The chief priest's face was radiant with triumph. He extended his hands
above his head and thrice pronounced the name of Allah. And when he had
thus thrice called upon the name of God, his lips suddenly grew dumb,
and there for a few moments he stood stiffly, with his hands raised
towards Heaven and wide open eyes, and then he suddenly fell down dead
from the pulpit.
"'Tis the dumb curse of Achmed!" whispered the awe-stricken spectators
to one another.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Farthing.
CHAPTER X.
THE FEAST OF HALWET.
The surgujal--the turban with the triple gold circlet--was on the head
of Mahmud, but the sword, the sword of dominion, was in the hand of
Halil Patrona. The people whose darling he had become were accustomed to
regard him as their go-between in their petty affairs, the host trembled
before him, and the magnates fawned upon him for favour.
In the Osman nation there is no hereditary nobility, everyone there has
risen to the highest places by his sword or his luck. Every single Grand
Vizier and Kapudan Pasha has a nickname which points to his lowly
origin; this one was a woodcutter, that one a stone-mason, that other
one a fisherman. Therefore a Mohammedan never looks down upon the most
abject of his co-religionists, for he knows very well that if he himself
happens to be uppermost to-day and the other undermost, by to-morrow the
whole world may have turned upside down, and this last may have become
the first.
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