The Lion of Janina; Or, The Last Days of the Janissaries: A Turkish NovelJókai, Mór
History
The Lion of Janina; Or, The Last Days of the Janissaries: A Turkish Novel
Jókai, Mór
Ali Pasa, Tepedelenli, 1744?-1822 -- Fiction; Janizaries -- Fiction; Turkey -- History -- Mahmud II, 1808-1839 -- Fiction
The first thing the favorite did on awaking was to look at the time,
and she perceived that it was now seven o'clock. She immediately
hastened to interrogate the pen, and asked the question of it with
fear and trembling; and now the pen wrote down the number "4."
* * * * *
The Sultan himself sent for Morrison.
The English sailor was proudly conscious of owning no master but the
sea. During his long roamings in the East and South he had always made
it a point of visiting all the barbarous chiefs and princes who came
in his way. He regarded them simply as freaks of nature, whose absurd
rites and customs he meant to thoroughly investigate in order that he
might make a note of them in his diary, and he even went the length of
adopting for a time their manners and customs, if he could not get
what he wanted in any other way.
A summons to appear before the divan was scarcely of more importance
in his eyes than an invitation to a wild elephant hunt, or initiation
into the mysteries of Mumbo Jumbo, or an ascent in the perilous aerial
ship of Montgolfier. He donned a dark-blue-colored garment and a
plumed three-cornered hat, and condescended to allow himself to be
conducted by the ichoglanler specially told off to do him honor to the
splendid canopied, six-oared pinnace, which was to take him to the
palace.
They escorted him first to the Gate of Fountains, and left him waiting
for a few moments in the Chamber of Lions, allowing him in the
meanwhile to draw a pocket-book from his breast-pocket and make a
rapid sketch of all the objects around him. They then relieved him of
his short sword, as none may approach the Sultan with arms, and threw
across his shoulders an ample caftan trimmed with ermine. He did not
reflect for the moment what a distinction this was. His only feeling
was a slight surprise that he should be dressed in green down to his
very heels, as, with the dragoman on his left hand, he was conducted
into the Hall of the Seven Viziers, where the Sultan sat in the midst
of his grandees.
Morrison greeted the Padishah very handsomely, just as he would have
greeted King George IV. or King Charles X., perhaps.
"Bow to the ground--right down to the ground, milord!" whispered the
dragoman in his ears.
"I'll be damned if I do!" replied Morrison. "It is not my habit to go
down on my knees in uniform!"
"But that was why they put the caftan on you," whispered the dragoman,
half in joke. "'Tis the custom here."
"And a deuced bad custom, too," growled Morrison; and, after
reflecting for a moment or two, he hit upon the idea of letting his
hat fall to the ground, and then bent down as if to pick it up again.
But, by way of compensation, immediately after righting himself he
stood as stiff and straight as if he were determined never to bend his
head again, though the roof were to fall upon him in consequence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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