The opening of parliament itself, with all the circumstance that arms and majesty could lend it, marked a term for those effervescent days. The Young Turks made it a particular point that the ceremony of December 17 should be held, not in the throne-room of Dolma Ba’hcheh, as the Sultan wished, but in the place where the parliament of 1876 had been dissolved. This Palladian structure behind St. Sophia, originally built for the university and remodelled after the dissolution of the first parliament for the uses of the Ministry of Justice, contained no hall of suitable size. There was not even room in the chamber of deputies for the two hundred odd members—if they all had arrived in time for the opening. The invitations were consequently restricted to the smallest possible number: to the greater dignitaries of state, to the heads of foreign missions and their first dragomans—leaving out disappointed secretaries and wives—and to a few representatives of the press. There was perhaps more heartburning among these spoilt children of the century than among any other section of the public. Some of them had travelled great distances to attend this historic inauguration, only to be shut out of it. The press of the country naturally had the first claim. The thorny question of allotting tickets among the press of other countries was settled by giving each head of a foreign mission two tickets to dispose of as he chose. Those fortunate enough to get them were inclined to grumble at the quarters assigned them—a species of low, dark theatre box above that of the ambassadors, from which only the ten or fifteen first to arrive could see the floor. But all could see the imperial box, directly opposite. And I, for one, being no journalist, counted myself lucky to be there at all.