Chapter IV: Part 4

Passing from here into the perfumery bazâr, we once more find ourselves beset with temptations. It is one of the most distinctively Oriental in character of all the bazârs, and its wares were very dear to the heart of the Prophet, who classes together women, children, and perfumes as the three things which gave him the greatest pleasure. Here are to be had those famous Seraglio pastilles designed to perfume kisses; packages of the scented gum prepared by the hardy daughters of Chio to be used in strengthening the gums of delicate Mussulman women; exquisite essence of jessamine and of bergamont and powerful attar of roses, enclosed in red-velvet, gold-embroidered cases, and sold at prices that make one’s hair stand on end; here can be bought ointment for the eyebrows, antimony for the eyes, henne for the nails, soap to soften the Syrian beauty’s skin, and pills to prevent hair from growing on the face of the too masculine Circassian; cedar and orange-water, scent-bags of musk, sandal oil, ambergris, aloes to perfume cups and pipes--a myriad of different powders, pomatums, and waters with fanciful names and destined to uses undreamed of in the prosaic West, each one representing in itself some amorous fancy or seductive caprice, the very refinement of voluptuousness, and exhaling, all together, an odor at once penetrating and sensual, and dreamily suggestive of great languid eyes, soft caressing hands, and the subdued murmur of sighs and embraces.

These fancies are quickly dispelled on turning into the jewelry bazâr, a narrow, dark, deserted street, flanked by wretched-looking little shops, the last places on earth where one would expect to find the fabulous treasures which, as a matter of fact, they do contain. The jewels are kept in oaken coffers, hooped and bound with iron, which stand in the front of the shops under the ever-watchful gaze of the merchant, some old Turk or Hebrew with long beard, and piercing eyes which seem to penetrate into the very recesses of your pocket and examine the contents of your purse; occasionally one or another of them, standing erect before his door, as you pass close by first regards you fixedly in the eye, and then with a rapid movement flashes before your face a diamond of Golconda, a sapphire from Ormus, or a ruby of Gramschid, which at the slightest negative movement on your part is as quickly withdrawn from sight. Others, circulating slowly about, stop you in the middle of the street, and, after casting a suspicious glance all around, draw forth from their bosoms a dirty bit of rag in whose folds is hidden a fine Brazilian topaz or Macedonian turquoise, watching like some tempting demon to see its effect upon you. Others, again, after scrutinizing you closely, come to the conclusion that you have not the precious-stones look, as it were, and do not trouble themselves to offer you anything, and you may wear the face of a saint or the airs of a Crœsus, and it will not avail to open those oaken boxes. The opal necklaces, emerald stars and pendants, the coronets and crescents of pearls of Ophir, the dazzling heaps of beryls, agates, garnets, of crystals, aventurine, and lapis lazuli remain inexorably hidden from the eyes of the curious, provided he has no money, or, at all events, from those of a poor devil of an Italian writer. The utmost such an one can accomplish is to ask the price of a coral or sandal-wood or amber _tespi_ which he runs through his fingers, as the Turk does, to pass away the time in the intervals of his forced labors.

If you want to be really amused, though, just go into the Frankish shops, those which deal in everything, and where there are goods to suit all pockets. Hardly has your foot crossed the threshold before a crowd of people spring up from you don’t know where, and in an instant you are surrounded. It is out of the question to transact your business with one single person. What between the merchant himself, his partners, his agents, and the various hangers-on of the establishment, you never have to do with less than a half dozen at least. If you escape being floored by one, you are, so to speak, strung up by another. There is no way by which final defeat can be warded off. Words fail to describe their patience, art, and persistency, the diabolical subterfuges to which they resort in order to force you to buy what they choose. Finding everything put at an exorbitant price, you offer a third, upon which they drop their arms in sign of profound discouragement or beat their foreheads in dumb despair, or else they burst into an impassioned torrent of appeal and expostulation calculated to touch your feelings as a man and a brother. You are hard and cruel; you are evidently determined to force them to close their shops; your object is to reduce them to misery and want; you have no compassion for their innocent children; they wonder plaintively what injury they could ever have done you that you should be so bent upon their ruin. While you are being told the price of an article an agent from a neighboring shop hisses in your ear, “Don’t buy it; you are being cheated.” Taking this for a piece of honest advice, you soon discover that there is an understanding between him and the shopkeeper; the information that you are being imposed upon in the matter of a shawl is only given in order to fleece you far worse in the purchase of a hanging. While you are examining the various articles they talk in broken sentences among themselves, gesticulating, striking their breasts, casting looks full of dark meaning. If you understand Greek, the conversation is in Turkish; if you are familiar with that, it is in Armenian; if you show any knowledge of Armenian, they employ Spanish; but whatever language is adopted, they know enough of it to cheat you. If after some time you still preserve an unbroken front, they begin stroking you down--tell you how beautifully you talk their tongue; that you have all the air and manner of a real gentleman; that they will never be able to forget your attractive face. They talk of the land of your birth, where they have passed so many happy years. They have, in fact, been everywhere. Then they make you a cup of fresh coffee and offer to accompany you to the custom-house when you leave in order to interpose between you and the overbearing authorities; which means, being interpreted, in order to secure a final opportunity for cheating you and your fellow-travellers, in case you may have any. They turn their whole shop upside down for you, and should you finally leave without having bought anything, you get no black looks, as they have a sustaining conviction that the harvest is only deferred; if not to-day, then some other day: you are certain to return to the bazâr, when their bloodhounds will scent you out, and should you escape falling into their clutches, you will undoubtedly be caught in the toils of one of their associates; if they do not fleece you as shopkeepers, they will flay you as agents; if they fail to overreach you in the bazâr, they will get the better of you at the custom-house. Of what nationality are these men? No one knows: by dint of having a smattering of so many different languages they have lost their original accent, and the constant habit of acting a part has ended by altering the natural lines of their faces to such a degree as to efface their national traits. They belong to any race you choose, and their profession is whatever you may have need of at the moment--shopkeeper, guide, interpreter, money-lender, and, above all, past master in the art of gulling the universe.

