oothsayers; he
consulted omens, and demanded talismans and charms from the dervishes,
which he had either sewn into his garments, or suspended in the most
secret parts of his palace, in order to avert evil influences. A Koran
was hung about his neck as a defence against the evil eye, and frequently
he removed it and knelt before it, as did Louis XI before the leaden
figures of saints which adorned his hat. He ordered a complete chemical
laboratory from Venice, and engaged alchemists to distill the water of
immortality, by the help of which he hoped to ascend to the planets and
discover the Philosopher's Stone. Not perceiving any practical result of
their labours, he ordered, the laboratory to be burnt and the alchemists
to be hung.

Ali hated his fellow-men. He would have liked to leave no survivors, and
often regretted his inability to destroy all those who would have cause
to rejoice at his death, Consequently he sought to accomplish as much
harm as he could during the time which remained to him, and for no
possible reason but that of hatred, he caused the arrest of both Ibrahim
Pasha, who had already suffered so much at his hands, and his son, and
confined them both in a dungeon purposely constructed under the grand
staircase of the castle by the lake, in order that he might have the
pleasure of passing over their heads each time he left his apartments or
returned to them.

It was not enough for Ali merely to put to death those who displeased
him, the form of punishment must be constantly varied in order to produce
a fresh mode of suffering, therefore new tortures had to be constantly
invented. Now it was a servant, guilty of absence without leave, who was
bound to a stake in the presence of his sister, and destroyed by a cannon
placed six paces off, but only loaded with powder, in order to prolong
the agony; now, a Christian accused of having tried to blow up Janina by
introducing mice with tinder fastened to their tails into the powder
magazine, who was shut up in the cage of Ali's favourite tiger and
devoured by it.

The pasha despised the human race as much as he hated it. A European
having reproached him with the cruelty shown to his subjects, Ali
replied:--

"You do not understand the race with which I have to deal. Were I to
hang a criminal on yonder tree, the sight would not deter even his own
brother from stealing in the crowd at its foot. If I had an old man
burnt alive, his son would steal the