The second day after my first visit was a Thursday, and the pacha did not forget his promise.
At about eleven in the morning, a janissary came for me. I followed him, and this time I found Bonneval dressed in Turkish fashion.
His guests soon arrived.
We were eight at table, all disposed to be cheerful. The dinner was French in cooking and service; his steward and cook were both worthy French renegades.
Before we sat down, Bonneval introduced me to everyone and told me who each guest was. During most of the meal, however, he gave me little chance to speak.
The conversation was entirely in Italian. I noticed that the Turks did not use their own language even for the most ordinary thing.
Each guest had a bottle near him. It might have contained white wine, or perhaps hydromel. I can only answer for my own glass and for Bonneval's, for I sat beside him. We drank excellent white Burgundy.
Towards the end of dinner, the guests drew me into conversation. Venice came first, as it usually does when a Venetian is present; then Rome followed.
From Rome we passed naturally to religion.
No one touched upon dogmatic questions; the discipline of religion and liturgical questions were alone discussed.
One of the guests, whom the others addressed as effendi, had once been secretary for foreign affairs. During the conversation he mentioned the Venetian ambassador in Rome and spoke of him with great esteem.
"I share your admiration for the ambassador," I said. "He honoured me with a letter of introduction to a Turkish nobleman whom he represented as an intimate friend."
"To whom is the letter addressed?" asked the effendi.
I searched my memory and found nothing. The name had escaped me. I took out my pocket-book and drew forth the letter.
The effendi looked at the address.
His face brightened at once.
"It is for me."
He begged leave to read it at once, and after he had perused it, he kissed the signature and came to embrace me.
This scene pleased M. de Bonneval and all his friends.
The effendi's name was Ismail. He begged the pacha to dine with him and bring me also. Bonneval accepted, and a day was fixed.
Notwithstanding all the politeness of the effendi, I was particularly interested during our charming dinner in a fine elderly man of about sixty, whose countenance breathed at the same time the greatest sagacity and the most perfect kindness.
Two years afterwards I found again the same features on the handsome face of M. de Bragadin, a Venetian senator of whom I shall have to speak at length when we come to that period of my life.
That elderly gentleman had listened to me throughout dinner with the greatest attention, yet he had not uttered a single word.
In society, a man whose face and general appearance excite your interest, stimulates strongly your curiosity if he remains silent.
When we left the dining room, I asked Bonneval who he was.
"A wealthy man," he said, "a philosopher, a person of acknowledged merit, pure in morals, and sincerely attached to his religion. If he makes any advance towards you, you must cultivate his acquaintance."
The advice pleased me.
After a walk beneath the trees of the garden, we returned to a drawing room furnished in the Turkish manner.
I purposely took a seat near Yusuf Ali. Such was the name of the Turk for whom I felt so much sympathy.
He turned to me with a gentle inclination of the head and offered me his pipe.
I declined politely and accepted another pipe brought by one of Bonneval's servants.
Whenever I have been among smokers I have smoked or left the room; otherwise I would have fancied that I was swallowing the smoke of the others, and that idea which is true and unpleasant, disgusted me.
I have never been able to understand how in Germany the ladies, otherwise so polite and delicate, could inhale the suffocating fumes of a crowd of smokers.
Yusuf seemed pleased to find me beside him.
He began, very gently, with the subjects we had touched at table, then came by degrees to myself. He wished to know why I had abandoned the peaceful profession of the Church for a military life.
The question was natural, and not without danger. I wanted to satisfy his curiosity without lowering myself in his opinion. I therefore told him part of my history, choosing my facts with care. I let him see that if I had entered the ecclesiastical path, it had not been through vocation.
He listened with attention and seemed pleased with my recital.
When I had finished, he spoke of natural vocations like a Stoic philosopher. Every man, he said, had his place, his tendency, his inward law. To fight against it was to trouble the order of Providence. I saw at once that he was a fatalist.
I was careful to not attack his system openly.
I objected only with moderation. He did not dislike my objections, most likely because he thought himself strong enough to overthrow them.
After an hour spent questioning me, listening to my principles, and weighing me with his calm eyes, he said,
"I believe you are fit to know the truth. I can see that you are seeking for it, and that you are not certain of having obtained it so far."
