One sight I am glad to have seen, and that was on Friday, the 7th of October, the Sultan Abdul Aziz going to the mosque. There was a great crowd of carriages full of ladies, and all the principal ministers and officers of State. The Sultan looked tired and intensely bored, as well he might, for already his extravagances had brought upon him ceaseless remonstrances from the other Powers. He began his reign well, industriously paving the road to Hell, but his paving-stones, excellent as they seemed to be, soon crumbled into dust. He became inoculated with the barbarous lust of military splendour and all those whims and appetites to which Sultans have fallen victims to the undoing of themselves and their people. The sorry end came twelve years later (in 1876). How it came about remains a mystery of the women’s quarters. It was said at the time that a nip from a pair of sharp scissors opened a vein and the wretched man bled to death in the privacy of his own harem. Who did the deed none knew. Was it suicide? Was it a bribed eunuch? Was it one of the ladies? That is immaterial; his death was needed, and he died. Three notable men were among the high officials in waiting: Aali Pasha, who was said to be greatly under the influence of M. de Moustiers, the French Ambassador; Omar Pasha, the commander-in-chief of the Turkish army in the Crimea in 1855; and Fuad Pasha, who had been Lord Dufferin’s colleague on the commission which investigated the anti-Christian uprising in the Lebanon in 1860. I was glad to see him, for I had heard so much of him from Meade, who accompanied Lord Dufferin as secretary. That was Lord Dufferin’s first important mission; and very well he managed it. When he first took his seat with the colleagues, his extremely youthful appearance made them think that they would be able to do what they pleased with him; they were mistaken; by the third sitting his cleverness and tact, combined with the most exquisite manners and firmness, had made him master of the situation, and his fame as a diplomatist was secured. Fuad Pasha, like my old friend Khalil Pasha at St. Petersburg, was noted as a wit. A short time before I saw him he gave a ball to which the members of the Corps Diplomatique and their wives were invited. At a certain moment it was arranged that the ladies should go and pay a visit to Madame Fuad in the harem. A pert French _chargé d’affaires_ said that he should manage to smuggle himself inside the mystic doors. Fired with this ambition, at the given time he offered his arm to one of the ladies and tried to slip in with her. Fuad Pasha, who was standing by, stopped him, saying very quietly, “Pardon, mon cher, vous savez que vous n’êtes accrédité qu’auprès de la Porte.”