Page:Englishwomaninan00elli.pdf/149

 are ready. Vous maître maison, moi votre service." Too charming a thought for one to examine the accuracy of the language!

He was always amused to see me "hunting" in the dictionary; and as I could never get used to "beginning at the end and reading backwards," my most painstaking researches often produced strange results.

Like most of the Nationalist ministers, Feszi Bey is a man of about forty, tall, well-built, dark, with large dark eyes. He is one of the richest men in Asia Minor, owning about eighteen villages in Diarbékir, and is immensely proud of his sons. His house in Constantinople was "requisitioned" for English officers and left almost in ruins; but he has large estates and many houses in his native land. Here, in Angora, he was paying what seemed to be a heavy rent for somewhere to live, considering the scanty furniture and lack of comforts in this house.

The ground-floor was occupied by kitchens and another room which the merciful man had given up to his horses, leaving his carriage outside in the rain and snow. Though not in any way like a stable, the animals were clearly well-cared-for here. A very steep wooden staircase, certainly not built for ladies' high heels, leads to a central room—almost a "lounge"—which opens into four others. It was dimly lit by candles, a survival from war-days when petrol was worth its weight in gold—literally two hundred francs a litre.

Feszi Bey has been in Angora ever since the movement began, and has acquired that striking expression of a set, firm resolve which I notice on the faces of all his colleagues. I asked him whether he did not "sometimes tire of living in this bare and rough Asiatic fortress, so far from all means of culture or distraction."

"We have our work," he replied; "too absorbing and too important to leave us time for complaint. We do not even 'miss' our comforts, or need more than an hour or two's sleep. There is so much to plan for our new country, the day, and most of the night, are not long enough."

Here one naturally feels far more in "New Turkey"