The Mussulman shopkeepers present an altogether different field of observation. Among them may still be found examples of those venerable Turks, rarely enough to be seen now-a-days in the streets of Constantinople, who look like living representatives of the days of the Muhammads and Bayezids, remnants left intact of that mighty Ottoman edifice whose walls received their first rude shock in the reforms of Mahmûd, and which since then, year by year, stone by stone, have been crumbling into ruins. One must now go to the Great Bazâr and search in the dimmest shops of the most obscure streets to behold those enormous turbans of the time of Suleiman, shaped like the dome of a mosque, and beneath them the impressive face, the expressionless eye, hooked nose, long white beard, antique purple or orange caftan, full, plaited trousers confined about the waist by a huge sash, and the haughty and melancholy bearing of a once all-powerful people. With expressions dulled by opium or lighted up with the fire of fanaticism, they sit all day in the backs of their dens with crossed legs and folded arms, calm and unmoved like idols, awaiting with closed lips the predestined purchaser. If business is brisk, they murmur, “_Mach Allah!_” (God be praised!); if dull, “_Ol-sun!_” (So be it!), and bow their heads resignedly. Some employ their time in reading the Koran; others run the beads of the _tespi_ through their fingers, murmuring under their breath the hundred epithets of Allah; others, whose affairs have prospered, _drink their narghilehs_, as the Turks express it, slowly revolving around them their sleepy, voluptuous-looking eyes; others sit with drooping lids and bent brow in an attitude of profound meditation. Of what are they thinking? Possibly of their sons killed beneath the walls of Sebastopol, of their far-off caravans, of the lost pleasures of youth, or possibly of the eternal gardens promised by the Prophet, where, in the shade of the palm and the pomegranate, they will espouse those dark-eyed brides never yet profaned by mortal or geni. There is about each individual one of them something striking and original, and all are picturesque. The shop forms a framework for a picture full of color and suggestion; one’s mind is instantly filled with images taken from history or what is known of the domestic life of this strange people. This spare, bronzed man with a bold, alert expression is an Arab; he has led his train of camels laden with gems and alabaster from the interior of his far-off country, and more than once has felt the balls of the robbers of the desert whiz past him. This one in the yellow turban, bearing himself with an air of command, has crossed the solitudes of Syria on horseback, carrying with him treasures of silk from Tyre and Sidon. Yonder negro, with his head enveloped in an old Persian shawl, is from Nubia; his forehead is covered with scars made by magicians to preserve him from death, and he holds his head aloft as though still beholding before him the Colossus of Thebes or summits of the Pyramids. This good-looking Moor, with his black eyes and pallid skin, wrapped in a long snow-white cloak, has carried his _caic_ and his carpets from the uttermost western limits of the Atlas chain. That green-turbaned Turk, with the emaciated face, has this very year returned from the great pilgrimage. After seeing relatives and companions die of thirst amid the interminable plains of Asia Minor, he finally reached Mecca in the last stages of exhaustion, and, after dragging himself seven times around the _Kaaba_, finally fell half swooning upon the Black Stone, covering it with impassioned kisses. This giant with a pale face, arched brows, and piercing eyes, who has far more the air of a warrior than of a merchant, his entire bearing breathing nothing but pride and arrogance, has brought his furs hither from the northern regions of the Caucasus, and in his day struck at a blow the head from off the shoulders of more than one Cossack. And this poor wool-merchant, with his flat face and small oblique eyes, active and sinewy as an athlete, it is not so long since he was saying his prayers in the shadow of that immense dome which rises above the sepulchre of Tamerlane. Starting from Samarcand, he crossed the desert of Great Bûkharia, and, passing safely through the midst of the Turkoman hordes, crossed the Dead Sea, escaped the balls of the Circassians, and, after returning thanks to Allah in the mosques of Trebizond, has at last come to seek his fortune in Stambul, from whence, as he grows old, he will surely return once more to his beloved Tartary, which always claims the first place in his heart.

