"If only you could bring the child up!" he cried; "but you will not live long enough to do that. Men like you, Halil, never live long, and I don't want to survive you. You will see me die, if see you can; and when you die, your child will be doubly an orphan." With such words did he trouble them. They were always relieved when, at last, he would creep into a corner and fall asleep from sheer weariness, for his anxiety made him more and more somnolent as he grew older. But again the door opened, and there entered the Kadun-Kiet-Khuda, the guardian of the ladies of the Seraglio, accompanied by two slave-girls carrying a splendid porcelain pitcher, which they deposited at the sick woman's bed with this humble salutation: "The Sultana Valide greets thee and sends thee this sherbet!" The Sultana Valide, or Dowager, used only to send special messages to the Sultan's favourite wives when they lay in child-bed; this, therefore, was a great distinction for the wife of Halil Patrona--or a great humiliation for the Sultana. And a great humiliation it certainly was for the latter. It was by the command of Sultan Mahmud that the Sultana had sent the sherbet. "You see," said Halil, "the great ones of the earth kiss the dust off your feet. There are slaves besides those in the bazaars, and the first become the last. Rejoice in the present, my princess, and catch Fortune on the wing." "Fortune, Halil," said his wife with a mournful smile, "is like the eels of the Bosphorus, it slips from your grasp just as you fancy you hold it fast." And Halil believed that he held it fast in his grasp. The highest officers of state were his friends and colleagues, the Sultan himself was under obligations to him, for indeed Halil had fetched him from the dungeon of the Seven Towers to place him on the throne. And at that very moment they were digging the snare for him into which he was to fall. The Sultan who could not endure the thought that he was under a debt of gratitude to a poor oppressed pedlar, the Sultana who could never forget the humiliation she had suffered because of Guel-Bejaze, the Kizlar-Aga who feared the influence of Halil, the Grand Vizier who had been compelled to eat humble pie--all of them had long been waiting for an occasion to ruin him. * * * * * One day the Sultan distributed thirty wagon-loads of money among the forty thousand Janissaries and the sixteen thousand Topadshis in the capital because they had proposed to be reconciled with the Seraglio and reassemble beneath the banner of the Prophet. The insurgent mob, moreover, promised to disperse under two conditions: a complete amnesty for past offences, and permission to retain two of their banners that they might be able to assemble together again in case anything was undertaken against them. Their requests were all granted. Halil Patrona, too, was honoured by being made one of the privy councillors of the Divan.