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I knew it at once: I had lain a special fuse-train in the great palace at the top of the terraces: it was the royal palace, Yildiz.
It is significant that, while yet the blood of the murdered Christians was scarcely washed from the streets of Constantinople, the Emperor Wilhelm II. visited his brother-sovereign at Yildiz, after making his tour throughout the Holy Land.
Coming up and extending a hand for us to feel the pulse they would ask us to do something for the disease, which we could see was rapidly carrying them to the grave. Our first view of Sivas was obtained from the top of Mount Yildiz, on which still stands the ruined castle of Mithridates, the Pontine monarch, whom Lucullus many times defeated, but never conquered.
They had only reached London that night, and they bore with them a special mandate, signed by the Sultan himself, directing Mehemet Ali to hand over the diamonds to their charge, and to at once return with his assistants to Yildiz Kiosk. "There could be no questioning the authenticity of the Sultan's instructions.
A fresh force of fifty thousand men following up the victory might easily have made its own terms at the door of Yildiz Palace within three or four days; but there was not even a fresh regiment.
The Turks are exceedingly fond of going into society, but their domestic arrangements tend to prevent their entertaining. His Majesty the Sultan frequently invites European ladies to his dinner parties, and those who have had that honour must have thoroughly enjoyed the delicious music and the pleasant entertainments after dinner at the Palace of Yildiz.
These were saved by the protests of Europe, and perhaps by the knowledge that if all the Armenians were killed, there could never be any more shooting. The Kurds also had lost a considerable number of men, and that was far from displeasing to the yellow-faced butcher of Yildiz. A little blood-letting among those turbulent Kurds was not at all a bad thing.
I saw him less than a fortnight ago, driving to the Mosque on Friday, and his coachman evidently had orders to go at a gallop through the streets, whilst not only was the entire road protected by soldiers, but every house was examined previously by police agents. There is something in the wind of more than usual importance in the neighbourhood of Yildiz Kiosk just now, I am certain.
"I doubt very much," he said, "whether Downing Street realizes the enormous power which the Quai d'Orsay has over the Yildiz Kiosk." "So do I," I said, "what is it?" But he hardly noticed the interruption. "You've got to remember," he went on, "that, from the point of view of the Yildiz, the Wilhelmstrasse is just a thing of yesterday." "Quite so," I said.
In the distance along the water is the Cheraghan Palace where the imprisoned ex-Sultan Murad, the elder brother of the present Sultan, for many years had every luxury but liberty. And on the heights just beyond those grounds is Yildiz Kiosk, the palace where now lives the present ruler of Turkey, his Imperial Majesty, Sultan Abdul Hamid.
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