The shoe bazâr is one of the most resplendent of all, and possibly fills the brain more than any other with wild longings and riotous desires. It consists of two glittering rows of shops, which make the street in which it is situated look like a suite of royal apartments or like one of those gardens in the Arabian fairy-stories where the fruit trees are laden with pearls and have golden leaves. There are shoes enough there to supply the feet of every court in Europe and Asia. The walls are completely covered with slippers of the sauciest shapes and most striking and fanciful colors, made out of skins, velvet, brocade, and satin, ornamented with filigree-work, gold, tinsel, pearls, silken tassels, swan’s down; flowered and starred in gold and silver; so thickly covered with intricate embroidery as to completely hide the original texture; and glittering with emeralds and sapphires. You can buy shoes there for the boatman’s bride or for the Seraglio belle; you may pay five francs a pair or a thousand. There are morocco shoes destined to walk the paved streets of Pera, and beside them Turkish slippers which will one day glide over the thick carpets of some pasha’s harem; light wooden shoes which will resound on the marbles of the imperial baths; tiny slippers of white satin on which ardent lovers’ kisses will be showered; and it may well be that yonder pair encrusted with pearls will some day stand beside the couch of the Padishâh himself, awaiting the pretty feet of some beautiful Georgian. But how, you ask yourself, is it possible for any feet to get into such tiny little receptacles? Some of them seem intended to fit the houris and fairies--long as the leaf of a lily, wide as the leaf of a rose, of such dimensions as to throw all Andalusia into despair; graceful as a dream--not slippers at all, but jewels, toys, objects to stand on one’s table full of bonbons or to keep billetsdoux in. Once allow your imagination to dwell upon the foot which could wear them, and you are seized with an insane desire to behold it yourself, to stroke and caress it like some pretty plaything. This bazâr is one of those most frequented by strangers: it is not unusual to encounter young Europeans wandering about with slips of paper in their hands upon which are inscribed the measurements of some small French or Italian foot, of which they are possibly quite proud, and it is amusing to see their faces fall and the look of incredulous astonishment which follows the discovery that some slipper which has attracted their fancy is far too small; while others, having asked the price of a pair they had thought of buying, receive so overwhelming a reply that they make off without a word. Here, too, may sometimes be seen Mussulman ladies (_hanum_) with long white veils, and one can often catch, in passing, fragments of their lengthy dialogues with the shopkeepers, brief sentences of that beautiful language, uttered in sweet, clear tones, which fall upon the ear like the notes of a mandolin: “_Buni catscia verersin!_” (How much is this?) “_Pahalli dir_” (It is too high). “_Ziade veremem_” (I won’t pay any more). And then a childish, ringing laugh, which makes you feel like patting them on the head or pinching their cheeks.

But the richest and most picturesque of all is the armory bazâr. It is more like a museum, really, than a bazâr, overflowing with treasures and filled with objects which at once transport the imagination into the realms of history and legend. Every sort and shape of weapon is there, fantastic, horrible, cruel-looking, which has ever been brandished in defence of Islamism from Mecca to the Danube, polished and set out in warlike array, as though but now laid down by the fanatical soldiery of Muhammad and Selim. You seem to see the glittering eyes of those formidable sultans, those savage Janissaries, those _spahis_ and _azabs_, drunk with blood, amid the gleaming blades--those _silidars_, to whom pity and fear were alike unknown, and who strewed Europe and Asia Minor with severed heads and stiffened corpses. Here are displayed those renowned cimeters capable of cutting through a floating feather or striking off the ears of audacious ambassadors; those heavy Turkish daggers which cleaved downward at a blow from the skull to the very heart; mighty clubs which crashed through Servian and Hungarian helmets; _yataghans_, their handles inlaid with ivory and encrusted with amethysts and rubies, and on their blades the engraved record of the number of heads they have cut off; poniards with silver, velvet, or satin sheaths and agate or ivory handles set with coral, turquoise, and garnets, inscribed in golden lettering with verses from the Koran, their blades curved backward as though feeling for a heart. Who can tell whether amid all this strange and terrible array there may not be the cimeter of Orcano or the sabre with which the powerful arm of the warrior-dervish Abd-el-Murad struck off the heads of his enemies at a single blow; or that famous yataghan with which Sultan Moussa clove asunder the body of Hassan from shoulder to heart; or the huge cimeter of the Bulgarian giant who set the first ladder in place against the walls of Constantinople; or the club with which Muhammad II. felled his rapacious soldiers beneath the roof of St. Sophia; or the mighty Damascus sabre with which Scanderbeg cut down Firuzi Pasha beneath the walls of Stetigrad? All the most horrible massacres and blood-curdling murders of Ottoman history, revolts of the Janissaries, and black deeds of treachery come crowding into one’s mind at the mere sight of these terrific weapons, and one fancies that bloodstains can be detected upon the gleaming blades, and that those old Turks lurking in the dim recesses of their shops have gathered them from the field of battle--yes, and the bodies of their owners as well--and that even now their shattered skeletons are occupying some obscure corner close at hand. In among the arms are great blue and scarlet velvet saddles, worked with gold stars and crescents and embroidered in pearls, with plumed frontals and chased silver bits; saddle-cloths magnificent as royal mantles; trappings which remind one of the _Thousand and One Nights_, seemingly intended for the use of a king of the genii making his triumphal entry into a golden city in the land of dreams. Suspended on the walls above all these treasures are antique firelock muskets, clumsy Albanian pistols, long Arabian guns worked and chased like pieces of jewelry; ancient shields made out of bark, tortoise-shell, or hippopotamus skin; Circassian armor, Cossack shields, Mongolian head-pieces, Turkish bows, executioners’ axes, great blades of uncouth shape and full of horrible suggestions, each one of which seems to bear witness to a crime committed, and brings before one frightful visions of death-agonies.

