Hassan hurried back and told his master of the arrangement he had concluded. The present was prepared, along with the sums demanded as expenses, and was conveyed, under the protection of a Turkish guard, to the frontiers of the Persian dominions. Hassan, too, came again as the unfortunate Bajazet’s appointed executioner, for Solyman had specially ordered that he should put him to death with his own hands. Accordingly the bow-string was put round Bajazet’s neck, and he was strangled to death. He is said to have asked one boon before his death, namely, to be allowed to see his children and share his kisses among them as a last token of affection; but this he asked in vain, being told ‘There was other business which required his immediate attention.’[259] Such was the end of Bajazet’s ill-starred designs, whose ruin was precipitated by the very efforts he made to avoid it. His four sons shared their father’s fate. I mentioned that one, who had been lately born, had been left at Amasia when his father fled, and that he had been removed by his grandfather to Broussa, where he was being brought up; but, when the Sultan knew it was all over with Bajazet, he sent a eunuch, whom he trusted, to Broussa to kill him. As the eunuch’s own disposition was too tender, he took with him one of the doorkeepers, a hard-hearted ruffian who was capable of any atrocity, to be the child’s murderer. When the doorkeeper entered the room, and was fitting the cord to the child’s neck, it smiled at him, and, raising itself as much as it could, threw up its little arms to give him a hug and a kiss. This so moved the cruel fellow that he could not bear it, and fell down in a swoon. The eunuch, who was waiting outside, wondered that he was so long, and at last going in himself, found the doorkeeper lying senseless on the ground. He could not afford to let his mission be a failure, and so with his own hands he stopped for ever the feeble breath of that innocent child. From this it was clear enough that the grandson had been spared till then, not from the mercy of his grandfather, but from the Turkish superstition of referring all successful enterprises, whatever may have been the motive from which they were undertaken, to the instigation of God. On this account, as long as the issue of Bajazet’s attempts remained doubtful, Solyman determined to do no violence to the child, for fear that if afterwards Bajazet’s fortunes should take a turn for the better, he should be found to have been striving against the will of God. But now that he had perished, and thus had, as it were, been condemned by the sentence of God, he thought there was no reason for sparing Bajazet’s son any longer, that according to the proverb, not an egg of that mischievous crow might be left.