“Dost thou not know me?” he asked.

“Have mercy, great Vizier,” answered the poor woman, who, having nothing to lose but her life, imagined that even that would be taken from her.

“I see,” said the pacha, “that if thou knowest me, thou dost not really recognise me.”

The woman looked at him wonderingly, not understanding his words in the least.

“Dost thou remember,” continued Ali, “that forty years ago a young man asked for shelter from the foes who pursued him?  Without inquiring his name or standing, thou didst hide him in thy humble house, and dressed his wounds, and shared thy scanty food with him, and when he was able to go forward thou didst stand on thy threshold to wish him good luck and success.  Thy wishes were heard, for the young man was Ali Tepeleni, and I who speak am he!”

The old woman stood overwhelmed with astonishment.  She departed calling down blessings on the pasha, who assured her a pension of fifteen hundred francs for the rest of her days.

But these two good actions are only flashes of light illuminating the dark horizon of Ali’s life for a brief moment.  Returned to Janina, he resumed his tyranny, his intrigues, and cruelty.  Not content with the vast territory which owned his sway, he again invaded that of his neighbours on every pretext.  Phocis, Mtolia, Acarnania, were by turns occupied by his troops, the country ravaged, and the inhabitants decimated.  At the same time he compelled Ibrahim Pacha to surrender his last remaining daughter, and give her in marriage to his nephew, Aden Bey, the son of Chainitza.  This new alliance with a family he had so often attacked and despoiled gave him fresh arms against it, whether by being enabled better to watch the pasha’s sons, or to entice them into some snare with greater ease.

Whilst he thus married his nephew, he did not neglect the advancement of his sons.  By the aid of the French Ambassador, whom he had convinced of his devotion to the Emperor Napoleon, he succeeded in getting the pachalik of Morea bestowed on Veli, and that of Lepanto on Mouktar.  But as in placing his sons in these exalted positions his only aim was to aggrandise and consolidate his own power, he himself ordered their retinues, giving them officers of his own choosing.  When they departed to their governments, he kept their wives, their children, and even their furniture as pledges, saying that they ought not to be encumbered with domestic establishments in time of war, Turkey just then being at open war with England.  He also made use of this opportunity to get rid of people who displeased him, among others, of a certain Ismail Pacho Bey, who had been alternately both tool and enemy, whom he made secretary to his son Veli, professedly as a pledge of reconciliation and favour, but really in order to despoil him more easily of the considerable property which he possessed at Janina.  Pacho was not deceived, and showed his resentment openly.  “The wretch banishes me,” he cried, pointing out Ali, who was sitting at a window in the palace, “he sends me away in order to rob me; but I will avenge myself whatever happens, and I shall die content if I can procure his destruction at the price of my own.”