American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1876-12-02
A TURKISH ROMANCE.


Romance Within Romance.
[Charles Dudley Warner, in Scribner for De-
cember.
One who would paint the manners or
morals of Constantinople might adorn
his theme with many anecdotes charac-
teristic of condition of society which
is foreign to our experience. l select
one which has the merit of being liter
ally true. You who believe that mod
ern romance exists only in tales of fic-
ton, listen to the story of beauty of
Constantinople, the vicissitudes OF
whose life equal in variety, if not in i'm
portance, those of Theodore and Ath-
enais. For obvious reasons 1 shall
mention no names.
There lives now on the banks of the
Bosphorus an English physician, who,
at the entreaty of Lord Byron, went to
Greece in 1924 as volunteer surgeon
in the war of independence; he arrived
only in time to see the poet expire at
Missolonghi. In the course of the war
he was taken prisoner by the Egyptian
troops, who in their great need of sur
geons kept him actively employed in
his profession. He did not regain his
freedom until after the war, and then
only on condition that he should reside
in Constantinople as one of the physi-
clans of the Sultan, Mohammed II.
We may suppose that the Oriental
life was not unpleasant, nor the po-
sxlr he
far yielded to the temptations of the
capital as to fall in love with a very
pretty face which he sew daily in bay
window of the street he traversed on the
way to the seraglio. Acquaintance,
which sometimes precedes love, in this
case followed it; the Doctor declared
his passion and was accepted by the
willing maid. But an Oriental bay
window is the opportunity of the world,
and the Doctor, becoming convinced
that his affianced was desperate firt,
and yielding to the entreaties of his
friends, broke off the engagement, and
left her free, in her eyrie, to continue
her observations upon mankind. This,
however, did not suit the plans of the
lovely and tickle girl. One morning,
shortly after, he was summoned to see
two Turkish ladies who awaited him in
his Office; when he appeared, the Greek
girl (for it was she) and her mother
threw aside their disguise, and declared
that they would not leave the house un-
til the Doctor married the daughter, for
the rupture of the engagement had
rendered it impossible to procure any
other husband. Whether her own
beauty or the terrible aspect of the
mother prevailed, 1 do not know, but
the English chaplain was sent for; he
refused to perform the ceremony, and
a Greek priest was found who married
them.
This marriage, which took the ap-
pearance of duress, might have been
happy if the compelling party to it had
left her fondness of adventure and vari-
ETY. at the wedding threshold; but her
constancy was only assumed, like the
Turkish vail, for an occasion; lovers
were not wanting, and after the birth
of three children, two sons and a
daughter, she deserted her husband
and went to live with q young Turk,
who has since held high Office in the
Government of the Sultan. 1t was in
her character of Nine. Mehemet Pasha
that she wrote Cor one of her sons wrote
for her) a book well known in the
West, entitled Thirty Years in Har-
en-" But her intriguing spirit was
not extinct even in Turkish harem
She attempted to palm off upon the
Pasha, as her own, child that she had
bought; her device was detected by
one of the palace eunuchs, and at the
same time her amour with
Greek of the city came to
light. The eunuch incurred her dis
pleasure for his officiousness, and she
had him strangled and thrown into the
Bosphorus. Some say that the reso-
lutte woman even assisted with her own
hands. For these breaches of deco
rum, however, she paid dearly. The
Pasha banished her to Kutayah, with
orders to the guard who attended her
to poison her on the way, but she SO
won the affections of the officer that he
let her escape at Broussa. There he
beauty, if not her piety, recommended
her to an Imam of one of the mosques,
and she married him, and seems for
time to have led quiet life; at any
rate, nothing further was heard of her
until Just before the famous cholera
season, when news came of the death
of her husband, the Moslem priest, and
that she was living in extreme poverty,
all her beauty gone forever, and con-
sequently her ability to procure anoth-
or husband.
The Pasha, Mehemet, lived in beau
tiful palace on the eastern shore of the
Bosphorus, near Kandili. During the
great cholera epidemic of 1865, the Pa
sha was taken ill. One day there ap-
peared at the gate an unknown woman,
who said that she had come to cure the
Pasha; no one knew her, but she spoke
with authority, and was admitted. 1t
was our adventures. She nursed the
Pasha with the most tender care and
watchful skill, so that he recovered;
and, in gratitude for the preservation
of his life, he permitted her and her
daughter to remain in the palace. For
some time they were contented with
the luxury of such home, but one day
it was the evening of Wednesday,