Also, in accordance with the custom of the country, the women interposed between the combatants, and the good and gentle Emineh laid proposals of peace before Ibrahim Pacha, to whose apathetic disposition a state of war was disagreeable, and who was only too happy to conclude a fairly satisfactory negotiation.  A family alliance was arranged, in virtue of which Ali retained his conquests, which were considered as the marriage portion of Ibrahim’s eldest daughter, who became the wife of Ali’s eldest son, Mouktar.

It was hoped that this peace might prove permanent, but the marriage which sealed the treaty was barely concluded before a fresh quarrel broke out between the pachas.  Ali, having wrung such important concessions from the weakness of his neighbour, desired to obtain yet more.  But closely allied to Ibrahim were two persons gifted with great firmness of character and unusual ability, whose position gave them great influence.  They were his wife Zaidee, and his brother Sepher, who had been in command during the war just terminated.  As both were inimical to Ali, who could not hope to corrupt them, he latter resolved to get rid of them.

Having in the days of his youth been intimate with Kurd Pacha, Ali had endeavoured to seduce his daughter, already the wife of Ibrahim.  Being discovered by the latter in the act of scaling the wall of his harem, he had been obliged to fly the country.  Wishing now to ruin the woman whom he had formerly tried to corrupt, Ali sought to turn his former crime to the success of a new one.  Anonymous letters, secretly sent to Ibrahim, warned him that his wife intended to poison him, in order to be able later to marry Ali Pacha, whom she had always loved.  In a country like Turkey, where to suspect a woman is to accuse her, and accusation is synonymous with condemnation, such a calumny might easily cause the death of the innocent Zaidee.  But if Ibrahim was weak and indolent, he was also confiding and generous.  He took the letters to his wife, who had no difficulty in clearing herself, and who warned him against the writer, whose object and plots she easily divined, so that this odious conspiracy turned only to Ali’s discredit.  But the latter was not likely either to concern himself as to what others said or thought about him or to be disconcerted by a failure.  He simply turned his machinations against his other enemy, and arranged matters this time so as to avoid a failure.

He sent to Zagori, a district noted for its doctors, for a quack who undertook to poison Sepher Bey on condition of receiving forty purses.  When all was settled, the miscreant set out for Berat, and was immediately accused by Ali of evasion, and his wife and children were arrested as accomplices and detained, apparently as hostages for the good behaviour of their husband and father, but really as pledges for his silence when the crime should have been accomplished.  Sepher Bey, informed of this by letters which Ali