Both _Baïrams_ are an occasion for paying visits. Everybody calls on everybody else, so that it is a wonder if anybody is found at home. In the case of the Sultan, however, there is no uncertainty. On the first morning of each _Baïram_ he holds a great levee, which is attended by every one of a certain rank. The ceremony has taken place every year since the time of Baïezid the Thunderbolt, who held his court in Broussa in the fourteenth century. Foreigners take no part in this _mouayedeh_ (exchange of feast-day wishes), or _baise-main_, as they prefer to call it, but the diplomatic corps and other notables of the European colony are invited to watch it from the gallery of the throne-room. Or sometimes a humbler individual may be introduced in the suite of his embassy, as was the fortune of the present scribe on the occasion of the first _baise-main_ of Sultan Mehmed V. It rather reminded me of youthful operatic days to march through the endless corridors and to climb the immeasurable stairs of Dolma Ba’hcheh Palace and to look down at last from the high east gallery of the throne-room. The top galleries of my youthful days, however, did not contain gilt chairs upholstered in blue and white satin or buffets set out with gold plate and presided over by lackeys in red and gold. The lackeys, though, did look a little like the stage. While a Turk makes a magnificent soldier or horseman, he never attains, impassive though he be, the sublime superiority of a European footman. Is it that his livery is unnatural, or is the human in him too strong to be quite purged away? The operatic impression was further carried out by a crystal chandelier, swinging from the dome exactly where it would cut off somebody’s view, and by the rococo arches surrounding the central square of the throne-room. This huge space was empty save for a crystal candelabrum standing at each corner and a covered throne in the middle of the west side. The throne was a small red-and-gold sofa, as we presently saw when an old gentleman removed the cover. He also looked carefully under the throne, as might a queen apprehensive of burglars or mice; but I suppose it was to make sure no bomb was there.