“Years were elapsing,” said he, “and brought no important change in my position.  I was an important partisan, it is true, and strongly supported, but I held no title or Government employment of my own.  I recognised the necessity of establishing myself firmly in my birthplace.  I had devoted friends, and formidable foes, bent on my destruction, whom I must put out of the way, for my own safety.  I set about a plan for destroying them at one blow, and ended by devising one with which I ought to have commenced my career.  Had I done so, I should have saved much time and pains.

“I was in the habit of going every day, after hunting, for a siesta in a neighbouring wood.  A confidential servant of mine suggested to my enemies the idea of surprising me and assassinating one there.  I myself supplied the plan of the conspiracy, which was adopted.  On the day agreed upon, I preceded my adversaries to the place where I was accustomed to repose, and caused a goat to be pinioned and muzzled, and fastened under the tree, covered with my cape; I then returned home by a roundabout path.  Soon after I had left, the conspirators arrived, and fired a volley at the goat.

“They ran up to make certain of my death, but were interrupted by a piquet of my men, who unexpectedly emerged from a copse where I had posted them, and they were obliged to return to Tepelen, which they entered, riotous with joy, crying ‘Ali Bey is dead, now we are free!’ This news reached my harem, and I heard the cries of my mother and my wife mingled with the shouts of my enemies.  I allowed the commotion to run its course and reach its height, so as to indicate which were my friends and which my foes.  But when the former were at the depth of their distress and the latter at the height of their joy, and, exulting in their supposed victory, had drowned their prudence and their courage in floods of wine, then, strong in the justice of my cause, I appeared upon the scene.  Now was the time for my friends to triumph and for my foes to tremble.  I set to work at the head of my partisans, and before sunrise had exterminated the last of my enemies.  I distributed their lands, their houses, and their goods amongst my followers, and from that moment I could call the town of Tepelen my own.”

A less ambitious man might perhaps have remained satisfied with such a result.  But Ali did not look upon the suzerainty of a canton as a final object, but only as a means to an end; and he had not made himself master of Tepelen to limit himself to a petty state, but to employ it as a base of operations.