A LEAF OF EASTERN HISTORY. 



207 



ers, and that, if she made complaints or even in- 

 quiries, she would share my fate ; and in a short 

 time it would be forgotten, at least among the 

 Turks, that Hekekyan Bey had ever existed. 



" ' Mr. Lieder,' he added, ' says truly that our 

 poisonings are seldom rapid. When the exist- 

 ence of a man has become offensive to the mas- 

 ter he is impoverished, his villages are resumed, 

 claims against him are countenanced, it is whis- 

 pered about that it is imprudent to visit him or 

 to receive him ; he soon finds himself alone as if 

 he were in the desert. A Mussulman who has no 

 resources, who neither sports, nor gambles, nor 

 converses, nor reads, nor writes, nor walks, nor 

 rides, nor travels, soon smokes himself into dys- 

 pepsia. If he be, what few Mussulmans are, a 

 man of quick sensibility and self-respect, he is 

 also oppressed and irritated by the intolerable 

 feeling of wrong. Then perhaps he is suddenly 

 recalled. He is again in favor, he is soon to be 

 again in power ; at every visit that he pays to 

 the palace or to one of the divans, he gets a cup 

 of coffee slightly impregnated; the moral and the 

 physical excitement combine. His death follows 

 an illness which has not been scandalously 

 short.' 



"'The remark,' said Lieder, 'that Orientals 

 are not to be judged according to European no- 

 tions, is so obvious that it has become trite ; on 

 no point is the difference between the two minds 

 more striking than in the respect for life.' 



" The European cares nothing for brute life ; 

 he destroys the lower animals without scruple 

 whenever it suits his convenience, his pleasure, 

 or his caprice ; he shoots his favorite horse and 

 his favorite dog as soon as they become too old 

 for service. 



" The Mussulman preserves the lives of the 

 lower animals solicitously. Though he considers 

 the dog impure, and never makes a friend of him, 

 he thinks it sinful to kill him, and allows the 

 neighborhood and even the streets of his town to 

 be infested by packs of masterless dogs whom 

 we should get rid of in London or Berlin in one 

 day. The beggar does not venture to destroy 

 his vermin, he puts them tenderly on the ground. 

 There are hospitals in Cairo for superannuated 

 cats, where they are fed at the public expense. 

 But to human life he is utterly indifferent: he 

 extinguishes it with much less scruple than that 

 with which we shoot a horse past his work. 



"'Abbas,' said Hekekyan, 'when a boy, had 

 his pastry-cook bastinadoed to death. Mehemet 

 Ali mildly reproved him for it, as we should cor- 

 rect a child for killing a butterfly ; he explained 



to his little grandson that such things ought not 

 to be done without a motive.' 



" ' When Nazleh Hanem,' I asked, ' burnt her 

 slave to death for giving her cold coffee, did her 

 father interfere '? ' 



" ' No,' said Hekekyan, ' he could not. That 

 took place in a harem. The murdering the mes- 

 senger at Slioobra is another instance : it would 

 have cost little to shut up the poor old man until 

 any danger of his telling from whom he came 

 was over ; but it was simpler to drown him. 

 Perhaps, however, in that case Mehemet Ali 

 merely followed instructions which he might 

 have thought it dishonorable to disobey. There 

 was probably at the bottom of the letter some 

 mark indicating how the person who brought it 

 was to be disposed of, as we write, "Burn this 

 note as soon as you have read it." ' 



'"That incident,' I said, 'is mentioned by 

 Cadoleone and Barrault in their history of the 

 East in 1839 and 1840, and they affirm that the 

 messenger was drowned for having refused to 

 disclose the name of his employer.' 



'"That is a mistake,' said Hekekj'an. 'I 

 was the only person present when Mehemet Ali 

 received the messenger. He was obviously a 

 man of the lowest class, who would not have re- 

 fused to disclose anything. Mehemet Ali asked 

 no questions, and indeed had none to ask.' " 



Mr. Senior heard the sequel to this story some 

 time afterward at Alexandria from Artim Bey, 

 Mehemet Ali's prime-minister: 



" I asked him if he recollected the night de- 

 scribed to me by Hekekyan when Mehemet Ali 

 lay alone in an empty palace, thinking over the 

 chances of Ibrahim's fidelity. 



" ' Certainly I do,' he answered, ' and I recol- 

 lect the day that followed it. Napier appeared 

 off the old port and sent in a letter requiring the 

 viceroy to surrender the Turkish fleet, and to 

 submit to the award of the four powers.' 



" ' What was his force ? ' I asked. 



"'I forget,' answered Artim; 'five or six 

 ships. We had about eighteen sail-of-the-line 

 and twenty frigates — not less than fifty ships — 

 but we could not rely on the Turkish sailors. 

 They would have joined the English if we had 

 allowed the ships to quit the port, nor could we 

 indeed trust the Egyptians, and as for the artil- 

 lerymen they had spiked the guns on the bat- 

 teries. Mehemet Ali was still in his mood of re- 

 sistance. I took to him Napier's letter. He 

 asked fiercely, " What does the Englishman 



