From this court the Bâb-el-Selam,[G] Gate of Health, gives access to the second court. It is still standing intact, flanked by two massive towers, and can only be passed even now on presenting a firman or order from the Sultan. Formerly the great doors which shut it on either side enclosed a space between them which was used as a chamber of execution, where persons could be detained and secretly despatched. The cell of the executioner was just below, and communicated by secret passage-ways with the hall of the Divân. Persons of rank who had incurred the displeasure of the Divân would be detained there while awaiting their sentence, which not infrequently was first made known to them by being carried out. At other times a suspected governor or vizier, summoned to the Seraglio on some pretext or other, came, passed unsuspiciously beneath that sinister roof, entered the council hall, and, being received with benevolent smiles or such mitigated severity as laid his fears to rest, would pass tranquilly forth again, to suddenly feel a knife beneath his shoulders or a cord about his neck, and sink to the ground without seeing any one or being able so much as to make one effort at resistance. At the sound of his dying cry a hundred heads in the outer court would turn quickly, but in an instant every one would have resumed his occupation in perfect silence. Presently the head would be carried out to the Bâb-i-Humayûn, the body thrown to the ravens on the shore near St. Stephen’s, the news sent to the Sultan, and the whole matter be finished. [G] The name of this gate is the Orta Kapu, or Middle Gate.--TRANS. To the right and under the roof can be seen the small iron doorway of the chamber into which those victims were cast whose death-sentence had been recalled just in time, or others whose agony it was wished to prolong or who were to be sent into exile instead.