He was civil and urbane in the entertainment of his guests, and requested them to consider themselves as his children.  It was on this occasion he told Lord Byron, that he discovered his noble blood by the smallness of his hands and ears:  a remark which has become proverbial, and is acknowledged not to be without truth in the evidence of pedigree.

The ceremonies on such visits are similar all over Turkey, among personages of the same rank; and as Lord Byron has not described in verse the details of what took place with him, it will not be altogether obtrusive here to recapitulate what happened to myself during a visit to Velhi Pasha, the son of Ali:  he was then Vizier of the Morea, and residing at Tripolizza.

In the afternoon, about four o’clock, I set out for the seraglio with Dr Teriano, the Vizier’s physician, and the Vizier’s Italian secretary.  The gate of the palace was not unlike the entrance to some of the closes in Edinburgh, and the court within reminded me of Smithfield, in London; but it was not surrounded by such lofty buildings, nor in any degree of comparison so well constructed.  We ascended a ruinous staircase, which led to an open gallery, where three or four hundred of the Vizier’s Albanian guards were lounging.  In an antechamber, which opened from the gallery, a number of officers were smoking, and in the middle, on the floor, two old Turks were seriously engaged at chess.

My name being sent in to the Vizier, a guard of ceremony was called, and after they had arranged themselves in the presence chamber, I was admitted.  The doctor and the secretary having, in the meantime, taken off their shoes, accompanied me in to act as interpreters.

The presence chamber was about forty feet square, showy and handsome:  round the walls were placed sofas, which, from being covered with scarlet, reminded me of the woolsacks in the House of Lords.  In the farthest corner of the room, elevated on a crimson velvet cushion, sat the Vizier, wrapped in a superb pelisse:  on his head was a vast turban, in his belt a dagger, incrusted with jewels, and on the little finger of his right hand he wore a solitaire as large as the knob on the stopper of a vinegar-cruet, and which was said to have cost two thousand five hundred pounds sterling.  In his left hand he held a string of small coral beads, a comboloio which he twisted backwards and forwards during the greater part of the visit.  On the sofa beside him lay a pair of richly-ornamented London-made pistols.  At some distance, on the same sofa, but not on a cushion, sat Memet, the Pasha of Napoli Romania, whose son was contracted in marriage to the Vizier’s daughter.  On the floor, at the foot of this pasha, and opposite to the Vizier, a secretary was writing despatches.  These were the only persons in the room who had the honour of being seated; for, according to the etiquette of this viceregal court, those who received the Vizier’s pay were not allowed to sit down in his presence.