Constantinople old and new

Constantinople is finished! So a reactionary impressionist groaned to himself on a certain summer day—to be precise, on the 24th of July, 1908—when the amazing truth became known that the constitution, suppressed thirty-two years before, had been re-established. Constitutions were well enough in their place, but their place was not Constantinople. A Constantinople at whose gate your Shakespeare was not taken from you as being a perilous and subversive book, a Constantinople through whose custom-house you could not bribe your way, a Constantinople which you might explore ungreeted by a derisive “Gyaour!” or a casual stone, a Constantinople of mosques open to the infidel without money and without price, a Constantinople wherein you were free to walk at night without a lantern, a Constantinople indifferent to passports or to ladies’ veils, a Constantinople where it was possible to paint in the streets, to meet and see off steamers, to post a local letter—and, what is more, receive one—a Constantinople without a censor, a spy, or a dog, might be a Constantinople of a kind; but it would not be the true Constantinople. It could never be the impenetrable old Constantinople that lent a certain verisimilitude to stories like “Paul Patoff” and made it possible for a romantic Gladstone to be taken seriously at his most romantic moments. Violated of its mystery, laid open to the deadly levelling of Western civilisation, what could save it from becoming a Constantinople of straight streets, of pseudo-classic architecture, of glaring lights, of impatient tram and telephone bells, of the death-dealing motors that Abd ül Hamid would never allow, of the terrible tourists—the German Liebespaar, the British old maid, the American mother and daughter—who insist on making one place exactly like another?

Well, the Constantinople of a reactionary impressionist is finished. A good deal of it vanished by magic on the night of the revolution. Of the outward and visible remainder more has disappeared already than an outsider might suppose. The dogs and the beggars went very soon, followed by the worst of the cobblestones and the bumpy old bridge that every traveller wrote a chapter about; and when I took a little journey in the world after this process was well started it struck me that the streets of Paris and New York were less clean than those of Stamboul. As for the censor and the spies, if they still exist it is in a tempered form. In the meantime the telephones, the motors, the dynamos so redoubted by Abd ül Hamid, have made their appearance. And with them has come a terrifying appetite for civic improvement. The mosaics of Justinian are about to be lighted by electricity. Boulevards have been cut through Stamboul. Old Turkish houses have been torn down by the hundred in the interests of street widening. Only a miracle saved the city walls from being sold as building material. I could wish that the edifices encumbering the sphendone of the Hippodrome might be sold as building material, in order to give back to the city its supreme ornament of a sea view. Imagine what such a wide blue vision might be, seen from the heart of the town—perhaps through a dark-green semicircle of cypresses! In the meantime the Hippodrome has been made to blossom, not quite as the rose, depriving Stamboul of its one good square and threatening to hide the beauty of Sultan Ahmed’s marble mosque. If the new gardens also do something to hide the Byzantino-Germanico-Turkish fountain which William II, in remembrance of a memorable visit, had the courage to erect in line with the obelisk of Theodosius and the twisted serpents of Platæa, they will not have been planted altogether in vain. But direr changes still have the people of Constantinople witnessed since their revolution night—fire, pestilence, earthquake, mutiny, war. They have even lived to hear, from streets of something less than sweet security, the nearing thunder of cannon, and to ask themselves if the supreme change were at hand, and Constantinople itself was to go.

Of all these things more has been written than is profitable to read. It is still too soon to know very much about the Young Turks—their real leaders, their real motives, their real aims, their real accomplishment. It is fairly safe to conclude, however, that they were neither the demigods acclaimed in 1908 as the saviours of their country nor the rascals execrated as its destroyers in 1912. They were, in all likelihood, men neither better nor worse than the rest of us, who found their country in an evil case and who for no shameful reason lacked the knowledge and the power to make it an earthly paradise. Yet it seems to me that history will give them credit for breaking the spell of Abd ül Hamid, that strange and tragic figure of myth who struggled to keep the thirteenth century alive in the twentieth. Nor do I see how they could have matched him otherwise than as they did, with his own weapon of secrecy. And whatever their subsequent mistakes may have been, it also seems to me that history will absolve them from much of the reproach of losing their European empire. No one can fairly blame them for wishing to make the Turk the dominant element in his own empire, and for wishing to make that empire independent of the foreigner. Neither they nor any one else, moreover, could in the long run have saved their European provinces. It is a serious question whether they will succeed in saving certain of their provinces that remain—or whether their own good advises them to do so. There are influences of common blood and common tradition which no mere political influence can indefinitely withstand. In any case, I have come to look upon the Turkish revolution with other than the eye of a reactionary impressionist. It would be a reactionary impressionist indeed who put the picturesqueness of Stamboul before the good of a people—and a blind one who failed to see what there was of human colour in those dramatic events. And although time has only partially fulfilled so many generous hopes, or has turned them to bitterness, I refuse to believe that they were totally insincere. I shall always count it, on the contrary, among the most enlarging experiences of my life to have been in Constantinople in 1908, and to have seen a people at one of those rare moments when it really lives.

