Rebia Gulnuz, the odalisque of the hundred silver carriages, ruled the imperial Divân for the first ten years of the latter half of the seventeenth century, and Shekerbuli, the “_little lump of sugar_,” kept the sanguinary Ibrahim travelling back and forth between Stambul and Adrianople like an automaton to suit her own ends. [Illustration: Gateway of the Imperial Palace at the Sweet Waters of Asia.] What opposing interests, what an intricate web of jealousy, suspicion, intrigue, and petty ambition, must have been drawn close about that omnipotent and voluptuous little city! Wandering up and down those paths and alley-ways, I seemed to hear all about me the murmur of female voices, now rising high and shrill, now dying away in the distance--expostulations, questionings, explanations, supplications--the entire secret chronicle of the Seraglio; and a varied and curious one it must have been, treating of such questions as--which of the _kadyns_ had been chosen by the Sultan to accompany him in the summer to his kiosk at the Sweet Waters; what dot the Pâdishah’s third daughter, who was to marry the grand admiral, would have; if it were really true that the herbs procured by the superintendent Raazgié from the magician Sciugaa for the third _kadyn_, childless these five years, had been the cause of her having a son; if it were settled that the favorite, Giamfeda, was to have the governorship of Caramania for the governor of Anatoli. From one kiosk to another the news flew that the first _kadyn_ had a child, and that the new grand vizier, in order to outshine his predecessor, had presented her with a cradle of solid silver set with emeralds; that the Sultan’s favorite was not the slave sent by the governor of Caramania at all, but the one presented by the Kiaya-harem: that the chief of the white eunuchs was about to die, and that in order to obtain the long-coveted position the young page Mehemet was to sacrifice his manhood: it was whispered about that the plan proposed by the grand vizier Sinau for a canal in Asia Minor was to be abandoned, so that the progress of the work on the new kiosk building for Baffo Sultan might not be kept back; that _kadyn_ Saharai, who was thirty-five years old, had been crying her eyes out for the past forty-eight hours for fear she was going to be put in the Old Seraglio; that the buffoon Ahmed had sent the Sultan off into such a hearty fit of laughter that he had made him an agha of Janissaries on the spur of the moment. And then there would be thousands of choice bits of gossip and news to exchange in connection with the approaching nuptials of Otman Pasha with Ummetulla Sultan, when a bronze dragon was to vomit fire in the At-Meidan; and about the validéh sultan’s sable robe, whose every button was a jewel valued at a hundred golden scudis; or the new carriage of _kadyn_ Kamarigé, “moon of beauty;” or the tribute from Wallachia; or the little blood-colored rose found on