Seeing that I raised no objection, he inclined his head, satisfied.
"I want to invite you to spend a whole day with me."
He named the days on which I would be certain to find him at home. Then he added,
"But before accepting, I would like you to consult Osman Pacha."
"That is already done," I said. "The pacha had mentioned you to me and had spoken very highly of your character."
Yusuf's face brightened, though his manners did not lose their gravity. We fixed the day and I left him.
I must have inspired the honest Mussulman with very great esteem, for he thought me worthy of becoming his disciple; it was not likely that he could entertain the idea of becoming himself the disciple of a young man of nineteen, lost, as he thought, in a false religion.
I told M. de Bonneval everything that had passed between Yusuf and me.
He was delighted.
He said. "My janissary shall be every day at the Venetian palace, ready to execute your orders."
The baili also congratulated me on the acquaintances I had already made. M. Venier advised me not to neglect such friends.
"In this country," he said, "weariness of life is more deadly to foreigners than the plague."
On the appointed day, I went early to Yusuf's palace.
He was not at home.
His gardener, who had received his orders, welcomed me with great civility and undertook to entertain me until his master returned. For two hours he showed me through the garden, which deserved all the pride he took in it.
The paths were clean, shaded, and fragrant. Flowers of every colour opened under the morning light; fountains cooled the air; orange trees gave both perfume and order to the place.
The gardener was a Neapolitan.
He had belonged to Yusuf for thirty years. His manners were so good that I suspected him of gentle birth and some education. He laughed when I hinted at it.
"I was never taught even to read," he said frankly. "I was a sailor when I was taken and made a slave."
"And you have never wished to be free?"
"Free?" He looked around the garden, then back at me. "In my master's service I am so happy that liberty would be nothing but a punishment for me."
Of course I did not venture to address him any questions about his master, for his reserve might have put my curiosity to the blush.
Yusuf had gone out on horseback. He returned before noon.
After the usual compliments, he led me to a summerhouse where dinner had been prepared for the two of us. From there we had a fine view of the sea.
The heat, which elsewhere lay heavy upon the day, was softened by a fresh breeze from the northwest, that wind which arrives regularly at the same hour and is called the mistral.
We dined well.
There was only one prepared dish, the cauroman, a peculiar delicacy of the Turks. I drank water and hydromel, and told Yusuf that I preferred the latter to wine, of which I drank little at that time.
"Your hydromel," I said, "is very good, and the Mussulmans who offend against the law by drinking wine do not deserve any indulgence; I believe they drink wine only because it is forbidden."
"Many of the true believers," he answered, "think that they can take it as a medicine. The Grand Turk's physician has brought it into vogue as a medicine, and it has been the cause of his fortune, for he has captivated the favour of his master who is in reality constantly ill, because he is always in a state of intoxication."
"That is a disease," I said, "which many physicians would know how to encourage."
"In your country, is drunkenness common?"
"Not among people of any condition. We have drunkards, certainly, but the vice belongs chiefly to the lowest classes."
He looked surprised.
"I cannot understand," he said, "why wine is allowed by all religions, when its use deprives man of his reason."
"All religions," I answered, "forbid excess in drinking wine, and the crime is only in the abuse."
I proved him the truth of what I had said by telling him that opium produced the same results as wine, but more powerfully, and consequently Mahomet ought to have forbidden the use of it.
Yusuf inclined his head and observed,
"I have never taken either wine or opium."
After dinner, the pipes were brought in, and we filled them ourselves.
I smoked with pleasure, though not with Turkish discipline. From time to time I spat.
Yusuf observed me with mild amusement. He smoked as a Turk should, drawing calmly, letting the smoke leave him at measured intervals, without hurry and without the least impurity of gesture.
"The tobacco you are now smoking is of a very fine quality," he said, "and you ought to swallow its balsam which is mixed with the saliva."
"I suppose you are right; smoking cannot be truly enjoyed without the best tobacco."
"That is true to a certain extent, but the enjoyment found in smoking good tobacco is not the principal pleasure, because it only pleases our senses; true enjoyment is that which works upon the soul, and is completely independent of the senses."