It is strange to recall, in the light of all that has happened since, how silently that momentous change announced itself. We knew that there were disturbances in Macedonia; but there were always disturbances in Macedonia. We gathered that there were dissensions at the Palace, for on the very day of his decoration by William II with the Black Eagle, Ferid Pasha, the Albanian Grand Vizier, fell. But there were usually dissensions at the Palace. And when, two days later, we read at the top of our morning papers a bare official announcement that the constitution had been re-established, that long-suspended constitution, the promise of which had brought Abd ül Hamid to the throne, we asked each other what it meant. Apparently no one could tell—least of all the diplomats supposed to sit at the fountain-heads of information. The most frequent conjecture was of a trick to gain time. It was only later that rumours began to run about, in the true Constantinople way, of the revolt of Macedonia; of the telegrams exchanged between Salonica and Yîldîz, and the memorable night council at which Abd ül Hamid, fainting with exhaustion and rage, acknowledged himself beaten at last; of the mysterious Committee of Union and Progress that had performed the miracle, and of the men who had gone about the country, disguised as pedlers and dervishes, feeding the hunger for liberty and the courage to demand it, and of the women who carried messages from harem to harem and so delivered them without writing, and of the revolutionary circles that flourished under the eyes of spies, subordinate to the larger circles of Constantinople, Salonica, and Paris, wherein only one or two members knew of the definite existence of another circle, and then of only one or two of its members.

When the lancers rode through the streets that Friday morning of the 24th of July to guard the Sultan on his way to mosque, a few Greeks cheered them. The soldiers looked uneasy. Such a thing had never happened to them. That afternoon a few shopkeepers hung out their flags. The police went about zealously taking down the offenders’ names. By the next day, however, the police gave up trying to keep track of the flags. The whole city flapped with them. And other strange manifestations took place. Music marched through the streets. Orators sprang up at every corner. Newspapers quadrupled their editions and burst into extras at the novelty of containing news. Hawkers everywhere sold long red badges bearing golden words that it had been forbidden to utter—Liberty, Justice, Equality, Fraternity. It was as if a cover had suddenly been taken off. For thirty years this people had been kept in constantly closer restriction, had lived under the eyes of that vast army of informers from which they were not safe even within their own doors, had been robbed one by one of all the little liberties of life so common in other countries that we think nothing of them—to visit one’s friends, to gather for amusement or discussion, to read the book of one’s choice, to publish one’s sentiment or protest, to go out at night, to travel at will. Hundreds of thousands had grown up to man’s estate knowing no other manner of life. And from one day to another they were told that it was all at an end—that they were free. Was it any wonder that at first they were dazed? Was it not rather a wonder that they did not lose their heads?

The natural goodness and peaceableness of a race that has been accounted one of butchers could have had no more triumphant proof than those trying days when the whole machinery of government was disorganised. But of the sanguinary scenes that have marked other revolutions there were none. In Salonica, to be sure, where the constitution was proclaimed one day earlier, a policeman was shot for tearing down the proclamation. Ten notorious spies were also shot in honour of the date. Their comrades had the Julian calendar to thank that the number was not twenty-three! In Broussa another spy, the infamous Fehim Pasha of Constantinople, was killed by a crowd he unwisely went out of his way to insult. In the capital, however, although the Stamboul troops were ready to occupy Pera and cut off Yîldîz, extreme measures proved unnecessary. The moderation of the revolutionists, the astuteness of the Sultan, and the character of the people combined to make the affair pass off without bloodshed. If it had not been for foreigners employed in some of the public services, who promptly set about fomenting strikes, nothing would have occurred to disturb the peace. Zeki Pasha, it is true, the man who would have repeated the Bloody Sunday of St. Petersburg, had his windows smashed. Otherwise the hostility of the people toward the ringleaders of the old régime restricted itself to cartoons of the most primitive drawing and satire, which had an enormous sale in the streets and which were ultimately suppressed by the Committee of Union and Progress. The Committee sedulously fostered the belief that the real author of the Hamidian régime had merely been the victim of his advisers.

