Suddenly, one morning, the house of Bahá’u’lláh was surrounded by soldiers, sentinels were posted at its gates, His followers were again summoned by the authorities, interrogated, and ordered to make ready for their departure. “The loved ones of God and His kindred,” is Bahá’u’lláh’s testimony in the Súriy-i-Ra’ís, “were left on the first night without food... The people surrounded the house, and Muslims and Christians wept over Us... We perceived that the weeping of the people of the Son (Christians) exceeded the weeping of others— a sign for such as ponder.” “A great tumult seized the people,” writes Áqá Riḍá, one of the stoutest supporters of Bahá’u’lláh, exiled with him all the way from Ba_gh_dád to Akká, “All were perplexed and full of regret... Some expressed their sympathy, others consoled us, and wept over us... Most of our possessions were auctioned at half their value.” Some of the consuls of foreign powers called on Bahá’u’lláh, and expressed their readiness to intervene with their respective governments on His behalf—suggestions for which He expressed appreciation, but which He firmly declined. “The consuls of that city (Adrianople) gathered in the presence of this Youth at the hour of His departure,” He Himself has written, “and expressed their desire to aid Him. They, verily, evinced towards Us manifest affection.” The Persian Ambassador promptly informed the Persian consuls in ‘Iráq and Egypt that the Turkish government had withdrawn its protection from the Bábís, and that they were free to treat them as they pleased. Several pilgrims, among whom was Ḥájí Muḥammad Ismá’íl-i-Ká_sh_ání, surnamed Anís in the Lawḥ-i-Ra’ís, had, in the meantime, arrived in Adrianople, and had to depart to Gallipoli, without even beholding the face of their Master. Two of the companions were forced to divorce their wives, as their relatives refused to allow them to go into exile. _Kh_ur_sh_íd Pá_sh_á, who had already several times categorically denied the written accusations sent him by the authorities in Constantinople, and had interceded vigorously on behalf of Bahá’u’lláh, was so embarrassed by the action of his government that he decided to absent himself when informed of His immediate departure from the city, and instructed the Registrar to convey to Him the purport of the Sulṭán’s edict. Ḥájí Ja’far-i-Tabrízí, one of the believers, finding that his name had been omitted from the list of the exiles who might accompany Bahá’u’lláh, cut his throat with a razor, but was prevented in time from ending his life—an act which Bahá’u’lláh, in the Súriy-i-Ra’ís, characterizes as “unheard of in bygone centuries,” and which “God hath set apart for this Revelation, as an evidence of the power of His might.”