The Slaves of the Padishah quotes

So the poor priest received one day a long letter from Adrianople, in which he was informed that he had succeeded his brother as head of the family, and, from that hour, was the happy possessor of an annual income of 70,000 ducats.

I wonder whether they wept for that cow, which they never brought home after all?

Mr.

so there was nothing for it but to pull down the old castle, and to order his steward to build up a new one in its place, and make it as beautiful and splendid as his fancy could suggest.

Thus the whole order of the world he lived in was transformed by a golden caftan.

The steward embellished the castle with golden lattices, turrets, ornamental porches and winding staircases;

But the cheeks of two damsels remained rosy-red—Mariska’s and Flora’s.

Women don’t understand that sort of joke.

The bridegroom, half-smiling, half-angry, stroked his fine moustache. “Come, come, my lad,” said he, “you have been quicker in kissing my bride than I have been myself.”

“Twice you might have received from me Basanella’s masterstroke, so impetuously do you fight.”

In a duel nothing is so wounding as the supercilious self-restraint of an opponent.

Feriz Beg grew quite furious at Tököly’s cold repose, and flung himself upon his opponent as if absolutely beside himself.

… from his astonishment when he heard the crack of a whip behind his back, and there was Kökényesdi sitting already on the back of Haly Pasha’s charger, Shebdiz, and the next moment he had leaped the ditch above the Kurd’s head, shouting back at him:

“The trench is not broad enough for this horse, my son!”

Master Szénasi was one of those who had been sent to find Kökényesdi, and he now arrived at Demerser, the famous robber’s most usual resting-place in those days, and pushing his way forward told him that the gentlemen of Szathmár had sent him to ask …

“Shoot them down, you good-for-nothings!” roared Ali Pasha, turning back to the inactive and contumacious Komparajis. “Reck not whether your bullets sweep away as many Mussulmans as Hungarians, myself included! Sweep the bridge clear, I say!

Life is cheap, but Paradise is dear!

”

… well plundered, he set the town on fire in twelve places, so that the flames in half an hour consumed everything, and the whole city blazed away like a gigantic bonfire, the rising wind whirling the smoke and flame over the ditch towards the fortress.

“Ali Pasha may put that in his pipe and smoke it,” said Kökényesdi, rejoicing at the magnificent conflagration.

But the bodies of Ladislaus Rákóczy and his sweetheart they bore away, and buried them side by side in the family vault at Rákás.

“Not another word, Brother Gregory,” cried the robber, closing his fist on his dagger, “or I’ll set the monastery on fire and burn every living soul in it, yourself included.

A robber only recognises four sacraments: wine, money, wenches, and blood!

You may congratulate yourself if we are content with the third and dispense with the last.”

they united with the German dragoons, and pursued my flying army on horseback. Every bit of booty, every slave they have torn from us; this Calvinist Joshua is always close on my heels, not a single one of our infantry can be saved.”

The robber chief behaved as the leader of robber bands usually do behave. When he had to fight, he fought among the foremost; but when he had to run, then also he was well to the front.

When he was beaten, he cared not a jot whether the others got off scot-free, he only thought of saving himself.

When he had announced the catastrophe from horseback to the terrified Szénasi, he clapped spurs to his nag, and, without looking back to see whether anyone was following him, he galloped off, and left Szénasi in the lurch with the footmen.

The fox is always most crafty when he falls into the snare.

The perplexed hypocrite perceived that however quickly he might try to escape, the cavalry would overtake him at Grosswardein and mow him down. Unfortunately, he knew not how to ride, and therefore could not hope to save himself that way.

Yffim Beg gazed for a long time with the indifference of a connoisseur, but even his face relaxed at last, and smilingly tapping the merchant on the shoulder, he said to him:

“You have been filching from Paradise, Haji Baba!”

Haji Baba crossed his hands over his breast and shook his head humbly.

Watch carefully, that’s all I’ll say. Yet to keep a watch upon women is the most difficult of sciences.

If you want to get into a beleaguered fortress, hide an enamoured woman in it, and she’ll very soon show you the way in.

Take heed to what I say, sir, for if you forget my words but for half an hour, I would not give my little fingernail for your head.”

“Oh, that’s it, eh!” said Hassan.

“Tell Kucsuk Pasha that he must give his horses the clouds to eat; the hay of the Magyars is there, it seems.”

This messenger had no sooner departed than a whole embassy arrived from the Janissaries, and the whole lot of them energetically demanded that they should be led into battle at once.

What! Here with the foe in front of you, ye would wage war among yourselves, to your own shame, and to the joy of the stranger? Is not that sword accursed which is not drawn against the foe?”

“Yet accursed also is the sword which returns to its sheath unblooded.”

“And can you only find enemies among yourselves?”

“And can you only find enemies among yourselves?”

“Our first enemy is cowardice, and cowardice sits in the seat of that general who alone is afraid when the whole camp wants to fight. We would first slay fear, and then we would slay the foe.”

“Why not slay the foe first?”

“

Better perish for the sake of a woman than do that woman to death.

If you shut your rooms against her, I will open mine wide to receive her, and then you can tell the Sultan if you like that I have taken her.”

“Justice is often another name for necessity.”

