tottered beneath
him. And when he returned to the harem, and the charming odalisks
appeared before him with their music and dances, and Milieva amongst
them, the loveliest of them all, to whom in an hour of rapture he had
given the rose-garden of his realm, Damascus, he bethought him that
perchance to-morrow, or even that very night, those sweetly smiling
heads might all be cut off, seized by their flowing locks and cast in
heaps, while their dear and tender bodies might be sent swimming in
the cold waves of the Bosphorus, to serve as food for the monsters of
the deep. Who knows how many hours, who knows how many moments, they
have still to live?

Every hour, every moment, the tidings arrive from Stambul that the
Janissaries are assembling in menacing crowds, and now the
conflagrations begin; every day fires break out in three or four parts
of the town, but the heavy rains prevented any great damage from being
done. This was always the way in which the riots began in Stambul.

The priests of Begtash stirred up the fanaticism of the masses in
front of the mosques and in the public squares, incited the mob which
had joined the ranks of the Janissaries to acts of outrage against the
Sultan's officials and those of the Ulemas, softas, and Omarite fakirs
who were in favor of the reforms.

On July 14th a rumor spread that a company of Janissaries, actuated by
strong suspicion, had surrounded the cemetery which had been laid out
and enclosed by the Omarite fakir, and cut down all the dervishes they
found there, and amongst them their chief, Behram. They found upon him
a bundle of papers which plainly revealed that a secret understanding
existed between him and the great men of the Seraglio. They also found
in his girdle a metal plate, on which was the following inscription:

"I am Behram, the son of Halil Patrona, the strong man, and of
Guel-Bejaze,[14] the prophetess. My father in his lifetime began a
great work, which after his death I continued. This work will only be
accomplished and confirmed when I am dead and there is no further need
of me. Blessed be he who knoweth the hours of his life and of his
death."

[Footnote 14: The heroine of Jokai's _White Rose_.]

Those who were acquainted with the life and the end of Halil Patrona
knew right well what this great work was thus mentioned by Behram, who
had lived one hundred and eight years after his father's death, and
had striven all that time to develop and mature th