For a long time his mother Kamco had suffered from an internal cancer, the result of a life of depravity.  Feeling that her end drew near, she despatched messenger after messenger, summoning her son to her bedside.  He started, but arrived too late, and found only his sister Chainitza mourning over the body of their mother, who had expired in her arms an hour previously.  Breathing unutterable rage and pronouncing horrible imprecations against Heaven, Kamco had commanded her children, under pain of her dying curse, to carry out her last wishes faithfully.  After having long given way to their grief, Ali and Chainitza read together the document which contained these commands.  It ordained some special assassinations, mentioned sundry villages which, some day, were to be given to the flames, but ordered them most especially, as soon as possible, to exterminate the inhabitants of Kormovo and Kardiki, from whom she had endured the last horrors of slavery.

Then, after advising her children to remain united, to enrich their soldiers, and to count as nothing people who were useless to them, Kamco ended by commanding them to send in her name a pilgrim to Mecca, who should deposit an offering on the tomb of the Prophet for the repose of her soul.  Having perused these last injunctions, Ali and Chainitza joined hands, and over the inanimate remains of their departed mother swore to accomplish her dying behests.

The pilgrimage came first under consideration.  Now a pilgrim can only be sent as proxy to Mecca, or offerings be made at the tomb of Medina, at the expense of legitimately acquired property duly sold for the purpose.  The brother and sister made a careful examination of the family estates, and after long hunting, thought they had found the correct thing in a small property of about fifteen hundred francs income, inherited from their great-grandfather, founder of the Tepel-Enian dynasty.  But further investigations disclosed that even this last resource had been forcibly taken from a Christian, and the idea of a pious pilgrimage and a sacred offering had to be given up.  They then agreed to atone for the impossibility of expiation by the grandeur of their vengeance, and swore to pursue without ceasing and to destroy without mercy all enemies of their family.

The best mode of carrying out this terrible and self-given pledge was that Ali should resume his plans of aggrandizement exactly where he had left them.  He succeeded in acquiring the pachalik of Janina, which was granted him by the Porte under the title of “arpalik,” or conquest.  It was an old custom, natural to the warlike habits of the Turks, to bestow the Government provinces or towns affecting to despise the authority of the Grand Seigneur or whomsoever succeeded in controlling them, and Janina occupied this position.  It was principally inhabited by Albanians, who had an enthusiastic admiration for anarchy, dignified by them with the name of “Liberty,” and who thought themselves independent in proportion to the disturbance they succeeded in making.  Each lived retired as if in a mountain castle, and only went out in order to participate in the quarrels of his faction in the forum.  As for the pachas, they were relegated to the old castle on the lake, and there was no difficulty in obtaining their recall.