The Bloody Sunday which might have been was the Sunday after the coup d’état, when all day long deputation after deputation marched up to the Palace in the July sun, until a hundred thousand fezzes and turbans packed the avenues of approach. They had been the day before to each of the ministers in turn, demanding their oaths to maintain the constitution. They now came to the Sultan, loyal and unarmed, but asking from him too an assurance that he would not a second time withdraw the instrument which he had been the first of his line to promulgate. The Palace guards did not resist, but within was such terror as those without had never dreamed of inspiring. The Sultan, always chary of his person, uncertain as to the designs of a mob the like of which he had never seen before, refused to show himself. He merely sent messages to the people and begged them to disperse. They would not. Then Zeki Pasha, Grand Master of Artillery, asked leave to clear the crowd away—with his cannon. Fortunately, most fortunately, the old martinet’s advice was not taken. But still the Sultan did not appear. Finally, late in the evening, the last deputation of all arrived. It was composed of the more enlightened element of the population and contained members of the Committee. Like those who had preceded them, they respectfully asked to see his majesty. They were told that his majesty had retired. They insisted, with what arguments one may never know. And at last, near midnight, his majesty appeared on a balcony of the Palace and asked the people what they wished. They, amid frantic demonstrations of loyalty, said that they wished to see the imperial master who had so long been kept from them by traitors, and to hear him swear fealty to his own constitution. He replied: “My children, be certain that I shall shrink before no sacrifice for your happiness. Henceforth your future is assured. I will work with you in common accord. Live as brothers. I am overcome by the sentiments of devotion and gratitude which you show. Return to your homes and take your rest.” This speech, characteristic of its maker’s adroitness, satisfied the thousands who did not hear it, and they went away.

It did not satisfy the instigators of the demonstration, who later obliged the Sultan to make the desired oath on the Koran. It was his only chance to save his throne. But bitter as his surrender doubtless was, he must have had moments of compensation. One of them occurred on the succeeding Friday, when a hundred thousand people gathered again to see him go to mosque. Hours before the time of the ceremony the precincts of the Palace were invaded, and hamals kicked their heels from the edge of the terrace reserved for visitors with cards from their embassies. A great tree near the mosque was so full of men and boys that two or three branches cracked off. When the imperial cortège came down from the Palace there was such cheering as Abd ül Hamid, accustomed to the perfunctory “Padishah’m chok yasha!” of his guard, could scarcely have heard before. The monarch who all his life had been most afraid of bombs and bullets may never have been so nervous, but he stood up like a man, saluting his people with the red-and-white rosette of the constitution pinned to his shoulder. They responded in a frenzy of emotion, tears streaming from many of their eyes. After returning to the Palace the Sultan showed himself again at a balcony and spoke a few words. Could there have been only terror for him in the joyful shouting of a mob that would have torn an assassin to shreds? Could he have seen there only enemies who had overcome him by the brute force of numbers? Could he have felt only the irony of his undoing by the very schools he had created, by the very means he had taken to stamp out individual liberty?

There may be question as to whether any real generous impulse, any true glimmer of repentance, visited that old lion at bay. But there can be none as to the temper of the crowds that marched about the streets for days with flags and music, cheering the army that had freed them, cheering the Sultan who, they said, had been kept from them by traitors, cheering the orators who told them again and again of their happiness and assured them that thenceforward in the Ottoman Empire there was no distinction between Armenian, Greek, Jew, and Turk: all were Ottomans, all were brothers, all were free. It was, of course, too good to be true. Yet, even in the light of subsequent history, I persist in remembering those days as a little golden age which no one was the worse for having known. A carriage wheel was crushed in the press. The hat—or should one say the fez?—was instantly passed around, and the happy jehu was given the wherewithal to buy fifty new wheels. A shop-window, again, was accidentally broken. The shopkeeper presently had reason to wish that the crowd would break a window every day. Ladies who never before would have dared go alone through certain streets, or through any street at certain hours, went unmolested when and where they chose. Races that had lived under an armed truce, and not always that, suddenly fell on each other’s necks. A cold-hearted impressionist more than once found it in him to smile at respectable old gentlemen who insisted on kissing fervent young orators on both cheeks. And when priests of different religions exchanged such salutes it was even more a case of the lion lying down with the lamb.

