His excellency made some remark respecting the happiness of young men who, like me, without care, without any fixed purpose, abandon themselves to fortune with that confidence which knows no fear, and telling me that the cardinal’s letter made it desirable that he should do something for me, he promised to introduce me to three or four of his Turkish friends who deserved to be known.  He invited me to dine with him every Thursday, and undertook to send me a janissary who would protect me from the insults of the rabble and shew me everything worth seeing.

The cardinal’s letter representing me as a literary man, the pacha observed that I ought to see his library.  I followed him through the garden, and we entered a room furnished with grated cupboards; curtains could be seen behind the wirework; the books were most likely behind the curtains.

Taking a key out of his pocket, he opened one of the cupboards, and, instead of folios, I saw long rows of bottles of the finest wines.  We both laughed heartily.

“Here are,” said the pacha, “my library and my harem.  I am old, women would only shorten my life but good wine will prolong it, or at least, make it more agreeable.

“I imagine your excellency has obtained a dispensation from the mufti?”

“You are mistaken, for the Pope of the Turks is very far from enjoying as great a power as the Christian Pope.  He cannot in any case permit what is forbidden by the Koran; but everyone is at liberty to work out his own damnation if he likes.  The Turkish devotees pity the libertines, but they do not persecute them; there is no inquisition in Turkey.  Those who do not know the precepts of religion, say the Turks, will suffer enough in the life to come; there is no need to make them suffer in this life.  The only dispensation I have asked and obtained, has been respecting circumcision, although it can hardly be called so, because, at my age, it might have proved dangerous.  That ceremony is generally performed, but it is not compulsory.”

During the two hours that we spent together, the pacha enquired after several of his friends in Venice, and particularly after Marc Antonio Dieto.  I told him that his friends were still faithful to their affection for him, and did not find fault with his apostasy.  He answered that he was a Mahometan as he had been a Christian, and that he was not better acquainted with the Koran than he had been with the Gospel.  “I am certain,” he added, “that I shall die-calmer and much happier than Prince Eugene.  I have had to say that God is God, and that Mahomet is the prophet.  I have said it, and the Turks care very little whether I believe it or not.  I wear the turban as the soldier wears the uniform.  I was nothing but a military man; I could not have turned my hand to any other profession, and I made up my mind to become lieutenant-general of the Grand Turk only when I found myself entirely at a loss how to earn my living.  When I left Venice, the pitcher had gone too often to the well, it was broken at last, and if the Jews had offered me the command of an army of fifty thousand men, I would have gone and besieged Jerusalem.”