In an hour's time the firmans and hatti-scherifs, deposing and elevating the various functionaries, were in Musli's hands as desired. Only as to the method of destroying the kiosks did the Sultan venture to make a suggestion. They had better not be burnt to the ground, he opined, for thereby the Mussulmans would make themselves the laughing-stock of the whole Christian world; but he undertook to dilapidate the walls and devastate the pleasure-gardens. And within three days one hundred and twenty splendid kiosks, standing beside the Sweet Waters, had become so many rubbish heaps; and the rare and costly plants of the beautiful flower-gardens were chucked into the water, and the groves of amorous dallying were cut down to the very roots. Only ruins were now to be seen in the place of the fairy palaces wherein all manner of earthly joys had hitherto built their nests, and all this ruin was wrought in three days by Halil Patrona, just because there is but one God, and therefore but one Paradise, and because this Paradise is not on earth but in Heaven, and those who would attain thereto must strive and struggle valiantly for it in this life. FOOTNOTES: [3] 1481 A.D. [4] Ablutions before prayers. [5] The first section of the Koran. [6] The Imperial Treasury. [7] The part of Stambul inhabited by the Greeks. [8] Companies of horse. [9] Tablets indicating the direction in which Mecca lies. [10] "God be for ever gracious to him." [11] Believer. [12] Unbeliever. [13] Anti-Christ. [14] The prescribed almsgiving. [15] Voluntary almsgiving. [16] Peter the Great. The allusion is to the Peace of the Pruth. CHAPTER XII. HUMAN HOPES. A time will come when the star has risen so high that it can rise no higher, and perchance learns to know that before long it must begin its inevitable descent!... All Halil Patrona's wildest dreams had been realised. There he stood at the very apex of sovereignty, whence the course of empires, the destiny of worlds can be controlled. Ministers of State were pulled down or lifted up at his bidding, armies were sent against foreign powers as he directed, princes were strengthened on their thrones because Halil Patrona wished it, and the great men of the empire lay in the dust at his feet. For whole days at a time he sat reading the books of the Ottoman chroniclers, the famous Rashid and the wise Chelbizade, and after that he would pore over maps and charts and draw lines of different colours across them in all directions, and dot them with dots which he alone understood the meaning of. And those lines and dots stretched far, far away beyond the borders of the empire, right into the midst of Podolia and the Ukraine. He knew, and he only, what he meant by them. The projects he was hatching required centuries for their fulfilment--what is the life of a mere man?