“But if I feel them to be real enjoyments, it is enough to prove that they are truly so.”

“Granted; but if you would take the trouble of analyzing them after you have tasted them, you would not find them unalloyed.”

“It may be so, but why should I take a trouble which would only lessen my enjoyment.”

“A time will come when you will feel pleasure in that very trouble.”

“It strikes me, dear father, that you prefer mature age to youth.”

“You may boldly say old age.”

“You surprise me.  Must I believe that your early life has been unhappy?”

“Far from it.  It was always fortunate in good health, and the master of my own passions; but all I saw in my equals was for me a good school in which I have acquired the knowledge of man, and learned the real road to happiness.  The happiest of men is not the most voluptuous, but the one who knows how to choose the highest standards of voluptuousness, which can be found, I say again, not in the pleasures which excite our senses, but in those which give greater repose to the soul.”

“That is the voluptuousness which you consider unalloyed.”

“Yes, and such is the sight of a vast prairie all covered with grass.  The green colour, so strongly recommended by our divine prophet, strikes my eyes, and at the same moment I feel that my soul is wrapped up in a calm so delightful that I fancy myself nearer the Creator.  I enjoy the same peace, the same repose, when I am seated on the banks of a river, when I look upon the water so quiet, yet always moving, which flows constantly, yet never disappears from my sight, never loses any of its clearness in spite of its constant motion.  It strikes me as the image of my own existence, and of the calm which I require for my life in order to reach, like the water I am gazing upon, the goal which I do not see, and which can only be found at the other end of the journey.”

Thus did the Turk reason, and we passed four hours in this sort of conversation.  He had buried two wives, and he had two sons and one daughter.  The eldest son, having received his patrimony, had established himself in the city of Salonica, where he was a wealthy merchant; the other was in the seraglio, in the service of the Grand Turk and his fortune was in the hands of a trustee.  His daughter, Zelmi, then fifteen years of age, was to inherit all his remaining property.  He had given her all the accomplishments which could minister to the happiness of the man whom heaven had destined for her husband.  We shall hear more of that daughter anon.  The mother of the three children was dead, and five years previous to the time of my visit, Yusuf had taken another wife, a native of Scio, young and very beautiful, but he told me himself that he was now too old, and could not hope to have any child by her.  Yet he was only sixty years of age.  Before I left, he made me promise to spend at least one day every week with him.