The Sultan alights, enters the Hamidiè Mosque, and the muezzin from the top of the adjacent minaret calls the Faithful to prayer. An interval of about half an hour follows, in which tea and cigarettes are served to the Sultan’s guests. At last a slight stir is noticeable at the entrance of the mosque. The Sultan reappears, enters an open victoria, the reins of which he handles himself, and drives back to the Palace up the hill, followed by a throng of gaudily attired functionaries—old, white-bearded men among them—running after the carriage as best they may: a somewhat undignified sight to a European. [Illustration: Musical Score] [Music: Double Eagle March _pp p p dolcissimo._ _pp_] The band now strikes up the Austrian “Double-Eagle March.” It is almost imperative to have heard the famous trio of this most enthralling of military marches—a languorous, sensual theme—in order to gain an idea of the effect a military band is capable of producing upon a susceptible crowd. The popularity of the “Double-Eagle March” throughout Austria-Hungary and the German Empire has long been general. Composed by a bandmaster of an Austrian regiment, it has been set to music in close upon twenty different arrangements. A great deal of what is incomprehensible to strangers in latter-day Germany may be attributed to the effect of this popular military march on the public, and, what is more, on those who are supposed to influence and inspire it. If there is a march in the whole world which produces intoxication without either alcohol or hashish, it is this one. A parallel to the last years of the Second Empire and Jacques Offenbach’s Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein, General Boum-Boum, and Prince Paul would suggest itself on the occasions when foreign princes and princesses with their hungry retinues came to visit the Sultan. The Prince Imperial would find his counterpart in the Sultan’s poor little sons, who got on horseback and figured in the pageantry of the Selamlik. It is a wonder that there were still some quiet nooks in which a philosophic contemplation of the vanity of things could be indulged. One day, now long ago, I paid a call on Munir Pasha at his office after the Selamlik. I have already had occasion to mention this high-bred, gracious, and kind Turkish gentleman. Not a breath of scandal, slander, or concession-mongering ever touched this man, whose influential position during many years might have brought him wealth for the mere asking.