On the declaration of war with Russia made by the Turks in 1786, Baron Bulhakoff, the Russian Minister, despite his representation that the imprisonment of the Muscovite Ambassadors on such occasions had been abolished by treaty, was, nevertheless, sent to the Seven Towers by order of Codza Youssouf Pasha, the Grand Vèzir, with the assurance that treaties were very good things in a time of peace, but mere waste paper in the event of war. The discomfited Ambassador was, however, treated with great civility, and was even permitted to select such members of the Legation as he desired should bear him company during his captivity; strict orders being given to the Commandant of the castle to accede to every request of his prisoner which did not tend to compromise his safety; and upon his complaining of the accommodations of the Tower, he was moreover permitted to erect a kiosk on the walls of the fortress, whence he had a magnificent view of the Sea of Marmora and its glittering islands, and to construct a spacious and handsome apartment within the Tower itself. I have already stated that the Commandant was lodged beneath the same roof as his prisoner; but I have yet to tell that he had an only daughter, so young, and so lovely, that she might have taken her stand between the two Houri who wait at the portal of Paradise to beckon the Faithful across its threshold, without seeming less beautiful than they. Fifteen springs had with their delicate breathings opened the petals of the roses since the birth of Rèchèdi[7] Hanoum, and she had far out-bloomed the brightest blossoms of the fairest of seasons. Her voice, when it was poured forth in song, came through the lattices of her casement like the tones of a distant mandolin sweeping over the waters of the still sea—when you looked upon her, it was as though you looked upon a rose; and when you listened, you seemed to listen to the nightingale. Rèchèdi Hanoum had never yet poured the scented sherbet in the garden of flowers. Her young heart was as free as the breeze that came to her brow from the blue bosom of the Propontis; and when she heard that a Muscovite Giaour was about to become an inmate of the Tower, she only trembled, for she knew that he was the enemy of her country. Terror was, however, soon succeeded by curiosity. Only a few weeks after the compulsatory domestication of the Ambassador at the Seven Towers, his kiosk was completed; and from her closed casements the young Hanoum could see all that passed in the vast apartment of the prisoner.