed by a number of officers on foot; and the
show was over. I think, on the whole, that what impressed me most
vividly was the sight of those officers, attired in full dress, running
and skipping after the imperial equipage like so many lackeys: I have
never witnessed a similar prostitution of the military uniform.
This spectacle of the state appearance of the Sultan is, as may be
seen, a poor affair enough, very different from what it once was.
Formerly the sultans only showed themselves in public surrounded by
great pomp and display, preceded and followed by a gorgeous retinue of
horsemen, slaves, guards of the gardens, chamberlains, and eunuchs,
which when seen from a distance resembled, to use the simile of the
enthusiastic chroniclers of the day, “a vast bed of tulips.” In these
days the sultans seem to rather avoid all such display, as though it
would be a piece of theatrical ostentation, representing an order
of things which no longer exists. I often asked myself what one of
those early monarchs would say if, rising for a moment from his
sepulchre in Brusa or türbeh in Stambul, he should behold one of his
descendants of the nineteenth century pass by clad in a long black
coat, without turban, sword, or jewels, and making his way through a
crowd of insolent foreigners: probably he would grow red in the face
with rage and shame, and, to show his utter disdain, would treat him
as Suleiman I. did Hassan--seize him by his beard and cut it off with
his cimeter, than which no more poignant insult can be offered to an
Osman. And, indeed, between the sultans of to-day and those whose names
resounded like claps of thunder throughout Europe from the twelfth
to the sixteenth century there is as much difference as between the
Ottoman empire of our times and that of the early centuries. To their
lot fell the youth, beauty, and vigor of the race; and they were not
only the living representatives of their people, glorious examples,
precious pearls in the sword of Islamism, but they constituted a
distinct force in themselves. The personal qualities of these powerful
rulers formed one of the most potent factors in the marvellous growth
of the Ottoman power during that period of its youth which covered
the hundred and twenty-three years from Osman to Muhammad II. Truly,
that was a succession of mighty princes, and, with a single exception,
not only powerful, but, if you take into consideration the times in
which they lived and conditions of their race, austere and wise as
well, and deeply beloved by their people--frequently ferocious, but
rarely unjust, and often kind and generous to their enemies. All of
these, too, as princes of such a race should be, were handsome and
imposing in appearance, veritable lions, as their mothers termed them,
at whose roar the whole earth trembled. The Abdul-Mejids, Abdul-Azizs,
and Murads are but pale shadows of padishahs in comparison with those
formidable youths, sons of fathers and mothers of eighteen and fifteen
respectively, offspring of the flower of Tartar blood and bloom of
Greek, Caucasian, and Persian beauty. At fourteen they commanded
armies, governed provinces, and were presented by their mothers with
slaves as beautiful and ardent as themselves. Sons were born to them at
sixteen as well as at seventy, and they retained their youthful vigor
of mind and body to old age. Their spirit, said the poets, was of iron,
their bodies were of steel. Certain features which they all possessed
in common were lost later on by their degenerate descendants--high
foreheads, with arched eyebrows meeting like those of the Persians;
the blue eyes of the sons of the Steppes; a curved nose above crimson
lips, “like the beak of a parrot over a cherry;” and very thick black
beards, which exhausted the fertility of the Seraglio poets to find
meet comparisons for. They had the piercing glance of the eagle of
Mt. Taurus and the endurance of the king of the desert; bull necks,
enormously wide shoulders, expanding chests, “capable of containing all
the warlike ardor of their people;” very long arms, huge muscles, short
bowed legs, under whose grip the most powerful Turkomanian chargers
would neigh with pain; and great shaggy hands, which tossed the
bronze maces and mighty bows of the soldiery about as though they had
been reeds. And their surnames fitted them well--wrestler, champion,
thunderbolt, bone-grinder, blood-shedder. After Allah, war occupied
the chief place in their thoughts, and death the least. Although they
did not possess the genius of great commanders, they were endowed with
that power of prompt and quick action which almost takes its place,
and a ferocious obstinacy which not infrequently accomplishes the same
results. They swept like winged furies across the field of battle,
