Death in the Revel—Marriage of the Princess Mihirmàh—The Imperial Victim—The First Lover—Court Cabal—Policy of the Seraskier—The Second Suitor—The Miniature—The Last Gift—Interview between the Sultan and Mustapha Pasha. It is strange how often events, which to the crowd appear redolent of joy and happiness, are to the principal actors replete with heartburning and misery—how what is a pageant to the many may be a penance to the few—and how the triumphant acclaim of the multitude may be hollowly echoed back in bitterness from the depths of a bereaved and stricken spirit. The price of greatness must be paid, even although it should be in the coinage of despair, wrung slowly, through a long life, like blood-drops from the heart; and it is well for the shouting, holyday-seeking crowd, that the gaunt spectre of reality is not permitted, like the skeleton of the Egyptian banquets, to take its seat at the feast, and startle them into a knowledge of the heavy price paid for the “funeral-baked meats” of their empoisoned revel! Only a few weeks had elapsed since Constantinople had held a general holyday; since her joy had been written in characters of fire; and her tens of thousands had collected together like one vast family, to celebrate the same happy event. Who that looked around and about him during the marriage festivities of the Imperial Bride of Saïd Pasha—the young, the fair, the high-born maiden, descended from a long-line of Emperors, “born in the purple,” and on whom no sunbeam had been suffered to rest, lest it should mar the brightness of her beauty—Who could have guessed, amid the flashing of jewels, the echo of compliments, and the lavish congratulation by which he was surrounded, that the idol to whom all this incense was offered up was already lying shivered at the foot of the altar on which it had been reared?—That the roses of the bridal wreath had fallen leaf by leaf, withered by the burning of the brow they cinctured?—and that the victim of an Empire’s holyday was seated heart-stricken and despairing in her latticed apartment, weeping hot tears over her compulsatory sacrifice? And yet thus it was:—even I myself, when the rumour reached me, that had the Princess been free to chuse from among the many who sighed for, without venturing to aspire to her hand, she would have made another selection—even I, remembering only that she was an Oriental, and forgetting that she was also a woman, never doubted for an instant that she would resign herself to her fate with true Turkish philosophy, and find consolation for a passing disappointment in the gaud and glitter of her new state. But it was not so: the arrow had been driven home, and the wound was mortal!