Chainitza, fully as ambitious as her brother, could not contain her delight at the idea of governing in the name of her son, who was weak and gentle in character and accustomed to obey her implicitly.  She asked her brother’s permission to go to Trikala to be present at the installation, and obtained it, to everybody’s astonishment; for no one could imagine that Ali would peacefully renounce so important a government as that of Thessaly.  However, he dissembled so skilfully that everyone was deceived by his apparent resignation, and applauded his magnanimity, when he provided his sister with a brilliant escort to conduct her to the capital of the province of which he had just been deprived in favour of his nephew.  He sent letters of congratulation to the latter as well as magnificent presents, among them a splendid pelisse of black fox, which had cost more than a hundred thousand francs of Western money.  He requested Elmas Bey to honour him by wearing this robe on the day when the sultan’s envoy should present him with the firman of investiture, and Chainitza herself was charged to deliver both gifts and messages.

Chainitza arrived safely at Trikala, and faithfully delivered the messages with which she had been entrusted.  When the ceremony she so ardently desired took place, she herself took charge of all the arrangements.  Elmas, wearing the black fox pelisse, was proclaimed, and acknowledged as Governor of Thessaly in her presence.  “My son is pacha!” she cried in the delirium of joy.  “My son is pacha! and my nephews will die of envy!” But her triumph was not to be of long duration.  A few days after his installation, Elmas began to feel strangely languid.  Continual lethargy, convulsive sneezing, feverish eyes, soon betokened a serious illness.  Ali’s gift had accomplished its purpose.  The pelisse, carefully impregnated with smallpox germs taken from a young girl suffering from this malady, had conveyed the dreaded disease to the new pacha, who, not having been inoculated, died in a few days.

The grief of Chainitza at her son’s death displayed itself in sobs, threats, and curses, but, not knowing whom to blame for her misfortune, she hastened to leave the scene of it, and returned to Janina, to mingle her tears with those of her brother.  She found Ali apparently in such depths of grief, that instead of suspecting, she was actually tempted to pity him, and this seeming sympathy soothed her distress, aided by the caresses of her second son, Aden Bey.  Ali, thoughtful of his own interests, took care to send one of his own officers to Trikala, to administer justice in the place of his deceased nephew, and the Porte, seeing that all attempts against him only caused misfortune, consented to his resuming the government of Thessaly.

This climax roused the suspicions of many persons.  But the public voice, already discussing the causes of the death of Elinas, was stifled by the thunder of the cannon, which, from the ramparts of Janina, announced to Epirus the birth of another son to Ali, Salik Bey, whose mother was a Georgian slave.