The constitution took them more completely than any by surprise. Accustomed to the variable climate of the court, they were prepared to fall from favour, to be exiled, or even to lose their lives. But they were not prepared for this. Not many of them were quick enough to grasp the situation. The first to do so was Selim Pasha Melhameh, a Syrian. As Minister of Agriculture, Mines, and Forests he was in the way of getting good things from people who wanted concessions. His already comfortable fortune was agreeably increased during his last winter in office by a scarcity of fuel that caused great misery among the poor of the capital. An imperial order was issued to bring down wood from the forests of the interior and sell it at a fixed price. The wood was brought down and the price fixed—by Selim Pasha. He is said to have been absent from the all-night council at which the constitution was granted. At first he would not believe the news, but when proof was given him he called for his wife and told her to pack at once. She did so with such expedition that three days later, borrowing the Italian embassy launch on the pretext of seeing off their son, who was going to his post in the Turkish embassy at Rome, they sailed on the steamer with him. The next to leave was the notorious Izzet Pasha, the Sultan’s first chamberlain. There was a mediæval character for you—that perfect gentleman and connoisseur, descended from robber Bedouins beyond Damascus, who became the greatest robber in the empire. He robbed so shamelessly, he robbed so amusingly, that an irresponsible impressionist cannot help investing him with a romantic interest. When the coup d’état took place, his Syrian wit told him that a country he had plundered for years was no longer the country for him. He accordingly bought for eight thousand pounds, in the name of a French lady, a small Greek passenger steamer worth some fifteen hundred, and prepared to decamp. When the captain learned the identity of his new owner he refused to serve him. Rather than excite suspicion by drumming up another crew, Izzet proceeded to buy another steamer, this time under the British flag. Having been bitten once, he stipulated that the owners should be paid in three instalments—two thousand pounds down, fifteen hundred when he should get away, by cash deposited with a third party, and fifteen hundred more from his first port of call. When the owners presented their cheque for two thousand pounds at Izzet Pasha’s bank they were informed that the latter had withdrawn his account. Izzet Pasha expressed infinite regret at the mistake, and courteously wrote out a second cheque on a bank from which he had withdrawn his account. Before the owners had time to present that Izzet Pasha, boarding his steamer from the German embassy launch and a series of tugs, had got away with three of his four wives, in spite of the crowd that shook their fists after him from Galata quay. At the Dardanelles he was stopped.