that I do not know why I
did not live here, and spare my toils during those sixteen nightmare
years; for two whole weeks the impulse to burn was quieted; and since
then there has been an irritating whisper at my ear which said: 'It is
not really like the great King that you are, this burning, but like a
foolish child, or a savage, who liked to see fireworks: or at least, if
you must burn, do not burn poor Constantinople, which is so charming,
and so very old, with its balsamic perfumes, and the blossomy trees of
white and light-purple peeping over the walls of the cloistered painted
houses, and all those lichened tombs--those granite menhirs and regions
of ancient marble tombs between the quarters, Greek tombs, Byzantine,
Jew, Mussulman tombs, with their strange and sacred
inscriptions--overwaved by their cypresses and vast plane-trees.' And
for weeks I would do nothing: but roamed about, with two minds in me,
under the tropic brilliance of the sky by day, and the vast dreamy
nights of this place that are like nights seen through azure-tinted
glasses, and in each of them is not one night, but the thousand-and-one
long crowded nights of glamour and fancy: for I would sit on the immense
esplanade of the Seraskierat, or the mighty grey stones of the porch of
the mosque of Sultan Mehmed-fatih, dominating from its great steps all
old Stamboul, and watch the moon for hours and hours, so passionately
bright she soared through clear and cloud, till I would be smitten with
doubt of my own identity, for whether I were she, or the earth, or
myself, or some other thing or man, I did not know, all being so silent
alike, and all, except myself, so vast, the Seraskierat, and the
Suleimanieh, and Stamboul, and the Marmora Sea, and the earth, and
those argent fields of the moon, all large alike compared with me, and
measure and space were lost, and I with them.

* * * * *

These proud Turks died stolidly, many of them. In streets of
Kassim-pacha, in crowded Taxim on the heights of Pera, and under the
long Moorish arcades of Sultan-Selim, I have seen the open-air barber's
razor with his bones, and with him the half-shaved skull of the
faithful, and the long two-hours' narghile with traces of burnt tembaki
and haschish still in the bowl. Ashes now are they all, and dry yellow
bone; but in the houses of Phanar and noisy old Galata, and in the Jew
quarter of Pri-pacha, the black shoe and head-dress of the Gre