The Kapudan Pasha was wild with impatience. There they all were, just on
the point of blooming, and he would be unable to see it. How he would
have liked a contrary wind to have kept back the fleet for a day or two.
But what the wind would not do for him, the Sultan's birthday gave him
the opportunity of doing for himself. The day of rest appointed for the
morrow permitted the Kapudan Pasha to get himself rowed across to his
summer palace at Chengelkoei, where his marvellous tulips were about to
bloom at the beginning of autumn.
What a spectacle awaited him! All four of them, yes, all four, were in
full bloom!
Belgrade was pale yellow with bright green stripes, those of the stripes
which were pale green on the lower were rose-coloured on the upper
surface, and those of them which were bright green above died gradually
away into a dark lilac colour below.
Naples was a very full tulip, whose confusingly numerous angry-red
leaves, with yellow edges, symbolized, perhaps, the fifteen hundred
Venetians who had fallen at its name-place beneath the arms of the
Ottomans.
Morea was the richest in colour. The base of its cup was of a dark
chocolate hue, with green and rose-coloured stripes all round it;
moreover, the green stripes passed into red, and the rose ones into
liver-colour, and a bright yellow streak of colour ran parallel with
every single stripe. On the outside the green hues, inside the red
rather predominated.
But the rarest, the most magnificent of the four was Kermanjasahan.
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