Seated cross-legged in the midst of all these objects of magnificence and horror are the merchants who, of all those to be found in the Great Bazâr, present the most striking and distinctive examples of the true Mussulman. They are, for the most part, old, of forbidding aspect, lean as anchorites, haughty as sultans, belonging apparently to another age and wearing the dress of a bygone era: it would seem as though they had arisen from the dead for the purpose of recalling their degenerate descendants to the forgotten austerities of their ancient race.

Another spot well worth seeing is the old-clothes bazâr. Rembrandt would simply have taken up his abode here, and Goya have expended his last _peseta_. Any one who has never been in an Oriental second-hand shop can form no idea of the variety and richness of the rags, pomp of color, and irony of contrast to be found in them--a sight at once fantastic, melancholy, and repellent. They are a sort of rag-sewer, in which the refuse of harem, barrack, court, and theatre await together the moment when some artist’s caprice or beggar’s necessity shall once more call them forth into the light of day. From long poles fastened to the walls depend antique Turkish uniforms, swallow-tailed coats, fine gentlemen’s cloaks, dervishes’ tunics, Bedouins’ mantles, all greasy, torn, and faded, looking as though they had been taken by force from their former owners, and strongly resembling the booty found on footpads and assassins which may be seen on exhibition in the Court of Assizes. In among all these rags and tatters one catches the glitter of an occasional bit of gold embroidery; old silk scarfs and turbans, all unwrapped, dangle to and fro; a rich shawl with ragged edges; a velvet corsage looking as though some rude hand had torn off its trimming of pearls and fur; slippers and veils which may once have belonged to some beautiful sinner, whose body, sewn up in a bag, now sleeps quietly enough beneath the rippling waters of the Bosphorus;--these and countless other feminine garments and adornments, of all manner of charming shapes and colors, hang imprisoned between rough Circassian caftans, long black Jewish capes, rusty cartridge-boxes, heavy cloaks and coarse tunics beneath whose folds who knows how often the bandit’s musket or dagger of the assassin may have been hidden? On toward evening, when the subdued light from the roof above becomes still more uncertain, all these garments, as they sway back and forth in the wind, assume the look and air of human bodies strung up there by some murderer’s hand, and just then, as your eye catches the sinister glance of one of those old Jews seated watchfully in the rear of his gloomy den of a shop, you cannot avoid fancying that the skinny claw with which he scratches his forehead can be no other than the one which tightened the rope--a soothing idea which causes you to glance involuntarily over your shoulder to see if the entrance to the bazâr is still open.

One day of wandering here and there will not suffice if you really wish to see every part of this strange city. There is the fez bazâr, in which are to be found fezzes of every country in the world, from that of Morocco to the Vienna fez, ornamented with inscriptions from the Koran, which serve to ward off evil spirits; the fez which is worn perched on the tops of their heads by the pretty Greek girls of Smyrna, surmounting their coils of black hair intertwined with coins; the little red fez of the Turkish women; soldiers’, generals’, sultans’, dandies’ fezzes, of all shades of red and every style, from the primitive ones worn in the days of Orcano to the large and elegant fez of Mahmûd, emblem of reform and an abomination in the eyes of Mussulmans of the old school.

Then there is the fur bazâr, where may be seen the sacred fur of the black wolf, which at one time none but the Sultan himself and his grand vizier were allowed to wear; the marten, used to trim state caftans; skins of white and black bears; astrakhan, ermine, blue wolf, and rich sable skins, upon which in old times the sultans would expend fabulous sums of money.

Then the cutlery bazâr is worth a visit, if only to examine those huge Turkish shears whose bronzed and gilded blades, adorned with fantastic designs of birds and flowers, open with a murderous sweep wide enough to swallow up entirely the head of an unfavorable critic.

There are the gold-thread embroidery, china, household utensils, and tailors’ bazârs, all differing from one another in size, shape, and character, but all in one respect alike, that in none of them do you ever see a woman either attending to the customers or working apart. At the very most, it may occasionally happen that a Greek woman, seated for a moment in front of some tailor’s shop, will timidly offer to sell you a handkerchief she has just finished embroidering. Oriental jealousy forbids shopkeeping to the fair sex, as offering too wide a field for coquetry and intrigue.

