about his neck as a defence against the evil eye, and
frequently he removed it and knelt before it, as did Louis XI before the
leaden figures of saints which adorned his hat. He ordered a complete
chemical laboratory from Venice, and engaged alchemists to distill the
water of immortality, by the help of which he hoped to ascend to
the planets and discover the Philosophers' Stone. Not perceiving any
practical result of their labours, he ordered the laboratory to be burnt
and the alchemists to be hung.

Ali hated his fellow-men. He would have liked to leave no survivors, and
often regretted his inability to destroy all those who would have cause
to rejoice at his death. Consequently he sought to accomplish as much
harm as he could during the time which remained to him, and, for no
possible reason but that of hatred, he caused the arrest of both Ibrahim
pacha, who had already suffered so much at his hands, and his son, and
confined them both in a dungeon purposely constructed under the grand
staircase of the castle by the lake, in order that he might have the
pleasure of passing over their heads each time he left his apartments or
returned to them.

It was not enough for Ali merely to put to death those who displeased
him; the form of punishment must be constantly varied in order to
produce a fresh mode of suffering, therefore new tortures had to be
constantly invented. Now it was a servant, guilty of absence without
leave, who was bound to a stake in the presence of his sister, and
destroyed by a cannon placed six paces off, but only loaded with powder,
in order to prolong the agony; now, a Christian accused of having tried
to blow up Janina by introducing mice with tinder fastened to their
tails into the powder magazine, who was shut up in the cage of Ali's
favourite tiger and devoured by it.

The pacha despised the human race as much as he hated it. A European
having reproached him with the cruelty shown to his subjects, Ali
replied:--

"You do not understand the race with which I have to deal. Were I to
hang a criminal on yonder tree, the sight would not deter even his own
brother from stealing in the crowd at its foot. If I had an old man
burnt alive, his son would steal the ashes and sell them. The rabble
can be governed by fear only, and I am the one man who does it
successfully."

His conduct perfectly corresponded to his ideas. One great feast-day,
two gipsies devoted their lives in order to avert the evil d