The scattering of the Palace camarilla was one of the most picturesque of the many picturesque events of the day. The true story of those precious rascals is a piece of the Middle Ages—or of the flourishing days of New York. Some of them were ministers, some chamberlains and secretaries, one of them no more than an Arab astrologer, who gained immense credit during the Greek war of 1897 by holding over telegrams and prophesying their contents to the Sultan. Without this star-chamber nothing was done in the empire. The council of ministers sat at the Sublime Porte, but the true cabinet sat secretly in Yîldîz Palace. If the Grand Vizier did not happen to belong to it, so much the worse for him. He must be prepared to see his orders countermanded and his promises rendered void. It was always possible to obtain such a result. Those who knew the ropes knew the department of each member of the kitchen cabinet, and his price. For that matter they were willing to be accommodating. They took from each according to his means. And they were not too proud to be known as the _kehayas_ of the industrial guilds. One accepted two hundred pounds a month from the butchers of Constantinople, in return for leniency in the matter of inspection. Another received a handsome allowance from the corporation of bakers, who were also obliged to subsidise the police in order to prevent the seizure of undersized loaves from being too serious. A third drew a dollar for every bag of flour that came into the city. I even heard of a pasha who allowed his kitchens to be supplied with butter by a Kürdish chief. There was no possible source of revenue which these men had not tapped—public funds, private enterprises, the distribution of places, the granting of concessions. It mattered nothing to them that the country was going to ruin, the development of its incalculable resources stopped, so long as they built great palaces on the Bosphorus and fared sumptuously every day.