The scattering of the Palace camarilla was one of the most picturesque of the many picturesque events of the day. The true story of those precious rascals is a piece of the Middle Ages—or of the flourishing days of New York. Some of them were ministers, some chamberlains and secretaries, one of them no more than an Arab astrologer, who gained immense credit during the Greek war of 1897 by holding over telegrams and prophesying their contents to the Sultan. Without this star-chamber nothing was done in the empire. The council of ministers sat at the Sublime Porte, but the true cabinet sat secretly in Yîldîz Palace. If the Grand Vizier did not happen to belong to it, so much the worse for him. He must be prepared to see his orders countermanded and his promises rendered void. It was always possible to obtain such a result. Those who knew the ropes knew the department of each member of the kitchen cabinet, and his price. For that matter they were willing to be accommodating. They took from each according to his means. And they were not too proud to be known as the kehayas of the industrial guilds. One accepted two hundred pounds a month from the butchers of Constantinople, in return for leniency in the matter of inspection. Another received a handsome allowance from the corporation of bakers, who were also obliged to subsidise the police in order to prevent the seizure of undersized loaves from being too serious. A third drew a dollar for every bag of flour that came into the city. I even heard of a pasha who allowed his kitchens to be supplied with butter by a Kürdish chief. There was no possible source of revenue which these men had not tapped—public funds, private enterprises, the distribution of places, the granting of concessions. It mattered nothing to them that the country was going to ruin, the development of its incalculable resources stopped, so long as they built great palaces on the Bosphorus and fared sumptuously every day.

The constitution took them more completely than any by surprise. Accustomed to the variable climate of the court, they were prepared to fall from favour, to be exiled, or even to lose their lives. But they were not prepared for this. Not many of them were quick enough to grasp the situation. The first to do so was Selim Pasha Melhameh, a Syrian. As Minister of Agriculture, Mines, and Forests he was in the way of getting good things from people who wanted concessions. His already comfortable fortune was agreeably increased during his last winter in office by a scarcity of fuel that caused great misery among the poor of the capital. An imperial order was issued to bring down wood from the forests of the interior and sell it at a fixed price. The wood was brought down and the price fixed—by Selim Pasha. He is said to have been absent from the all-night council at which the constitution was granted. At first he would not believe the news, but when proof was given him he called for his wife and told her to pack at once. She did so with such expedition that three days later, borrowing the Italian embassy launch on the pretext of seeing off their son, who was going to his post in the Turkish embassy at Rome, they sailed on the steamer with him.

The next to leave was the notorious Izzet Pasha, the Sultan’s first chamberlain. There was a mediæval character for you—that perfect gentleman and connoisseur, descended from robber Bedouins beyond Damascus, who became the greatest robber in the empire. He robbed so shamelessly, he robbed so amusingly, that an irresponsible impressionist cannot help investing him with a romantic interest. When the coup d’état took place, his Syrian wit told him that a country he had plundered for years was no longer the country for him. He accordingly bought for eight thousand pounds, in the name of a French lady, a small Greek passenger steamer worth some fifteen hundred, and prepared to decamp. When the captain learned the identity of his new owner he refused to serve him. Rather than excite suspicion by drumming up another crew, Izzet proceeded to buy another steamer, this time under the British flag. Having been bitten once, he stipulated that the owners should be paid in three instalments—two thousand pounds down, fifteen hundred when he should get away, by cash deposited with a third party, and fifteen hundred more from his first port of call. When the owners presented their cheque for two thousand pounds at Izzet Pasha’s bank they were informed that the latter had withdrawn his account. Izzet Pasha expressed infinite regret at the mistake, and courteously wrote out a second cheque on a bank from which he had withdrawn his account. Before the owners had time to present that Izzet Pasha, boarding his steamer from the German embassy launch and a series of tugs, had got away with three of his four wives, in spite of the crowd that shook their fists after him from Galata quay. At the Dardanelles he was stopped. And perhaps the most novel of all his experiences was to see a handful of gold he gave to the officer keeping him under guard thrown scornfully overboard. But the English register of his boat and a commission he displayed, sending him abroad on imperial business, saved his skin. He was not heard from again till he turned up at Genoa. There, telling his captain he was going to take his family ashore for a walk, he took ticket for England. The captain waited patiently till there was nothing left on board to eat or to burn, and then he wired to his former owners. They had not received their third payment, but as the second was duly made and as they got their boat back they did not come off so badly.

