On returning to Adrianople, this thirst of glory and of conquest devoured him as it had devoured his ancient models. He coveted Constantinople with a consuming avidity that often woke him with a bound from his sleep. The phantom of Constantinople beset by day and night the young conqueror. He tried to conceal his impatience for fear of exciting before the hour the emotions of the Christian West. He could not restrain it. He sent for his grand vizier, Khalil, at night. Alarmed, the vizier embraced as in a last farewell his wife and daughter, made his death prayer and appeared before the Sultan. He prostrated himself as if to redeem his life by a ransom and presented to Mohammed II. the golden cup. "Do not fear, my lala, (familiar term as father), do not fear, it is not thy gold nor thy life I want: what I want that thou shouldest give me is Constantinople." Then showing him his eyes, fatigued with sleeplessness, and his couch disordered, he added, "I cannot sleep unless you promise me what I dream of night and day." "You must have it, my master," responded Khalil. "Who could refuse you that which belonged to you by the grandeur of your views, and by the omnipotence of your arms. I have divined this long time your desires beneath your silence; I have all prepared to satisfy on an appointed day, your religion, your patriotism, your glory. Constantinople or my head is at your feet." The next day the Sultan set out with Khalil for Gallipoli and then proceeded to the village situated on the European shore of the Bosphorus at the point which formerly gave passage to the Persians of Darius. There he ordered Khalil to construct forthwith a fortress in front of the Asiatic fortress constructed twenty years before by his ancestor, Bajazet-Ilderim. This promontory on the Bosphorus, at a point where the channel is not wider than a river and only a few miles distant from Constantinople, was admirably chosen to extend the limits of the conquest, to wall in the city, and to smother it by terror even before being swept by the fury of their fiery onslaught. With fantastic superstition the Sultan or his architect gave the different compartments the form of the letters, which in Arabic compose both his name and the name of the false prophet, as if to stamp with the very walls of a fortress on the soil of Europe, the seal of Islamism, and the empire on the last promontory that still sheltered the capital of the Christians. The Greek Emperor alarmed at this menace almost under the very walls of his capital sent Ambassadors who timidly demanded explanations from the Sultan.