In other parts of the Great Bazâr it is as well for a stranger not to venture unless he is accompanied by a dragoman or one of the shopkeepers. Those are the interior parts of the various districts into which this strange city is divided--the islands, as it were, about which wind and twist the rapid currents of streets and byways. If it is a difficult matter to keep from losing your way among the main thoroughfares, in here it is quite impossible. From passage-ways scarcely wider than a man’s shoulders, where it is necessary to stoop to avoid striking your head, you come out upon tiny courtyards encumbered with bales and boxes, where hardly so much as a single ray of light can penetrate. Feeling your way down flights of wooden steps, you come to other courts lighted only by lanterns, from which you descend below ground, or, climbing up again into what passes for the light of day, stumble with bent head through long, winding corridors, beneath damp roofs and between black and moss-grown walls, to come at last upon some small hidden doorway, and suddenly find yourself exactly where you started. Everywhere shadowy forms are seen coming and going; dusky shapes stand immovable in dark corners, outlines of persons handling merchandise or counting money; lights which flash ahead of you at one moment, and the next, disappear; a sound of hurrying footsteps, of low, eager voices, coming from you don’t know where; reflections thrown from unseen lights; suspicious encounters; strange odors like those one might expect to escape from a witch’s cave; and apparently no possible means of escape from it all. The dragoman is very apt to conduct his victim through these quarters on his way to those shops, usually somewhat apart, which contain a little of everything, like Great Bazârs in miniature or a superior sort of second-hand shop, extremely curious and interesting, but extremely perilous as well, since they contain such a variety of rare and attractive objects as to woo the money out of the pocket of the veriest miser. The shopkeepers here are great solemn knaves, thoroughly well versed in every art appertaining to their business, and, polyglot like their brothers of the trade, have a certain dramatic power which they employ in the most entertaining manner to tempt people to buy, sometimes rising to the level of genuinely good acting. Their shops usually consist of dark little holes cluttered up with boxes and chests of drawers, where lights have to be lit in order to see anything, and there is barely enough space to turn around in. After displaying a few trifles inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, some bits of Chinese porcelain, a Japanese vase or two, and some other things of the same sort, the shopkeeper informs you with an impressive air that he sees what sort of person you are, and will now bring out something especially suited to you. He then proceeds to pull out a certain drawer, whose contents he empties upon the table. There are all manner of knick-knacks and gewgaws--a peacock-feather fan, a bracelet made of old Turkish coins, a little leather cushion with the Sultan’s monogram embroidered upon it in gold, a Persian hand-glass painted with a scene from the _Book of Paradise_, one of those tortoise-shell spoons with which Turks eat cherry compôte, an ancient decoration of the Order of Osmanieh. You don’t care for any of these, either? Very well. He turns out the contents of another, and this is a drawer which, as a matter of fact, was being reserved for your eye alone. There is a broken elephant’s tusk; a Trebizond bracelet, looking as though it had been made from a lock of silver hair; a Japanese idol; a sandal-wood comb from Mecca; a large Turkish spoon, chased and filigreed; an antique silver narghileh, gilded and inscribed; bits of mosaic from St. Sophia; a heron’s feather, which once ornamented the turban of Selim III.: for the truth of this last statement the merchant, as a man of honor, is willing to vouch. And still there is nothing which suits your fancy? Here, then, is another drawer, crammed full of treasures--an ostrich egg from Sahara; a Persian inkstand; a chased ring; a Mingrelian bow, with its quiver made out of an elk’s skin; a Circassian two-pointed head-piece; a jasper rosary; a smelling-bottle of beaten gold; a Turkish talisman; a camel-driver’s knife; a box of _attar-gul_. In Heaven’s name, is there still nothing that tempts you? Have you no presents to make? no beloved relatives? no dear friends? Perhaps, though, your tastes run to stuffs and carpets. Well, here too he can assist you as a friend. “Behold, milor, this striped Kurdistan mantle, this lion skin; yonder rug is from Aleppo, with its little steel fastenings, while this _Casablanca_ carpet, three fingers thick, is guaranteed to last for four generations; here, Your Excellency, are old cushions, old brocade scarfs, old silken coverlids, a little faded, a little frayed out at the edges, it is true, but such embroidery as you could not get in these days, even if you were to offer a fortune. You, _caballero_, have been brought here by a friend of mine, and for that reason I am going to let you have this ancient sash for the sum of five napoleons, and live myself on bread and garlic for one week in order to make up the loss.” Should even this magnificent offer fail to move you, he whispers in your ear that he has in his possession, and is moreover willing to sell, the very rope with which the terrible Seraglio mutes strangled Nassuh Pasha, Muhammad Third’s grand vizier. And if you laugh in his face and decline to swallow it, he gives it up at once like a sensible man, and proceeds to make his final effort, displaying before you, in rapid succession, a horse’s tail such as were once carried before and after every pasha; a janissary’s helmet, spattered with blood, which his own father picked up on the day of the famous massacre; a scrap of one of the flags carried in the Crimea, showing the silver star and crescent; a wash-basin studded with agates; a brazier of beaten copper; a dromedary-collar with its shells and bells; a eunuch’s whip made of hippopotamus leather; a gold-bound Koran; a Khorassan scarf; a pair of slippers from a kadyn’s wardrobe; a candlestick made from the claw of an eagle,--until at length your imagination is fired. The longing to possess breaks forth, and you are seized with a mad impulse to throw down your purse, watch, overcoat, everything you have, and fill your pockets with booty. One must indeed be an uncommonly well-balanced person, a very mountain of wisdom, to be able to withstand the temptations of this place, whence many an artist has come forth as poor as Job, and where more than one rich man has thrown away his fortune.

