y the president and members
of the royal council,) who punish or reward the bearer according to its
contents; though, if these are not favourable, he buys off his
punishment with money. If there is no accusation against him, and he is
not rewarded, as commonly happens, he obtains by means of presents the
post he most desires; for, at that court, offices are not bestowed by
merit, but for money; everything is bought and sold. The bestowers of
office fleece the receivers; but he who purchases a post, makes enough
by it to purchase another which promises more profit.

"Everything proceeds as I tell you; in this empire all is violence: a
fact which betokens that it will not be durable; but, as I full surely
believe, it is our sins that uphold it, the sins, I mean, of those who
imprudently and forwardly offend God, as I am doing: may he forgive me
in his mercy!

"It is, then, for the reason I have stated that your master, Hassan
Pasha, has been encamped here four days, and if the Pasha of Nicosia has
not come out as he should have done, it is because he has been very ill.
But he is now better, and he will come out to-day or to-morrow without
fail, and lodge in some tents behind this hill, which you have not seen,
after which your master will immediately enter the city. And now I have
replied to the question you put to me."

"Listen, then, to my story," said Ricardo, "but I know not if I shall be
able to fulfil my promise to be brief, since my misfortune is so vast
that it cannot be comprised within any reasonable compass of words.
However, I will do what I may and as time allows. Let me ask you, in the
first place, if you knew in our town of Trapani, a young lady whom fame
pronounced to be the most beautiful woman in Sicily? A young lady, I
say, of whom the most ingenious tongues, and the choicest wits declared
that her beauty was the most perfect ever known in past ages or the
present, or that may be looked for in the future. One, of whom the poets
sang that she had hair of gold, that her eyes were two shining suns, her
cheeks roses, her teeth pearls, her lips rubies, her neck alabaster; and
that every part of her made with the whole, and the whole with every
part, a marvellous harmony and consonance, nature diffusing all over her
such an exquisite sweetness of tone and colour, that envy itself could
not find a fault in her. How is it possible, Mahmoud, that you have not
already named her? Surely you have either not liste