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Hussein smoked a narghile of dark red Bohemian cut crystal. M. Petronievitch and myself were supplied with pipes which were more profusely mounted with diamonds, than any I had ever before smoked; for Hussein Pasha is beyond all comparison the wealthiest man in the Ottoman empire.
Wucics, dressed in the coarse frieze jacket and boots of a Servian peasant, heard with a reverential inclination of the head the elegantly polished discourse of the gold-bedizened prelate, but nought relaxed one single muscle of that adamantine visage; the finer but more luminous features of Petronievitch were evidently under the control of a less powerful will.
A few days after my arrival, Wucics and Petronievitch, the two pillars of the party of Kara Georgevitch, the reigning prince, and the opponents of the ousted Obrenovitch family, returned from banishment in consequence of communications that had passed between the British and Russian governments. Great preparations were made to receive the popular favourites.
C. "Well, then, we will take the winter of Cairo; the spring of Damascus, and the summer of the Bosphorus." M. Petronievitch took me to see the Prince, who has got into his new residence outside the Constantinople gate, which looks like one of the villas one sees in the environs of Vienna.
Being Ramadan, I could not see the pasha during the day; but in the evening, M. Petronievitch, the exiled leader of the Servian National party, introduced me to Hussein Pasha, the once terrible destroyer of the Janissaries. This celebrated character appeared to be verging on eighty, and, afflicted with gout, was sitting in the corner of the divan at his ease, in the old Turkish ample costume.
Arrival at Widdin Jew. Comfortless Khan. Wretched appearance of Widdin. Hussein Pasha. M. Petronievitch. Steam Balloon. River steaming is, according to my notions, the best of all sorts of locomotion. Steam at sea makes you sick, and the voyage is generally over before you have gained your sea legs and your land appetite.
My time during the rest of the year was taken up with political, statistical, and historical inquiries, the results of which will be found condensed at the termination of the narrative part of this work. Return to Servia. The Danube. Semlin. Wucics and Petronievitch. Cathedral Solemnity. Subscription Ball. After an absence of six months in England, I returned to the Danube.
I had never seen a Servian full-dress ball, but the arrival of Wucics and Petronievitch procured me the opportunity of witnessing an entertainment of this description. The principal apartment in the new Konak, built by prince Michael, was the ball-room, which, by eight o'clock, was filled, as the phrase goes, by all "the rank and fashion" of Belgrade.
Here he made the acquaintance of all the leading personages at the Ottoman Porte, and learned colloquial Turkish in perfection. Petronievitch is astute by education and position, but he has a good heart and a capacious intellect, and his defects belong not to the man, but to the man's education and circumstances.
Dinner was served in the refectory to about twenty individuals, including the monks and our party. The Igoumen drank to the health of the prince, and then of Wucics and Petronievitch, declaring that thanks were due to God and those European powers who had brought about their return. The shabby priest, with the gallows look, then sang a song of his own composition, on their return.
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