For several days there was a general mourning throughout the camp, and there seemed no prospect of any abatement of the soldiers’ sorrow, unless Roostem were removed from office. This step Solyman accordingly took, at the suggestion (as it is generally believed) of Roostem himself. He dismissed him from office, and sent him back to Constantinople in disgrace. His post was filled by Achmet Pasha, who is more distinguished for courage than for judgment. When Roostem had been chief Vizier he had been second. This change soothed and calmed the spirits of the soldiers. With the credulity natural to the lower orders, they were easily induced to believe that Solyman had discovered Roostem’s machinations and his wife’s sorceries, and was coming to his senses now that it was all too late, and that this was the cause of Roostem’s fall. Indeed, they were persuaded that he would not even spare his wife, when he returned to Constantinople. Moreover, the men themselves met Roostem at Constantinople, apparently overwhelmed with grief and without the slightest hope of recovering his position. Meanwhile, Roxolana, not contented with removing Mustapha from her path, was compassing the death of the only son he had left, who was still a child; for she did not consider that she and her children were free from danger, so long as his offspring survived. Some pretext, however, she thought necessary, in order to furnish a reason for the murder, but this was not hard to find. Information is brought to Solyman that, whenever his grandson appeared in public, the boys of Ghemlik[115]—where he was being educated—shouted out, ‘God save the Prince, and may he long survive his father;’ and that the meaning of these cries was to point him out as his grandsire’s future successor, and his father’s avenger. Moreover, he was bidden to remember that the Janissaries would be sure to support the son of Mustapha, so that the father’s death had in no way secured the peace of the throne and realm; that nothing ought to be preferred to the interests of religion, not even the lives of our children; that the whole Mussulman religion (as they call it, meaning ‘the best religion’) depended on the safety of the throne and the rule of the house of Othman; and that, if the family were to fall, the foundations of the faith would be overthrown; that nothing would so surely lead to the downfall of the house as disunion among its members; for the sake, therefore, of the family, the empire, and religion itself, a stop must be put to domestic feuds; no price could be too great for the accomplishment of such an end, even though a father’s hands had to be dipped in his children’s blood; nay, the sacrifice of one’s children’s lives was not to be esteemed of any great account, if the safety of the faith was thereby assured. There was still less reason, they added, for compunction in this case, inasmuch as the boy, as Mustapha’s son, was already a participator in his