Hastily written letters were dispatched to all the captains and to all
the rebels, informing them that Sultan Achmed had been deposed and
Sultan Mahmud was reigning in his stead; let them all come, therefore,
at dawn of day next morning and do homage to the new Padishah.
The moon had long been high in the heavens and was shining through the
coloured windows of the Seraglio when the magnates withdrew and Mahmud
remained alone.
Only the Kizlar-Aga awaited his pleasure--the Kizlar-Aga whose sooty
face seemed to cast a black shadow upon itself.
Mahmud extended his hand to him with a smile that he might kiss it.
And then Elhaj Beshir conducted him to the door of those secret
apartments within which bloom the flowers of bliss and rapture, and
throwing it open bent low while the new Sultan passed through.
Only three among the peris of loveliness had preferred eternal loveless
slavery to the favours of the new Padishah, and among those who smiled
upon the young Sultan as he entered the room, the one who had the
happiest, the most radiant face, was the fair Adsalis, who still
remained the favourite wife, the Sultana Asseki, even after the great
revolution which had turned the whole Empire upside down and made the
least to be the greatest and the greatest to stand lowest of all.
Among so many smiling faces hers was the one towards which the
tremulously happy and enraptured Sultan hastened full of tender
infatuation; she it was whom he raised to his breast and in whose arms
he soothed himself with dreams of glory, while she stifled his anxieties
with her kisses.
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