Had I not known that such a thing was altogether impossible, I should have said, when I pulled up my panting horse on the height above the palace, that the same groups occupied the same spots where I had seen them on the previous day. The scene did not appear to have altered in a single feature. I saw the same smiling faces, and received the same kindly greetings; laughed at the same dirty, stupid-looking sentinels, and bought a cool draught from the same water-vender for a twenty para piece; and, altogether, I had some difficulty in persuading myself that I had really talked politics with a hot-headed Englishman, theology with a Greek Papas, and nonsense with a Sardinian Secretary, and moreover had slept through a long night, since I last stood upon that sunny hill, and looked far and wide upon the same wilderness of human beings. The procession of the preceding day had been announced to start from Dolma Batchè at eight o’clock, but the mid-day muezzin had been called from the minarets, ere the first trumpeter issued from the portal. Profiting, therefore, by our experience, we partook of a quiet breakfast on the present occasion, ere we sped to the scene of action; and we had judged rightly in so doing, for we were yet considerably in advance of the bridal train. Nevertheless, it is certain that the baggage-mules and the treasure-carriages required more time to prepare them for the journey than the Imperial Bride, and her attendant train of ladies; for the Kislar Agha was yet girding on his sword with all the quiet precision of a man who has no cause for haste, when a negro of the Seraï rushed into the apartment, and startled him with the intelligence that her Highness was not only ready to start, but actually in the Great Saloon of the Harem, waiting for him to precede her to her carriage. At this announcement the portly personage suffered his weapon to fall from his hands; and tossing his arms above his head, he filled the apartment with his outcries. “Who has done this? Who has insidiously counselled this haste? Where is the traitor who would destroy the Imperial Daughter of our noble Sultan? (May his beard be white!) It yet wants ten minutes of the time appointed by the astrologer—the lucky moment is not come—and until it arrives, she shall not set her foot without the palace, were it ten times her bridal day.”