But before the Great Bazâr closes let us take a turn around to see how it looks at the end of the day. The crowd moves along more hurriedly; shopkeepers call out to you and gesticulate more imperiously than ever; Greeks and Armenians run through the streets calling aloud, with shawls or rugs hung over their arms, or form into groups, bargaining and discussing as they move about, then break up and form again into other groups farther off; horses, carriages, beasts of burden, all moving in the direction of the gateway, pass by in endless files. At this hour all those tradespeople with whom you have had fruitless negotiations during the day start to life again, circling around you in the dusk like so many bats: you see them peeping out from behind columns; come suddenly upon them at every turn; they cross in front of you or pass close by you gazing abstractedly in the air, to remind you by their presence of that certain rug or that bit of jewelry, and, if possible, reawaken your desire to possess it. Sometimes you are followed by a whole troop of them at once: if you stop, they do the same; if you slip down a side street, you find them there before you; turning suddenly, you are aware of a dozen sharp eyes fixed upon you which seem to fairly devour you whole. But already the fading light warns the crowd to disperse. Beneath the vaulted roof can be heard the voice of an invisible muezzin announcing the sunset from some wooden minaret. Some Turks have spread strips of carpet in the street before their shop-doors and are murmuring the evening prayer; others perform their ablutions at the fountains. The centenarians of the armor bazâr have already shut to their great iron doors; the smaller bazârs are empty; the farther ends of the corridors are lost in shadow, and the openings of the side streets look like the mouths of caves. Camels suddenly loom up close to you in the uncertain light; the voices of the water-carriers echo distantly among the arched roofs; the Turk quickens his step and the eunuch’s eyes grow more alert; strangers are seen hurrying away; the entrance is closed; the day ended.

And now on all sides I can hear the questions: What about St. Sophia? and the old Seraglio? and the Sultan’s palaces? and the Castle of the Seven Towers? and Abdul-Aziz? and the Bosphorus. All in good time: each one of them shall be fully described in turn, but for still a little while longer let us wander here and there about the city, touching at every page upon some new theme just as some new idea strikes our fancy at every step.

LIFE IN CONSTANTINOPLE.

THE LIGHT.

And first of all I must speak of the light. One of my chief pleasures at Constantinople was to watch the sun rise and set from the bridge of the Validéh Sultan. At daybreak in the autumn there is almost always a light fog hanging over the Golden Horn, through which the city can only be seen indistinctly, as though one were looking through those thin gauze curtains which are lowered across the stage of a theatre in order to hide the details of some grand spectacular effect. Skutari is quite invisible; only her hills, a vague outline, can be faintly traced against the eastern sky. The bridge, as well as both banks, is deserted. Constantinople is buried in slumber, and the profound silence and solitude lend solemnity and impressiveness to the scene. Presently behind the Skutari hills the sky begins to show streaks of gold, and, one by one, against that luminous background, the inky points of the cypress trees stand out clear and defined, like a company of giants drawn up in battle-array on the heights of her vast cemetery. Now a single ray of light flashes from one end to the other of the Golden Horn, like the first faint sigh of returning consciousness, as the great city stirs and slowly awakens once more to life. Then, behind the cypresses on the Asiatic shore, a fiery eye shines forth, and immediately upon the white summits of St. Sophia’s four minarets an answering blush is seen. In rapid succession from hill to hill, from mosque to mosque, to the farthest end of the Golden Horn, every minaret turns to rose, every dome to silver. The crimson flush creeps down from one terrace to another; the light increases, the veil is lifted, and all of Stambul lies revealed, rosy and resplendent on the heights, tinged with blue and violet shadows on the water’s edge, but everywhere fresh and sparkling as though just risen from the waves. In proportion as the sun rises higher and higher the delicacy of the first coloring disappears, swallowed up in the flood of dazzling light, which becomes so white and blinding as in turn to slightly obscure everything, until toward evening, when the glorious spectacle recommences. So clear does the atmosphere then become that from Galata you can easily distinguish each separate tree on the farthermost point of Kadi-keui. The huge profile of Stambul is thrown out against the sky with such distinctness and accuracy of detail that it would be quite possible to note one by one every minaret, every spire and cypress tree, that crowns her heights from Seraglio Point to the cemetery of Eyûb. The waters of the Bosphorus and Golden Horn turn to a marvellous ultramarine; the sky, of the color of amethysts in the east, grows fiery as it reaches Stambul, lighting up the horizon with a hundred tints of crimson and gold, making one think of the first day of creation. Stambul grows dim, Galata golden, while Skutari, receiving the full blaze of the setting sun upon her thousand casements, looks like a city devoured by flames. And this is the most perfect moment in all the twenty-four hours in which to see Constantinople. It is a rapid succession of the most exquisite tints--pale gold, rose, and lilac--mingling and blending one with another on the hillsides and water’s surface, lending to first one part of the city and then to another the finishing touch to its perfect beauty, and revealing a thousand modest charms of hill- and country-side, which were too shy to thrust themselves into notice beneath the blaze of the noonday sun. It is then that you see the great melancholy suburbs losing themselves amid the shadows of the valleys--little purple-tinted hamlets smiling on the hilltops; towns and villages which languish and droop as though their life were ebbing away; others disappear from view, as you look at them, like fires which have been suddenly extinguished; others, again, apparently quite dead, come unexpectedly to life again, all aglow, and sparkle joyously for still some moments longer in the last rays of the sun. Finally, however, nothing remains but two shining summits on the Asiatic shore--Mt. Bûlgurlù and the point of the cape which guards the entrance to the Propontis. At first they are two golden coronets, then two little crimson caps, then two rubies; and then Constantinople is plunged in shadow, while ten thousand voices from ten thousand minarets announce that the sun has set.

THE BIRDS.

