Nor was this all; for a still more startling fact came to my knowledge from so authentic a source that I state it without hesitation. A Turkish female in a respectable station of society, having in vain importuned her husband for the means of witnessing the festivities in a manner suited to her rank, and receiving for an answer the assurance that he was unable to comply with her request; finding that she had no hope of success save through her own ingenuity, set herself to work to devise some expedient by which she might raise the necessary sum; and having taken into her confidence a favourite slave who was to accompany her in the event of any fortunate discovery, it was at length decided between them that she should sell her son, a fine little boy of about five years of age. No sooner said than done; she adjusted her yashmac and feridjhe, took her child by the hand, and, followed by her attendant, proceeded to the house of a slave merchant, where the bargain was soon made, and the sum of three thousand piastres given in exchange for the little Musselmaun! The astonishment of the husband may be conceived, when on the morrow he saw his wife seated in an araba in the midst of a bevy of her fair friends, without being able to discover how she had contrived to secure a carriage at so expensive a period. He demanded an explanation in vain; and it was not until he inquired for his child, and detected a mysterious confusion in the manner of his wife, that a suspicion of the fact flashed upon him. He insisted on hearing the truth; and when he at length learnt it, he hurried like a madman to the slave-merchant, and demanded back his boy; but the dealer in human beings had no expensive sympathies; and he only answered the agonized intreaties of the father, by asserting his willingness to deliver up the child when the money which he had given for him was repaid. The wretched parent had it not to give; and finding that his misery produced no effect upon the slave-merchant, he hurried in his anguish to the Seraskier, who, having heard the tale, summoned to his presence the mother, the child, and the merchant; and after having ascertained that the fact was precisely as it had been stated to him, he expressed to the former his horror of the unnatural deed of which she had been guilty, and received for answer that she had acted under the firm conviction that her husband had merely refused to supply her with money from an impulse of avarice; and that, being devoted to his child, he would immediately purchase him back. The apology, poor as it was, was admitted; and the Seraskier, finding that the father really did not possess the means of recovering his boy, generously paid the price of his liberty, and restored him to his parents; only cautioning the mother not to attempt a second sale of the same description, as, in the event of such an occurrence, she should herself be her child’s ransom.