Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/160

 The pasha not only greatly commended it, but was delighted at obtaining so important a proselyte as the steward of the Christian embassy, and immediately gave him a handsome red Turkish dress, a turban, and a fine Turkish horse, and ordered him to be conducted to circumcision with great pomp.

When this wretch was led to circumcision many hundred horse and foot soldiers went before and behind him past our house, all shouting ferociously, and wishing him joy, while he exhibited a joyful countenance, looked in at the windows, and carried himself haughtily. After circumcision, pay, or wages, amounting to forty aspers a day, as they told us, was assigned to him, which is, certainly, high pay among them. This renegade, although he had at Prague a wife, a young court lady, Madame Von Bernstein, who was in office at court as mistress-of-the-robes, and a son, a handsome youth, yet forsook all, forgot his soul and wife, took immediately a Turkish woman to wife, and frequently walked and rode past our house.

One day this steward went to Synan Pasha and said: “As, when a Christian, I kept faith with my king, now, too, that I am a Mussulman, I wish to exhibit the same fidelity towards the Sultan and all the pashas, and will not spare anything, not even my neck, for the extension of their dominions. In order, therefore, that I may prove this fidelity to my Emperor, and the whole Turkish nation, I request that the mighty pasha do permit me, with some Turks, to examine the chancery of the ambassador of the Christian emperor, wherein I desire to find and lay before the pasha such things that every one will wonder in what way and how the