The rest of the gang were not allowed to escape. They were entertained at the War Department until they began to disgorge gold and lands. Zeki Pasha gave up no more than ten thousand pounds; but Hassan Rami Pasha, who had been Minister of Marine a year, handed over some two hundred thousand. This act of penance performed, they and their colleagues were sent to Prinkipo, where, under due surveillance, they were granted the liberties of an island six miles in circumference until such time as parliament should investigate their affairs.

In contrast to the scurrying to cover of the old régime was the return of the exiles. During Abd ül Hamid’s long reign, and most actively during the latter part of it, there had been a systematic clearing out of independent personalities. Men who would not hide their disapproval of the government, who could not be bought or silenced in any other way, or whom chance spies happened to report on adversely, were banished to remote parts of the empire. Others fled to countries where life was made less difficult for them. Sixty thousand exiles are said to have left Constantinople alone. And there remains the large number of those who were suppressed in unavowed ways. One of the first acts of the new government was to issue an amnesty for exiles and political prisoners. There consequently set in an immediate tide of return. It happened that the old French steamship line of the Messagéries Maritimes brought back most of the exiles, partly because many of them were settled in Paris, partly because of the sympathy of educated Turks and of all revolutionaries for France. So the arrival of the Messagéries boat became a weekly event of the city. Steamers would be chartered to go down the Marmora, crowds would blacken the Galata quay, the windows, balconies, and roofs overlooking it, the adjacent shipping, the old bridge, to welcome back with flags, music, cheers, and frantic whistles men like old Deli Fouad Pasha, mad Fouad Pasha, who prevented the massacre of Armenians in Scutari in 1896; like the Armenian Patriarch who proved too intractable at the same period; like young Prince Sabaëddin, the Sultan’s nephew, who came back from Paris with the coffin of his fugitive father. But not all of these returns were joyful. There were tragic meetings at the coming of men broken by imprisonment or deadly climates—as once when a pale figure was carried from the ship in a chair, amid a silence that was broken only by some one sobbing on the quay. And there were those who returned to the quay every week, scanning the decks of arriving steamers for faces they never found.

Altogether there was matter enough for the eye of an impressionist resentful of the demolishing of his city. Space would never suffice me to report the scenes characteristic or picturesque, the stories romantic and humorous, that could not fail to mark so great an event. The sudden outburst of literary and dramatic activity, the movement toward emancipation of the Turkish women, the honours paid by the Young Turks to the memory of the Armenians massacred in 1896, the visits of friendly deputations from Bulgaria, Greece, and Roumania, the events in the Balkans and the Austrian boycott, the manœuvres of the reactionaries, the removal of the Palace guard, the procedure of the elections, added each its note of colour. Nothing, perhaps, filled the public eye quite so obviously as the primary elections for parliament. Symbolic of what the revolution had striven to attain, this event was celebrated in each district with fitting ceremonies. One district in Stamboul solemnly brought its voting urn to the Sublime Porte on the back of a camel. Five villages on the Bosphorus, forming another district, made a water pageant that reminded one of state days in Venice. But the five great fishing caïques, with their splendid incurving beaks, their high poops gay with flags and trailing rugs, their fourteen to twenty costumed rowers, were no imitation of other days, like the Venetian Bissone. Most imposing of all was the procession that carried the urns of Pera through the city in decorated court carriages, attended by music, banners, soldiers, school children, and other representative bodies to the number of several thousand. Two of these were peculiarly striking. Near the head of the procession, led by an Arab on a camel, rode a detachment of men representing the different races of the empire, each in the costume of his “country.” And later came a long line of carriages in which imams and Armenian priests, imams and Greek priests, imams and Catholic priests, imams and Jewish rabbis, drove two and two in the robes of their various cults.

