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Updated: May 21, 2025
The Kislar Aga came to see me, and was astonished; he saw at once that I should immediately become first favourite; and having heard me sing and play, he demanded my price, which was enormous. He reported me to the sultan, stating that he had never beheld such perfection, and at the same time informing him of the exorbitant demand of the slave-merchant.
"'I, El-Kobbir, a slave-merchant, and purveyor of the harem of his highness, acknowledge having received for transmission to the sublime emperor, from the French lord, the Count of Monte Cristo, an emerald valued at eight hundred thousand francs; as the ransom of a young Christian slave of eleven years of age, named Haidee, the acknowledged daughter of the late lord Ali Tepelini, pasha of Yanina, and of Vasiliki, his favorite; she having been sold to me seven years previously, with her mother, who had died on arriving at Constantinople, by a French colonel in the service of the Vizier Ali Tepelini, named Fernand Mondego.
But I restrained myself, although my cheeks burned with rage, and I more than once put my hand to my jewelled dagger. I was often visited by Osman Ali, who in vain attempted to make me speak; a harsh guttural sound was all which I would utter to express pain or pleasure. At last, being convinced that I was dumb, he exchanged me with a slave-merchant for a beautiful Circassian girl.
They had been given to him by an esteemed friend, a Portuguese slave-merchant; and he declared that, in his opinion, they were the best horses in the world. No others could replace them. "Very well," said Groot Willem, when this communication had been made; "ask him what he expects us to pay." "All this ceremony is not for nothing," remarked Hendrik, while Congo was again talking to the chief.
I was brought from my native country, when I was five years old, by a slave-merchant, who sold me to one of the royal messengers. My master had a three-year-old daughter, with whom I was reared, and they used to make sport of me, letting me play with the girl and dance and sing to her, till I reached the age of twelve and she that of ten; and even then they did not forbid me from her.
In the meantime, Osman Ali having heard from the women the message I had sent, was very wroth, and came to the slave-merchant to procure me again; but the slave-merchant informed him that the Kislar Aga of the sultan had seen me, and ordered me to be reserved for the imperial seraglio; by this falsehood screening himself, not only from Ali's importunities, but also from his vengeance.
He did not state my supposed infirmity, but gave it as a reason for parting with me, that I was too young, and required to be taught. As soon as the bargain was struck, and the merchant had received the money which had been given by Ali to effect the exchange, I was despoiled of my dress and ornaments, and put in a litter, to be conveyed to the house of the slave-merchant.
Why does the English nation, which has made itself memorable to all time as the destroyer of negro slavery, which has shrunk from no sacrifices to free its own character from that odious stain, and to close all the countries of the world against the slave-merchant, why is it that the nation which is at the head of Abolitionism, not only feels no sympathy with those who are fighting against the slaveholding conspiracy, but actually desires its success?
Not such are the raptures of a Circassian father who has sold his pretty daughter well to a Turkish slave-merchant. Yet Dr. Burney was an amiable man, a man of good abilities, a man who had seen much of the world.
All the specimens of African races elbowed one another in the streets, from the nigger, brought from his native Soudan by the slave-merchant, to the Romanized Numidian. The inflow, continually renewed, of traffickers and cosmopolitan adventurers increased this confusion. And so Carthage was a Babel of races, of costumes, of beliefs and ideas.
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