the heron-quills fastened in their white turbans and the ample folds
of their purple and gold-embroidered caftans showing from afar, as
with savage cries they drove forward the decimated ranks of sciari
whose ox-like nerves had at last given way under the demoralizing
fire of Servian and German guns. They swam their horses across rivers
whose waters were reddened with blood from their dripping cimeters;
they would seize cowardly or panicstricken pashas by their throats,
dragging them from the saddle in their headlong flight; leap from
their horses in a time of rout and plunge their jewelled daggers up to
the hilt in the backs of the flying soldiers; and, mortally wounded,
would conceal the hurt and mount upon some eminence on the battlefield
that their janissaries might behold the countenance of their lord,
pallid with death, but threatening and imperious to the last, until,
finally sinking exhausted to the earth, they would roar with rage,
maybe, but never with pain. What must the sensations have been of one
of those gentle Persian or Circassian slaves, hardly more than a
child, when on the evening of a day of battle she beheld for the first
time, in the door of her purple tent, under the subdued lamplight,
the terrific apparition of one of those all-powerful sultans, drunk
with victory and blood. But he could be tender and winning as well,
and, gently taking the trembling little fingers in his mighty hands,
still cramped from wielding the cimeter, search his imagination for
pretty figures of speech to reassure his frightened slave, comparing
her beauty to the flowers in his gardens, the jewels in his dagger,
the most gorgeous birds in the forests, the most exquisite tints of a
sunrise in Anatolia or Mesopotamia, until at last, taking courage, she
would reply in the same impassioned and fanciful language: “Crown of my
head! glory of my life! my beloved and mighty lord! may thy countenance
ever shine with splendor on the two worlds of Africa and Europe! may
victory follow wherever thy horse shall bear thee! may thy shadow
extend over the whole earth! Would I were a rose to exhale sweetness
in the folds of thy turban! a butterfly beating its wings against thy
forehead!” And then, as her all-powerful lover reposed his mighty head
upon her breast, she would recount childish tales of emerald palaces
and mountains of gold, while all around the wild and savage soldiers
of the army lay extended fast asleep upon the dark, bloodstained
earth. All weakness, however, was left within the tent, from which
these sultans came forth more hardy and imperious than ever. They
were tender in the harem, ferocious on the battlefield, humble in the
mosque, and haughty on the throne. Their language was full of glowing
hyperboles and appalling threats; any judgment once pronounced by them
was irrevocable; the war was declared, the subject elevated to the
pinnacle of greatness, the head of the victim rolled at the foot of
the throne, or a tempest of fire and sword drove furiously across the
face of a rebel province. Thus sweeping from Persia to the Danube, from
Asia to Macedonia, in a continual succession of wars and triumphs,
with intervals devoted to the pursuit of love and in hunting, to the
flower of their youth there succeeded a maturity even more vigorous and
ardent, followed by an old age of which their horses’ flanks, their
sword-blades, or the hearts of their favorites could not have been
conscious. And not in old age alone, but sometimes in the very flower
and vigor of their youth, they would become overpowered with a sense
of their position, dismayed in the very moment of victory and triumph
by the tremendous responsibility resting upon them, and, seized with
a sort of terror at the magnitude and loneliness of their own exalted
state, would turn to God with all the force of their natures, passing
days and nights in composing religious poetry in dim recesses of the
palace-gardens, betaking themselves to the seashore to meditate by the
hour upon the Koran, joining the frantic dances of the dervishes, or
reducing themselves with fasting and sackcloth in the company of some
devout old hermit. In death as in life they furnished their people
with examples either of fortitude or of majesty--whether dying with
the serenity of a saint, like the founder of the dynasty; or laden
with years and glory and melancholy, like Orkhan; or by the hand of a
traitor, like Murad I.; or in the misery of exile, like Bayezid; or
calmly conversing with a circle of poets and scholars, like the first
Muhammad; or from the mortification of defeat, like the second Murad.
And one may safely assert that there is nothing upon the blood-red
horizon of Ottoman history which can compare with the threatening
phantoms of these formidable rulers.