Neither was I there to see whether he actually sent back to the new Sultan his present of a magnificent Arab charger, saying that he was a poor man and had no stable for such a steed. The crucial test of the Balkan War he had no opportunity to undergo. But less than any other personality discovered by the Turkish revolution does he need the favouring kindness of uncertainty. At the moment when if he chose he might have been dictator, he did not choose. And the decision, the promptness, the tact, the strategic ability with which he grasped the situation of the mutiny and threw an army into Chatalja before the blundering mutineers knew what he was about, made for him the one clear and positive record of that confused time. They say he suffered from an incurable disease, and captured cities for distraction. [Illustration: Mehmed V on the day of sword-girding, May 10 Photograph by Apollon, Constantinople] I had the honour of meeting Mahmoud Shefket Pasha a little later, in company with Mr. Booth; and I owed it to the latter’s bandaged head and to the interest which the general took in the wounded journalist that I also obtained the coveted leave to visit Yîldîz. Yîldîz had so long been a name of legend that one approached it with the vividest curiosity—even though the innermost enclosure, jutting out into the park from the crest of the hill on a gigantic retaining wall, at first remained impenetrable. When at last the gates of the Forbidden City itself were opened, it was strange to discover that the Sultan who stood for all that was conservative and Oriental, who spent as he pleased the gold of the empire, who might have created anew the lost splendours of the Seraglio, had chosen to surround himself with would-be European cottages, for the most part of wood, with a profusion of gables and jig-saw carpentry. The more ornate were those intended for the reception of ministers and ambassadors. The simplest and the largest was the long, low, L-shaped structure where Abd ül Hamid lived with his extensive family. His private apartments gave a singular picture of that singular man. The rooms were all jealously latticed, even behind the fortifications of Yîldîz, and one was scarcely to be distinguished in its use from another, so full were they all of desks, screens, couches, weapons, and pianos. In one of the least ambiguous, where white chairs stood about a long table, was shown the gilt Vienna _Récamier_ in which Abd ül Hamid received the notification of his dethronement. An orchestrion filled one end of the room, where also was a piano. No less than four of these instruments were in another room. Farther on were the empty safes where the old man hoarded his gold and his famous jewels, a cupboard of ugly tiles that was a mixture of Turkish _hamam_ and European bath, without the luxuries of either, and a perfectly appointed carpenter’s shop. It is an old tradition for the princes of the house of Osman to learn some trade,