And yet even this sacred precinct was not respected by the mad billows of military revolt. Indeed, it may be said that this particular corner of the great courtyard, situated between the hall of the Divân and the Bâb-i-Sâdet, is the precise spot in which the blind fury of rebellion has committed some of its most daring acts of insubordination. The vicar of God sometimes beheld that gleaming sword with which he ruled the world turned against himself, and that despotism which so jealously guarded every approach to the Seraglio was the very same which, on occasion, violated its most secret recesses. Once the dazzling blades of the cimeters were withdrawn from around that threatening colossus, it was easily seen upon how fragile a support its power rested. Armed hordes of Janissaries and spahis, pounding down the first and second doors with clubs, poured through in the dead of night, waving lighted torches and brandishing on the points of their gleaming blades the names of those ministers upon whom they were determined to wreak their vengeance, while their fierce shouts, reaching far beyond those invulnerable walls, spread terror and dismay in the very innermost recesses of their sovereign’s abode. In vain were bags of gold and silver coins thrown down from the summits of the walls; in vain did terrified muftis, sheikhs, ulemas, and all the most powerful and influential members of the court plead, reason, implore, promise, try by every means their fears or ingenuity could suggest to lower those brawny arms rigid with rage and fury; in vain the validéh sultans, half dead with fright, appeared at the grated windows holding up to view their little innocent children. The blind beast with a thousand heads was unchained, and nothing would satisfy it but living human victims, flesh to tear, blood to pour out, heads to carry stuck on the points of spears; and then the Sultan would appear in person between the battlements, even adventure as far as the barricades of the gateway, surrounded by trembling eunuchs and terrified pages armed with useless daggers, and, one by one, plead for each victim, promising, weeping, begging for mercy in the name of his mother, his sons, the Prophet, for the glory of the empire, the peace of the world; but nothing would avail. A fresh outburst of insults and threats, a waving of torches and brandishing of cimeters, was the only response to all entreaties; and so at last forth from the Gate of Felicity were led ministers, viziers, generals, eunuchs, favorites, one after another, cowering, shrieking, swooning with terror, and on the instant were torn in pieces by the howling pack, hacked by a hundred blades, trodden underfoot, mangled past recognition. Thus Murad III. surrendered his favorite falconer to be torn in pieces before his very eyes, as did Muhammad III. the kislaraghà Otman, and Ghaznèfer, chief of the white eunuchs, being moreover forced to salute the troops in the actual presence of their