Constantinople possesses a grace and gayety all her own emanating from her myriads of birds of every species, objects of especial veneration and affection among the Turks. Mosque and grove, ancient wall and garden, palace and courtyard, are full of song, of the cheerful sound of twittering and chirping; everywhere there is the rush of wings, everywhere the busy, active little lives go on. Sparrows come boldly into the houses and eat from the women’s and children’s hands; swallows build their nests over the doorways of cafés and beneath the roofs of bazârs; innumerable flocks of pigeons, maintained by means of legacies from different sultans as well as private individuals, form black and white garlands around the cornices of the domes and terraces of the minarets; gulls circle joyously about the granaries; thousands of turtle-doves bill and coo among the cypress trees in the cemeteries; all around the Castle of the Seven Towers ravens croak and vultures hover significantly; kingfishers come and go in long lines between the Black Sea and Sea of Marmora; while storks may be seen resting upon the domes of solitary mausoleums. For the Turk each one of these birds possesses some pleasing quality or lucky influence. The turtle-dove is the patron of lovers; the swallow will protect from fire any building where her nest is built; the stork performs a yearly pilgrimage to Mecca; while the halcyon carries the souls of the faithful to Paradise. Hence they feed and protect them both from religious motives and from gratitude, and in return the birds make a continual festival around their houses, on the water, and among the tombs. In every quarter of Stambul they soar and circle about, grazing against you in their noisy flights, and filling the entire city with something of the joyous freedom of the open country, constantly bringing up before one’s mind images of nature.

ASSOCIATIONS.

In no other city of Europe do the sites and monuments, either legendary or historical, act so forcibly upon the imagination as at Stambul, because in no other spot do they record events at once so recent and so picturesque. Elsewhere, in order to get away from the prose of modern every-day life, one is obliged to go back for several centuries; at Stambul a few years suffice. Legend, or what has all the character and force of legend, dates from yesterday. It is not many years since, in the square of Et-Meidan, the celebrated massacre of the Janissaries took place; not many years since the waters of the Sea of Marmora cast up upon the banks of the imperial gardens those twenty sacks containing each the body of a beauty of Mustafa’s harem; not long since Brancovano’s family was executed in the Castle of the Seven Towers, or European ambassadors were pinioned between two _kapuji-basci_ in the presence of the Grand Seigneur, upon whose half-averted countenance there glowed a mysterious light; or within the walls of the old Seraglio that life--so extraordinary--a mingling of horrors, love, and folly, ceased finally to exist, which now seems to belong to such a far-distant past. Wandering about the streets of Stambul and reflecting upon all these things, you cannot help a feeling of astonishment at the calm, cheerful aspect of the city, gay with color and vegetation. “Ah, traitoress!” you cry, “what have you done with all those mountains of heads, those lakes of blood? How is it possible that everything has been so cleverly concealed, so wiped out and obliterated, that not a trace remains?”

On the Bosphorus, beneath the Seraglio walls and just opposite Leander’s Tower, which rises from the water like a lover’s monument, you may still behold the inclined plane down which the bodies of the unfaithful beauties of the harem were rolled into the sea; in the middle of the Et-Meidan the serpentine column still bears witness to the force of Muhammad the Conqueror’s famous sabre; on the Mahmûd bridge the spot is still pointed out on which the fiery sultan annihilated at a single blow the adventurous dervish who had dared to fling an anathema in his face; in the Holy Well of the Balukli church the miraculous fish still swim about which foretold the fall of the City of the Palæologi; beneath the trees of the Sweet Waters of Asia you can visit those shady retreats where a dissolute sultana was wont to bestow upon the favorite of the hour that fatal love whose certain sequence was death. Every doorway, every tower, every mosque and park and open square, records some strange event--a tragedy, a love-story, a mystery, the absolutism of a padishah or the reckless caprice of a sultana; everything has a history of its own, and wherever you turn the near-by objects, the distant view, the balmy perfumed air, the silence, all unite to transport him whose mind is stored with these histories of the past out of himself, his era, and the city of to-day, so that not infrequently, when suddenly confronted with the suggestion that it is high time to think of returning to the hotel, he asks himself confusedly what it means, how can there be a “hotel.”

RESEMBLANCES.

In those early days, fresh from reading masses of Oriental literature, I kept recognizing in the people I met on the streets famous personages who figure in the legends and history of the East: sometimes they answered so entirely to the picture I had drawn in my own mind of some celebrated character that I would find myself stopping short in the street to gaze after them. How often have I seized my friend’s arm, and, pointing out some passer-by, exclaimed, “There he goes, by Jove! Don’t you recognize him?” In the square of the Sultan Validéh I have many a time seen the gigantic Turk who hurled down rocks and stones upon the heads of Baglione’s soldiers before the walls of Nicea; near one of the mosques I came across Unm Dgiemil, the old witch of Mecca who sowed thorns and brambles in front of Mohammed’s house; coming out of the book bazâr one day, I ran against Digiemal-eddin, the great scholar of Brusa, who knew all the Arabian dictionary by heart, walking along with a volume tucked under his arm; I have passed close enough to Ayesha, the favorite wife of the Prophet, to receive a steady look from those eyes “like twin stars reflected in a well.” I recognized in the Et-Meidan the beautiful and unfortunate Greek killed at the foot of the serpentine column by a ball from the huge guns of Orban; turning a sharp corner of one of the narrow streets of Phanar, I found myself suddenly face to face with Kara-Abderrahman, the handsomest young Turk of the days of Orkhan; I have seen Coswa, Mohammed’s she-camel, and recognized Kara-bidut, Selim’s black charger; I have encountered poor Fighani, the poet, who was condemned to go about Stambul harnessed to an ass for having made Ibrahim’s grand vizier the subject of a lampoon; I saw in one of the cafés the unwieldy form of Soliman, the fat admiral, whom the united efforts of four powerful slaves could with difficulty drag up from his divan; and Ali, the grand vizier, who failed to find throughout all Arabia a horse fit to carry him; and Mahmûd Pasha, that ferocious Hercules who strangled Suleiman’s son; and, established before the entrance of the copyists’ bazâr near the Bayezid square, that stupid Ahmed II., who would say nothing all day but “_Kosc! kosc!_” (Very well! very well!) Every character in the _Thousand and One Nights_--the Aladdins, the Zobeids, the Sinbads, the Gulnars, the old Jew dealers with their magic lamps and their enchanted carpets for sale--passed before me one after another like a procession of so many phantoms.

