imploring for mercy, and frantic with grief, while the callous Court favourites, with scarce a side glance at the bloody deed, continued to gaze with gloating eyes at the dance of the slave girls. Then a messenger came in with news that was evidently of importance. He opened the box which he had brought with him, and to the joy of the courtiers drew out the bleeding head of the murdered Midhat Pasha. Then the vision faded away, and the Pasha awoke from his nightmare. It had deeply affected him, and in a long speech he announced his intention of fleeing from Turkey to Paris in order that he might help to organise the revolution by which Turkey must be saved. His son entered, was delighted to hear the Pasha’s resolve, and agreed to accompany him. The scenes of the play itself were laid in Paris. We heard plots being arranged by spies in the Turkish Embassy in the French capital, and saw them circumvented by an _attaché_ of the Embassy, who happened to be a secret adherent of the Young Turk party. We witnessed the deathbed of the Pasha, who had abandoned wife and property for the sake of his country, and who, in a long speech, urged his son to persevere in the good work. We were taken to a Mussulman burial ground, where an eloquent funeral oration was delivered over the remains of the dead patriot, and we witnessed his apotheosis when angels bore him upwards to Paradise. The final scene represented a somewhat extraordinary entertainment at the Turkish Embassy, where a good deal of champagne was being drunk; suddenly, in rushed a newsboy carrying a poster announcing the proclamation of the Constitution; and the curtain dropped on the group of revelling spies, now overwhelmed with fear and consternation. It was a gloomy play, mainly made up of long and earnest monologues, lit up occasionally with flashes of grim humour, but its effect upon the audience was extraordinary. The actors who represented the friends of liberty delivered, with great oratorical power, eloquent speeches, in which they preached the righteousness of the cause, and the beauty of sacrifice of self for the fatherland. They swayed the audience as they willed; for these were not merely clever actors who felt their parts, but men who had done, and were still doing, in real life, the things that they represented upon the stage. The audience hung upon their words, warmly applauded the patriotic sentiments, and showed their detestation of the tyrants and their pity for the sufferers. There were tears in the eyes of many men present, to whom, no doubt, the play recalled bitter memories. The audience was mostly exclusively composed of Mussulman Turks—soldiers, theological students, turbanned _hodjas_, and others. In the higher-priced seats were many officers of the army and navy, and two near relatives of the Sultan were in the boxes. CHAPTER XIX _A STRONG ARMY NEEDED_