d, a child of nine, he thought to himself,
"This lad will not sit on the throne, he will not be a ruler as his
forefathers were; he will not dictate laws to half the world like the
other descendants of Omar; but he will be a fugitive on the face of
the earth, the slave of strange people, as was the fugitive Dzhem,
whom they cast forth ages ago."

How miserable was the life of the Sultan! What avails it though an
earthly paradise be open to him if life itself be closed against him?
What avails it to be a god if he cannot be a man? The Sultan never
knows what it is to have relatives. Very early, while they are still
children, the latest born are shut up in the Seven Towers. The
first-born son can never meet them, unless it be on the steps of the
throne, when the rebellious Janissaries drag one of them from his
dungeon to raise him to the throne, and lock up the first-born in his
stead. The Sultan cannot be said to possess a wife; all that he has
are favorite concubines, in hundreds, in thousands, as many as he
chooses to have, and there is no difference between them except
differences of feminine loveliness and the blind chance which blesses
some of them with children. And he makes no more account of one than
he does of another. Not one of them feels it her duty to love her
husband; it is enough if she be the slave of his desires. If the
Padishah be troubled or sorrowful, there is none about him to whom he
can open his heart. He may go from one end of the harem to the other,
like one who wanders through a conservatory whose flowers are all so
beautiful, so radiantly smiling; but in vain will he tell them of his
grief and trouble, for they do not understand him, they do not trouble
their heads about his thoughts; and if, perchance, he tells them that
from all four corners of the world mighty foes are marching against
Stambul, here and there, perchance, he may hear a sigh of longing from
some captive maiden, who cannot conceal her secret joy at the thought
of the happy hour when the hand of deliverance will thunder at the
harem door and break its bolts and give freedom, beautiful sunbright
freedom, to the captives.

It is slavish obsequiousness and nothing else which bends its knee
before the Padishah; it is fear, not love, which obeys him. And to
whom shall he turn when his heart is held fast in the iron grip of
that numbing sensation which makes the mightiest feel they are but
men--fear?

Mahmoud's sole joy was his ni