The opening of parliament itself, with all the circumstance that arms and majesty could lend it, marked a term for those effervescent days. The Young Turks made it a particular point that the ceremony of December 17 should be held, not in the throne-room of Dolma Ba’hcheh, as the Sultan wished, but in the place where the parliament of 1876 had been dissolved. This Palladian structure behind St. Sophia, originally built for the university and remodelled after the dissolution of the first parliament for the uses of the Ministry of Justice, contained no hall of suitable size. There was not even room in the chamber of deputies for the two hundred odd members—if they all had arrived in time for the opening. The invitations were consequently restricted to the smallest possible number: to the greater dignitaries of state, to the heads of foreign missions and their first dragomans—leaving out disappointed secretaries and wives—and to a few representatives of the press. There was perhaps more heartburning among these spoilt children of the century than among any other section of the public. Some of them had travelled great distances to attend this historic inauguration, only to be shut out of it. The press of the country naturally had the first claim. The thorny question of allotting tickets among the press of other countries was settled by giving each head of a foreign mission two tickets to dispose of as he chose. Those fortunate enough to get them were inclined to grumble at the quarters assigned them—a species of low, dark theatre box above that of the ambassadors, from which only the ten or fifteen first to arrive could see the floor. But all could see the imperial box, directly opposite. And I, for one, being no journalist, counted myself lucky to be there at all.

The first arrival of importance was that of the diplomatic corps, led by their formidable German dean, Baron Marschall von Bieberstein. Not least noticeable among them was the Persian ambassador, in a coat so thickly incrusted with gold that one could not tell what colour it was, and wide scarlet trousers and black astrakhan cap. The tall chargé d’affaires of Montenegro was also a striking figure in the national dress of his country—loose trousers thrust into top-boots, embroidered bolero and hanging sleeves, and black pill-box with red top—as was Mgr. Sardi, the Apostolic Delegate, in his flowing violet robes. Another splash of colour was presently made to the right of the tribune by the senators, in gala uniform and decorations. They are forty in number, appointed for life by the Sultan from among active or retired functionaries of state. A sprinkling of green robes of the cult was conspicuous among them. They were followed by the deputies in a body, or by as many of them as had arrived. For in the remoter parts of the empire the elections were not quite through by the time parliament, already a month late, opened. Their prevailing soberness of frock coat and fez was relieved by an occasional military uniform and by a surprising proportion of religious turbans. There were also a few Syrian or Arab head-dresses above picturesque robes of striped silk. In the meantime ministers, religious dignitaries, and certain unofficial guests of the kind known in the East as notables, had been taking their places. The ministers sat at the left of the tribune, facing the house. They were resplendent in gold lace and orders, with the single exception of the white-bearded Sheï’h ül Islam in his simple white robe. Facing the ministers were the green, purple, and fawn-coloured robes of the ülema. On the other side of the steps of the tribune, in front of the senators, were the heads of the non-Moslem sects of the empire. Their black robes and head-dresses made a contrastingly sombre group, in which the red-topped turban of the locum tenens of the Grand Rabbinate and the crimson hat and veil of the Armenian Catholic Patriarch were vivid notes of colour. But the most conspicuous contrast was made by certain of the “notables” present, among whom were members of that loquacious body known as the Balkan Committee and their ladies. I do not know whether the latter appreciated the honour that was done them, alone of their sex. These komitajis were prudently tucked as far out of sight as possible, where, nevertheless, their wayworn British tweeds and sailor-hats did not fail to attract musing Oriental eyes, and to suggest to light-minded impressionists the scenarios of comic operas.

By noon only the president’s tribune and the two boxes facing those of the diplomats and the journalists, reserved for guests from the Palace, remained without an occupant. Great doubt had been expressed as to whether the imperial box would be filled at all. If the matter had been left to Abd ül Hamid’s preference the box would doubtless have remained empty. But the Committee had found a way of overcoming Abd ül Hamid’s preferences, and not only did he reopen in person the parliament he had tried to suppress, but he drove all the way from Beshiktash to Stamboul to do it. He had not seen so much of his capital for fifteen years. The arrival of his brilliant cortège we did not witness from our black pen under the ceiling of the parliament chamber. We heard the fanfare of bugles heralding the approach of majesty, the bands striking up one after the other the Hamidieh March, the cheers sounding nearer and nearer till the last rose from the court below. A few glittering personages near the tribune, a deputy or two from the front row, who had gone to the windows, resumed their places. There was a general stir of expectancy, a last preening of orders and epaulets. After a few minutes a group of very literally gilded youths was ushered into the left hand of the three compartments of the imperial box. They were five of the Sultan’s sons, accompanied by his cousin Abd ül Mejid Effendi. A moment later the box above them filled with members of the imperial suite. In the midst of their gold lace and jewels the black face and white eyeballs of a Palace eunuch were a characteristic note.