“Then who are all ye whom I see here? Are ye the chief men of Transylvania or Turkish slaves? This is what I ask, and what we should all of us very much like to know: is this the council chamber of the free and constitutional state of Transylvania, or is it the antechamber of Olaj Beg?”

The gentlemen present preserved a deep silence. This was a question to which they could not give a direct answer.

Feriz Beg, as if a weapon against his persecutors had suddenly been put into his hand, stepped boldly right up to Hassan Pasha, and exclaimed in a bold voice, which rang though the tent:

“Thou art the traitor, not I; for thou darest to hold the office of general when thou art blind and canst not distinguish two paces off father from son, or an enemy from a friend.”

Hassan sprang in terror from his carpet when he heard Kucsuk’s son speak instead of Kucsuk.

Speak he could not, both mind and body were too much broken for that; but he pointed to the door and signified to the damsel in dumb show that she was to withdraw.

“Thou knowest me, for thou hatest me,” stammered Azrael; “if thou didst not know me thou wouldst not hate me, and if thou didst know me better thou wouldst love me.”

The youth shook his head.

My suite, with the empty carriages, was to follow next morning in the direction of Grosswardein. The masked men cut them down as arranged, but the Princess and her son were in safe hands all the time.

Olaj Beg is an old fox, and a fox knows his way about.

”

Azrael’s face flushed red. Hastily she cast herself down on her knees on the carpet, and pressing her folded hands to her bosom, stammered in a scarce audible voice:

“God! grant me one moment in my life in which I can say: I am happy.”

Her eyes were still closed when the door of the dormitory opened, and Hayat, the oldest duenna of the harem, entered with an air of great secrecy.

She fancies ’tis her ideal whom she sees and embraces.

Ah, the extravagances of love!

I know a dodge worth two of that. Take horse along with us, and let us make our way into the fortress sword in hand; we shall do much more that way than if we went hobbling in on crutches.

Luck belongs to the audacious.

”

“I want to go over to the island,” she said in a faint voice.

“Then I’ll help thee to find thy skiff,” said the youth, extending his hand to the odalisque to raise her up.

She was still kneeling on the ground before him.

Great men are the greatest of all dangers to little States.

There are men born to be great generals who die as robber-chiefs.

“To the dungeon with him!” yelled Kara Mustafa, beckoning to the drabants to drag Béldi away.

Just as a hard stone emits sparks when it is struck, so Béldi turned suddenly upon the Vizier and said, shaking his chains, “Thine hour will also strike!”

Then he suffered them to lead him away to prison.

… to her, without being able to wipe the sweat from her forehead, or put a glass of cold water to her lips, or whisper to her words of comfort, and had to be content with knowing that she was with those who carefully nursed her.

Oh, it is not to the dying that death is most bitter.

By the morning the fever left her. The rising sun was just beginning to shine through the narrow round window and the sick girl begged to be carried out into the open air and the warm morning sunshine.

“That was owing to the fast, he isn’t used to such practices. Generally, he has a good supper, and if he departs from his usual course of life he is bound to sleep badly.

Bad dreams plague an empty stomach just as much as an overburdened one.

”

“That was the very time when your Highness pleaded before the Prince for war in the name of your exiled Hungarian kinsfolk.

Other times, other men.

”

but for all that he finished his letter, and when he came to the end of it he wrote at the bottom in firm characters:

“Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinae!”

Mustafa puzzled his brains considerably when he came to that part of the letter containing the verse which had nothing to do with the text, which the Minister, under the influence of an iron will struggling against terror, had written there almost involuntarily.

After him came two imams, one of whom carried a large document in a velvet case, whose pendant seal swung to and fro beneath its long golden cord; the other bent beneath the weight of an enormous book—it was the Alkoran.

The Alkoran is a very nice large book, larger than our corpus juris of former days, and in it may be found everything which everyone requires: accusatory, condemnatory, and absolvatory texts for one and the same thing.

The Mufti presented the Alkoran to the Sultan and all the Viziers in turn, and each one of them kissed it with deep reverence;

… of the room, he stood there glancing round upon the viziers with folded arms, just as if he were counting how many of them there were, one by one they all stood up before him—nay, even the Sultan did so, and awaited his words tremblingly.

Everyone in the East regards the insane with awe and reverence, and if a crazy fakir were to stop the greatest of the Caliphs in the way and say to him: “Dismount from thy horse, and change garments with me,” he would not dare to offer any opposition, but would fulfil his desire, for a strange spirit is in the man and God has sent it.

How will it be then when the terrible spirit of madness descends upon such a valiant warrior, such a distinguished soldier as Feriz Beg, who, when only six-and-twenty, had fought a hundred triumphant battles, and frequently put to shame the grey beards with his wisdom.

“

Poor Sultan!⁠—so young, so young⁠—and yet thou must die.

”

It was the heaviest blow he had ever staggered under.

Oh! Fortune is indeed ingenious in her disappointments.

Evening came, and still Teleki had not quitted his tent. Then the Prince went to see him. Teleki wanted to hear nothing, but the Prince told him everything.

Consequently both armies turned aside from the Principality, and Wallachia had to support neither the Germans nor the Tartars.

This is the diplomacy of little states.

Amidst the wildly romantic hills of Lebanon is a pleasant valley for which Nature herself has a peculiar preference. Amidst the gigantic mountains which encircle a vast hollow on every side of it, rises a roundish mound.