It would, indeed, be no cause for wonder if the Sultan had been occasionally in a serious mood. There are other monarchs besides the Sultan whose humour is not always _couleur de rose_. “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” is not a Mohammedan proverb. But the Sultan’s strength of purpose, his truly phenomenal powers of work, his abstinence from every form of nervous stimulant except an occasional cigarette and a cup of coffee, are irreconcilable with the idea that he could have been of a morbidly nervous disposition. As to the Sultan’s working habits, I have known him to be at work at five in the morning and at that hour keep going a whole staff of secretaries, who had slept overnight on couches in the rooms in the Palace in which they habitually worked. Munir Pasha once said to me: “There is one characteristic of His Majesty which conveys a lesson to us all: it is his extraordinary self-control—his impressive calm. It is almost sublime—no contrariety, no trial seems to ruffle his perfect self-possession. It is truly marvellous.” Making every allowance for the enthusiasm of a devoted servant and a prince of courtiers, I am yet inclined to believe, on the strength of other evidence, as well as from my own personal observation, that Munir Pasha’s estimate of his master’s nerve was by no means exaggerated. Certain Ambassadors, who had abundant opportunity of testing the Sultan’s self-control, might, if they were still among the living and inclined to make revelations of incidents in which they did not come off with flying colours, give even better corroborative evidence than I am able to do. It has been said that the Sultan was constantly surrounded by a fierce soldiery armed to the teeth, and that sudden death awaited the hapless creature who should venture to intrude unbidden within the sacred precincts of the Imperial Palace. As a matter of fact I doubt whether there is any other palace into which it would be so easy for a stranger to penetrate as it was into the Yildiz Kiosk. All sorts and conditions of men—but no women—used to find their way in and out. As already mentioned, I have known the Pera shopkeeper of English nationality enter the Palace and walk unbidden into the sanctum of the Sultan’s all-powerful secretary, take his seat among the Ambassadors, Pashas, and Ministers, sip his coffee and smoke his cigarette, and sit there for hours together as if “to the manner born.” So much for the exclusive character of the Sultan’s Palace.