"Whose is this palace?" inquired Halil of the mob.
"Damad Ibrahim's," cried sundry voices from among the crowd.
"Whose is that palace, I say?" inquired Halil once more, angrily shaking
his head.
Then many of them understood the force of the question and exclaimed:
"Thine, O Halil Patrona!"
"Thine, thine, Halil!" thundered the obsequious crowd, and with that
they rushed upon the palace, burst open the doors, and Patrona, with his
wife still clasped in his arms, forced his way in, and seeking out the
harem of the Grand Vizier, commanded the odalisks of Ibrahim to bow
their faces in the dust before their new mistress, and fulfil all her
demands. And before the door he placed a guard of honour.
Outside there was the din of battle, the roll of drums, and the blast of
trumpets; and the whole of this tempest was fanned by the faint
breathing of a sick and broken woman.
CHAPTER VII.
TULIP-BULBS AND HUMAN HEADS.
It is not every day that one can see budding tulips in the middle of
September, yet the Kapudan Pasha had succeeded in hitting upon a dodge
which the most famous gardeners in the world had for ages been racking
their brains to discover, and all in vain.
The problem was--how to introduce an artificial spring into the very
waist and middle of autumn, and then to get the tulip-bulbs to take
September for May, and set about flowering there and then.
First of all he set about preparing a special forcing-bed of his own
invention, in which he carefully mingled together the most nourishing
soil formed among the Mountains of Lebanon from millennial deposits of
cedar-tree spines, antelope manure, so heating and stimulating to
vegetation, that wherever it falls on the desert, tiny oases, full of
flowers and verdure, immediately spring up amidst the burning, drifting
sand-hills, and burnt and pulverized black marble which is only to be
found in the Dead Mountains.
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