Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/107

 and asked him, with vehement reproaches, why the annual present, which they call the tribute, had not been paid. Herr Petsch excused himself, and proved that the time had not yet come, and that no tribute had ever been in arrear; nay, he promised that he would send one of his servants to Vienna, and expressed his willingness to take measures for the tribute to be brought earlier. The vizier, having nothing else against him, had him asked, through an interpreter, where the King of Vienna (for this is the appellation they give our emperor, refusing to call him emperor, and asserting that their Sultan is the Roman emperor, as the throne of the Roman emperors was transferred from Rome to Constantinople) obtained the power of being able to make a rascally clerk into so distinguished a resident at the court of the Turkish emperor? To this, Herr Petsch answered without thinking, that, if the Sultan had the power to make swineherds and cowherds into the highest pashas, his lord, the Emperor of Rome, had the power of making a clerk into an ambassador, and of sending whom he pleased to the imperial court at Constantinople. Thereupon Ferhat smiled, and admiring his audacious language, merely said these words, in Turkish, to the bystanders: “Baka, baka, pre haranzada gaur!” that is, “See, see this audacious pagan!” Let us now pass again to our own embassy.

On Dec. 8, early in the morning, my lord ambassador Kregwitz had the ready money, 45,000 broad dollars, placed in carriages, and sent it beforehand to the imperial palace, with his dragoman, or interpreter. Then, about ten o’clock, both my lords the ambassadors rode, after the previous fashion, to the Emperor with their at-