These personages had time to admire and to be admired of all beholders before the more august guest of the occasion arrived. In fact it was a full quarter of an hour before a new splendour of uniforms was seen to mount the stairs at the rear of the box, and the Sultan came in sight. He then made the mistake of entering the compartment reserved for his brother Mehmed Reshad Effendi and his cousin Youssouf Izzeddin Effendi, the next two heirs to the throne—who failed to honour the occasion. With earth-sweeping salaams the master of ceremonies inducted his majesty into the central compartment. There seemed to be something less than imperial ease in the hesitation with which he lingered a moment in the rear of the box. He dropped his glove, and the master of ceremonies picked it up. The dead silence that greeted him when he did step forward was a surprise to those who had witnessed European acclamations of royalty. All rose to their feet and stood with folded hands in the Oriental attitude of respect. They did, however, permit themselves to look up. The Sultan stood with his hand on his sword of empire, looking down, a figure of dignity in his plain dark military overcoat, visibly bowed by years and anxiety, yet not so grey as one might expect, keen-eyed, hawk-nosed, full-bearded, taking in one by one the faces that represented every race and region of his wide domains. The silence and the intentness of that mutual regard grew dramatic as the seconds gathered into minutes. “A wolf in a cage!” whispered some one behind me. There was too little room in the epigram for the strangeness of the scene. One could fill the silence with what one pleased of historic visions, of tragic memories, of hatreds and ambitions, of victory and defeat. But all the East was in that unyielding surrender and in that uncelebrated triumph.

The silence was suddenly broken by the voice of the Sultan’s secretary, who began to read, beside the steps of the tribune, the speech from the throne. My Turkish is too small and too colloquial to take in much of so high-flown a document, but I caught references to the perfidy of Austria and Bulgaria and to the author’s satisfaction in being able to open again the assembly for which thirty years ago the country had not been ripe. Twice the house broke into applause, which the Sultan acknowledged with a military salute. At the close of the reading a green-robed mollah offered prayer. The majority of those present listened to it, as Moslems do, in an attitude very much like that of the Greek adorante in Berlin, except that the hands are held lower and closer to the body. When the prayer came to an end, with a fervent responsive amin, the Sultan did a thing that no one had expected. He made a brief speech. But the signal had already been given, according to programme, for bands and cannon to announce the inauguration of the new era. The consequence was that few heard even the sound of his majesty’s voice. In a moment more he was gone.

The entire ceremony, during which all remained on their feet, lasted less than half an hour. When it was over, those who had lost the spectacle of the Sultan’s arrival made haste to secure places whence they might witness that of his departure. The view from the windows of the parliament house was one never to forget—for its own picturesqueness, for its historic significance, for its evocations of the unconquerable vitality, of the dramatic contrasts and indifferences of life. The sun was in gala mood that day, to match the mood and to bring out the predominatingly Asiatic colour of the thousands that packed the square which had been the Forum Augustæum of New Rome. Not only did they pack the square, those Asiatic thousands, and every radiating open space as far as the eye could reach; they loaded its bare trees, they filled the windows and lined the roofs overlooking it, they darkened the buttresses, the cupolas, the minaret galleries of St. Sophia. Two men even clung to the standard of the crescent at the apex of the great dome. The brown chasseurs of Salonica, in recognition of the part they played in the revolution, were given the honour of keeping open a narrow lane through the middle of the square. They were assisted by tall blue Anatolians of the imperial guard and by deputations with flags and inscribed banners. A gilded barouche drove into the courtyard where once had stood the Roman senate. A scarlet-and-gold coachman drove the four superb iron-grey horses, and in front of them pranced a fifth iron-grey mounted by a blue-and-silver outrider. Three buglers in black and scarlet faced the porte-cochère. At the sound of their bugles the soldiers presented arms and a band burst into the imperial march. The thin blue and brown fringe of guards undulated with the eddies of motion that surged through the pressing thousands in their frenzy to see the monarch whom they had shorn of his power. Then, surrounded by the glitter of the princes and his aides, preceded and followed by the scarlet flutter of the lancers’ banderoles, the Caliph of Islam flashed away toward the column of Constantine.