"I cannot realize pleasures enjoyed by the soul without the instrumentality of the senses."
"Listen to me. When you fill your pipe do you feel any pleasure?"
"Yes."
"Whence does that pleasure arise, if it is not from your soul? Let us go further. Do you not feel pleased when you give up your pipe after having smoked all the tobacco in it--when you see that nothing is left but some ashes?"
"It is true."
"Well, there are two pleasures in which your senses have certainly nothing to do, but I want you to guess the third, and the most essential."
"The most essential? It is the perfume."
"No; that is a pleasure of the organ of smelling, a sensual pleasure."
"Then I do not know."
"Listen. The principal pleasure derived from tobacco smoking is the sight of the smoke itself. You must never see it go out of the bowl of your pipe, but only from the corner of your mouth, at regular intervals which must not be too frequent."
He looked up to the sky and exclaimed, "It is so truly the greatest pleasure connected with the pipe, that you cannot find anywhere a blind man who smokes. Try yourself the experiment of smoking a pipe in your room, at night and without a light; you will soon lay the pipe down."
I answered, "It is all perfectly true; yet you must forgive me if I give the preference to several pleasures, in which my senses are interested, over those which afford enjoyment only to my soul."
"Forty years ago I was of the same opinion, and in forty years, if you succeed in acquiring wisdom, you will think like me. Pleasures which give activity to our senses, my dear son, disturb the repose of our soul, a proof that they do not deserve the name of real enjoyments."
"But if I feel them to be real enjoyments, it is enough to prove that they are truly so."
"Granted; but if you would take the trouble of analyzing them after you have tasted them, you would not find them unalloyed."
"It may be so, but why should I take a trouble which would only lessen my enjoyment."
"A time will come when you will feel pleasure in that very trouble."
"It strikes me, dear father, that you prefer mature age to youth."
"You may boldly say old age."
"You surprise me. Must I believe that your early life has been unhappy?"
"Far from it. It was always fortunate in good health, and the master of my own passions; but all I saw in my equals was for me a good school in which I have acquired the knowledge of man, and learned the real road to happiness. The happiest of men is not the most voluptuous, but the one who knows how to choose the highest standards of voluptuousness, which can be found, I say again, not in the pleasures which excite our senses, but in those which give greater repose to the soul."
"That is the voluptuousness which you consider unalloyed."
"Yes, and such is the sight of a vast prairie all covered with grass. The green colour, so strongly recommended by our divine prophet, strikes my eyes, and at the same moment I feel that my soul is wrapped up in a calm so delightful that I fancy myself nearer the Creator. I enjoy the same peace, the same repose, when I am seated on the banks of a river, when I look upon the water so quiet, yet always moving, which flows constantly, yet never disappears from my sight, never loses any of its clearness in spite of its constant motion. It strikes me as the image of my own existence, and of the calm which I require for my life in order to reach, like the water I am gazing upon, the goal which I do not see, and which can only be found at the other end of the journey."
Thus reasoned the Turk, and we passed four hours in this sort of conversation.
Before I left, he spoke to me of his family.
He had buried two wives. By the first, he had two sons and one daughter. The eldest son had received his share of the patrimony and established himself at Salonica, where he had become a wealthy merchant. The second was in the seraglio, in the service of the Grand Turk; his fortune remained in the hands of a trustee.
His daughter, Zelmi, was then sixteen and she was to inherit all his remaining property.
Speaking of her he observed, "I have given her all the accomplishments which could minister to the happiness of the man whom heaven had destined for her husband."
We shall hear more of that daughter in due time.
Five years before my visit, after the death of his children's mother, Yusuf had taken another wife, a native of Scio, young and very beautiful, but he told me himself that he was now too old, and could not hope to have any child by her. Yet he was only sixty.
At nineteen, I thought this a great age. I have since learned that sixty is old only to those who have not yet reached it.
When I rose to go, Yusuf made me promise to spend at least one day every week with him.
That evening, at supper, I told the baili how pleasantly my day had passed.
"We envy you," they said, "the prospect you have before you of spending agreeably three or four months in this country, while, in our quality of ministers, we must pine away with melancholy."