Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/65

 work. I asked him now and then how he was getting on, but he had been three hours at it before he called my attention to the accomplishment of one portion of his task. He then read me the draft of three lines of his high-flown Turkish, and solicited me to admire the beautiful antithesis, and to acknowledge how well the two parts of the phrase were balanced. "It is almost poetry," said he.

"Mashalla, Effendi," said I, "it is an admirable composition; but it states the very opposite of my meaning; and, like poetry, it is not true."

"It would be a pity, Bey," replied he, "to sacrifice such a gem. Observe!" He went on, &c. &c.

He was confident it would excite the attention and admiration of the Grand Vizier. With great difficulty I did at last get my own meaning substituted, deeply to his regret.

He then copied out in due form the letter for his highness ready for the post, and I affixed my signet.

"Now," said I, "Effendi, quick with the two copies for the Foreign Minister and the Minister of Commerce."

"I will at once," responded he, "set about composing a suitable epistle for his Highness the Minister of Foreign Affairs."

"Wherefore, Effendi, when there is nothing more to be done than to copy that to the Grand Vizier, as it is the communication of the facts?"

"True," answered he; "but therefore it will never do. This letter is composed for the dignity of the Grand Vizier. As Aali Pasha is one of the most distinguished scholars in Turkey, I cannot think of writing to him what is only suited for the Grand Vizier. While respecting the exalted rank of Aali Pasha, we must lower it in style, to adapt it to one who is no longer grand vizier."

"And the Minister of Commerce," said I; "what as to his copy?"

"Inshallah!" said the Effendi, soberly, "we will provide for him, too. We must compose him another letter, with other words, in proportion to his quality; for he is much lower in rank than Aali Pasha or a grand vizier. Fear not!"

The Effendi applied himself to the blithesome occupation of compiling such an epistle as should gratify the critical eye of the universally admired master of learning, and the mail steamer had worked some two hours down the harbour with his letter for the Grand Vizier and my poor and hasty substitutes for the jewelled literary treasures of Nourri Effendi, before he had finished Number Two.

"Mashallah, Bey," said he, "the steamer has gone. What a pity! For this is indeed a satisfactory letter."

He went off, having another commission to execute for his wife on his way home; and I never asked him for Number Three.

He was indeed an accomplished master of his graphic art, and would sit, green spectacles on nose, and smoke, and write, and blot out, and get another whiff from his chibook, and another word from the coinage of his brain, and so his task proceeded. A distinguished provincial authority, who had been a chamberlain of the Sultan, courtly, courteous, and accomplished, had received me with some hospitality; and on his being promoted to a higher post I was desirous of congratulating him. Nourri Effendi gladly came to my aid. Three days did he devote to the composition of a short letter. Though he expounded to me its meanings and its beauties, for there were many for each word, it would, in my inferior state of appreciation, have taken me at least three days more, to arrive at anything near its exact interpretation. I fear that I affixed my mehur or signet to a document which I very imperfectly understood.

After many days the slow post brought me a reply from His Excellency. Having glanced at it, I transferred it to Nourri Effendi for his perusal. He was in ecstasies, and he read, re-read, and remarked upon each passage, making (I dare say) a most valuable commentary on the recondite mysteries of the oriental language. The Governor was well known to be as great a master of the sublime as Nourri Effendi, and had responded valiantly.

At the Effendi's request I delivered the precious work of art to him, and at the end of a month he was still exhibiting to admiring and bored friends his draft, with the Governor's admirable response.

Nourri Effendi's domestic claims so much interfered with his public engagements, that his occasional apologies on this head brought on many little conversations about family matters. His wife, although of provincial extraction, had profited by a long residence in Stambool, to acquire the tasteful habits of a metropolitan. There was no need to inquire how many wives the Effendi had, for there could be but one autocrat to whose sway he was bound. In vain had the legislator of Islam conferred on him, as a true believer, the prerogative of summary divorce by his own whim or behest, and of making this irrevocable by the formula of triple divorce. The Effendi must have been long ago convinced that such divorces were not invented for deliverance from such a wife as his, and that divorce would only have been followed by re-marriage to her, under conditions of severer thraldom. I imagine he had, as the limit of his liberty, a right of grumbling outside his own house, and beyond reach of the lady's ears. The narrow income of the Effendi was spent under my lady's dictation, and extraordinary budgets were demanded, although they were obliged to live a life of much enforced economy, greatly to her discontent. His provision of tobacco and snuff could only have been obtained by making a forced levy on the receipt of his monthly salary; after which epoch his purse departed from him.

From this authority I got an insight into the subject of mothers-in-law in Turkey, and I grieve to say he was not so devotedly attached to his mother-in-law as perhaps he ought to have been. Unluckily he had moved near to