“Woe to us if we believe that the days of threatening are still far off!  Woe to us if we believe that the sins which will ruin the nation of Osman have not yet been committed!  While our ancestors dwelt in tents of skin, half the world feared our name, but since the nation of Osman has strutted about in silk and velvet it has become a laughing-stock to its enemies.  Our great men grow gardens in their palaces; they pass their days in the embraces of women, drinking wine, and listening to music; they loathe the battlefield, and oh, horrible! they blaspheme the name of Allah.  If among the Giaours, blasphemers of God are to be found, I marvel not thereat, for their minds are corrupted by the multitude of this world’s knowledge; but how can a Mussulman raise his head against God—­a Mussulman who has never learnt anything in his life save to glorify His Name?  And what are we to think when on the eve of the Feast of Halwet we hear a Sheik, a descendant of the family of the Prophet, a Sheik before whom the people bow reverently when they meet him in the street—­what are we to think, I say, when we hear this Sheik say before the great men of the palace all drunk with wine:  ’There is no Allah, or if there is an Allah he is not almighty; for if he were almighty he would have prevented me from saying, there is no Allah!’”

A cry of horror arose from the assembled Mussulmans which only after a while died away in an angry murmur like a gradually departing gust of wind.

“Who was the accursed one?” exclaimed Mohammed dervish, shaking his clenched fist threateningly.

“It was Uzun Abdi, the Aga of the Janissaries,” replied Halil, “who said that, and the others only laughed.”

“Let them all be accursed!”

“Wealth has ruined the heart of the Osmanli,” continued Halil.  “Who are they who now control the fate of the Realm?  The creatures of the Sultana, the slaves of the Kizlar-Aga, the Izoglani, whose licentiousness will bring down upon Stambul the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah.  It is from thence we get our rulers and our treasurers, and if now and then Fate causes a hero to plump down among them he also grows black like a drop of water that has fallen upon soot; for the treasures, palaces, and odalisks of the fallen magnates are transferred to the new favourite, and ruin him as quickly and as completely as they ruined his predecessors; and so long as these palaces stand by the Sweet Waters more curses than prayers will be heard within the walls of Stambul, so that if ye want to save Stambul, ye must burn down these palaces, for as sure as God exists these palaces will consume Stambul.”

“We must go to the Sultan about it,” said the dervish Mohammed.