Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/40

24 however, lent a mysterious, and exciting, though not very pleasant interest to my first knowledge of a great Oriental city; it gave tone and color to all I saw, and all I felt—a tone, and a color sombre enough, but true, and well befitting the dreary monuments of past power and splendor. With all that is most truly oriental in its character, the Plague is associated; it dwells with the faithful in the holiest quarters of their city: the coats and the hats of Pera are held to be nearly as innocent of infection as they are ugly in shape and fashion; but the rich furs, and the costly shawls, the broidered slippers, and the gold-laden saddle-cloths—the fragrance of burning aloes, and the rich aroma of patchouli—these are the signs which mark the familiar home of Plague. You go out from your living London—the centre of the greatest and strongest amongst all earthly dominions—you go out thence, and travel on to the capital of an Eastern Prince—you find but a waning power, and a faded splendor, that inclines you to laugh and mock; but let the infernal Angel of Plague be at hand, and he, more mighty than armies—more terrible than Suleyman in his glory, can restore such pomp and majesty to the weakness of the Imperial walls, that if, when HE is there, you must still go prying amongst the shades of this dead Empire, at least you will tread the path with seemly reverence and awe.

It is the firm faith of almost all the Europeans living in the East, that Plague is conveyed by the touch of infected substances, and that the deadly atoms especially lurk in all kinds of clothes and furs; it is held safer to breathe the same air with a man sick of the Plague, and even to come in contact with his skin, than to be touched by the smallest particle of woollen, or of thread, which may have been within the reach of possible infection. If this notion be correct, the spread of the malady must be materially aided by the observance of a custom which prevails amongst the people of Stamboul; when an Osmanlee dies, it is usual to cut up one of his dresses, and to send a small piece of it to each of his friends, as a memorial of the departed. A fatal present is this, according to the opinion of the Franks, for it too often forces the living not merely to remember the dead man, but to follow and bear him company.