COSTUMES.

This is perhaps the very best period in which to study the dress of the Mussulman population of Constantinople. In the last generation, as will probably be the case in the next, it presented too uniform an appearance. You find it in a sort of transition stage, and presenting, consequently, a wonderful variety of form and color. The steady advance of the reform party, the resistance of the conservative Turks, the uncertainty and vacillation of the great mass of the people, hesitating between the two extremes--every aspect, in short, of the conflict which is being waged between ancient and modern Turkey--is faithfully reflected in the dress of her people. The old-fashioned Turk still wears his turban, his caftan and sash, and the traditional yellow morocco slippers, and, if he is one of the more strict and precise kind, a veritable Turk of the old school, the turban will be of vast proportions. The reformed Turk wears a long black coat buttoned close up under the chin, and dark shoes and trousers, preserving nothing Turkish in his costume but the fez. Some among the younger and bolder spirits have even gone farther, and, discarding the black frock-coat, substitute for it an open cut-away, light trousers, fancy cravat and jewelry, and carry a cane, and a flower in the buttonhole. Between these and those, the wearers of the caftan and the wearers of the coat, there is a deep gulf fixed. They no longer have anything in common but the name of Turk, and are in reality two separate nations. He of the turban still believes implicitly in the bridge Sirat, finer than a hair, sharper than a cimeter, which leads to the infernal regions; he faithfully performs his ablutions at the appointed hours, and at sunset shuts himself into his house. He of the frock-coat, on the contrary, laughs at the Prophet, has his photograph taken, talks French, and spends his evening at the theatre. Between these two extremes are those who, having departed somewhat from the ancient dress of their countrymen, are still unwilling to Europeanize themselves altogether. Some of them, while wearing turbans, yet have them so exceedingly small that some day they can be quietly exchanged for the fez without creating too much scandal; others who still wear the caftan have already adopted the fez; others, again, conform to the general fashion of the ancient costume, but have left off the sash and slippers as well as the bright colors, and little by little will get rid of the rest as well. The women alone still adhere to their veils and the long mantles covering the entire person; but the veil has grown transparent, and not infrequently reveals the outline of a little hat and feathers, while the mantle as often as not conceals a Parisian costume of the latest mode. Every year a thousand caftans disappear to make room for as many black coats; every day sees the death of a Turk of the old school, the birth of one of the new. The newspaper replaces the _tespi_, the cigar the chibuk; wine is used instead of flavored water, carriages instead of the _arabà_; the French grammar supersedes the Arabian, the piano the _timbur_; stone houses rise on the sites of wooden ones. Everything is undergoing change and transformation. At the present rate it may well be that in less than a century those who wish to find the traces of ancient Turkey will be obliged to seek for them in the remotest provinces of Asia Minor, just as we now look for ancient Spain in the most out-of-the-way villages of Andalusia.

CONSTANTINOPLE OF THE FUTURE.

Often, while gazing at Constantinople from the bridge of the Sultan Validéh, I would be confronted by the question, “What is to become of this city in one or two centuries, even if the Turks are not driven out of Europe?” Alas! there is but little doubt that the great holocaust of beauty at the hands of civilization will have been already accomplished. I can see that Constantinople of the future, that Oriental London, rearing itself in mournful and forbidding majesty upon the ruins of the most radiant city in the world. Her hills will be levelled, her woods and groves cut down, her many-colored houses razed to the ground; the horizon will be shut in on all sides by long rows of palatial dwellings, factories, and workshops, broken here and there by huge business-houses and pointed spires; long, straight streets will divide Stambul into ten thousand square blocks like a checker-board; telegraph-wires will interlace like some monster spider-web above the roofs of the noisy city; across the bridge of the Sultan Validéh will pour a black torrent of stiff hats and caps; the mysterious retreats of the Seraglio will become a zoological garden, the Castle of the Seven Towers a penitentiary, the Hebdomon Palace a museum of natural history; everything will be solid, geometrical, useful, gray, hideous, and a thick black cloud of smoke will hide the blue Thracian heavens, to which no more ardent prayers will be addressed nor poets’ songs nor longing eyes of lovers. At such thoughts as these I could not help feeling my heart sink within me, but then quickly there came the consoling fancy that possibly--who knows?--some charming Italian bride of the next century, coming here on her wedding journey, may be heard to exclaim, “What a pity! what a dreadful pity it is that Constantinople has changed so from what it was at the period of that old torn book of the nineteenth century I found in the bottom of my grandmother’s clothes-press!”

THE DOGS.