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The Armenians : a Tale of Constantinople

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The Armenians : a Tale of Constantinople mi^: 'iisp' L I E, RAFLY OF THE UNIVERSITY Of ILLINOIS 823 V. 2> Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2009 witii funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.arGhive.org/details/armenianstaleofc02macf : ^^ THE ARMENIANS, A TALE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. BY CHARLES MAC FARLANE, ESQ. AUTHOR OF " CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1828." IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. IL LONDON SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET. 1830. : LONDON S. MANNING AND CO., PRINTERS, LONDON-HOUSE YARD. 8?3 THE ARMENIANS. CHAPTER i; The hope of seeing Veronica, which had attracted the Prince to the Bosphorus and his fishing-lines, again most provokingly failed him; but now the door of the SerafFs' house was open at least for one visit of ceremony. Had she come to the Princess', he might have so arranged matters as to speak with her apart, were it but for a few minutes ; he might—his VOL. II. B 2 THE ARMENIANS. heart ached at the thought of all he might have said and done. Within the walls of the Tinghir-Oglus, there was, however, a possibi- lit} of seeing Veronica, and of hearing the sounds of her voice, and that, though but for a moment, and in the yashmack and feridji, and uttering but the most indifferent words, would still be an exquisite pleasure. Evening was approaching ere he went to the Armenian abode, for it was not until then that he ceased hoping Veronica might be at liberty to come where he suspected her heart to be. The Princess would accompany him in his visit, and express to her neighbours the pleasure she felt that her grandson had been so fortunate as to render a service to persons, who had so importantly served her in the days of her sorrows. • On turning the angle of the quay, and THE ARMENIANS. O approaching the house of the Tinghir-Oglus, Constantine saw a group of Armenians, who had probably been to pay a visit of condolence within, seated on low wicker stools, on the curb-stones that confine the bank, and smoking silently and assiduously, with their long chibook- projecting over the clear waters of the channel. At the moment, the eyes of some of them were fixed on the flight of those rapid aquatic birds that abound on the Bosphorus, and whose restlessness might have formed a curious contrast to their own quietude ; other eyes were bent on the gliding caik, or on the curling smoke of their ^^' lulahs : others were gazing vacantly across the channel, at the beautiful httle bay and vil- lage of Chibookli, or up its current, at the scale of Sultanie ; but on the Prince and Princess stopping at the SerafiPs" threshold, a long, B 2 ^ THE ARMENIANS. continuous hem! was heard, and all the eyes of the sedent party were fixed on them with a wide stare (and for width of stare no eyes can equal the Armenians'). " By the keel of Noah's ark on Mount Ararat," said Hugaz, a very broad man who dealt in broad cloth, *• the Greeks are gone " into the Seraffs' ! " Very true," quoth Ostref the Aleppine, " but you have heard how the heretic rescued friend Agop from the janissary: that was yesterday evening—now this evening he is come for his reward ; conforming herein, you know, to the advice of Nostradin-Chodjeaf *' Let not the taste of your sherbet be out of the rich man's mouth, ere you ask him for his pilaff." ^^) " But it is the son of the Hospodar of Wallachia. who but a few days ago bought the THE ARMENIANS. O best cachemere I had on hand for five thousand piastres," said Andron the Angorote. " And paid you ?" quoth Hugaz. " Money down!" replied Andron. *' Then so much the more likely is he to be in want of cash now," reasoned Ostref the " Aleppine ; he must have come here to borrow money from friend Agop ; what else ever brought a Greek under an Armenian roof?" " ^^^ !" Baccalum ! we shall see said Hugaz. While these animated speculations were interchanged, having been duly announced, and having traversed an intricate dark passage, each angle of which was guarded by a picture of a madonna, or a saint, well smoked by the oil that burned in an earthen dish before it, Constantine and the Princess were ushered into the presence of the brothers Tinghir-Oglu. 6 THE ARMENIANS. The passage was ingeniously contrived so as to wind round the whole of the apartment, and to end at a door that opened in the most distant corner of it. As Constantine advanced with a beating heart, he saw that beside the brothers there were two Catholic priests, one an Armenian, the other a secular, imported from Italy, and three gross Bazaarganlar in the room—but he could not expect to find Veronica there! It has been the fortune of few travellers to see the interior of an Armenian house, but the apartment of the Tinghir-Oglus, in form and furniture, differed, like the abodes of all their race, but little from the usual apart- ments of the Turks, whom they closely imitate in their domestic economy and general mode of living. The room, or it might be called a saloon, was spacious, but low ; the beech THE ARMENIANS. 7 lloor was in part covered with Egyptian mats, and in part with sundry carpets ; the roof was of tesselated wood, gaudily painted in stripes of red, blue, and yellow, and ornamented with bouquets of flowers, rather clumsily executed, in gold. The walls of the apart- ments, also of boards, were painted in a plain brown colour, and furnished with a range of shelves, or rather one continuous shelf, running round the upper end and two sides of the room, over the divan or low sofo, which as usual was trilater^Uy arranged. This shelf was well stocked with drums of tobacco, pipe-bowls, touchwood, pots of preserves, huge melons, and others of the absolute necessaries of a Levantine's life ; all of which might be reached from the divan with the least trouble possible. At intervals on the walls or wains- coting, differing here from the Turks, whose B THE ARMENIANS* religion prohibits them the representation of any human or brute form, were, a large picture of the Virgin Mary, with a silver crown enriched with brilliants, nailed over her head, and seven silver daggers stuck in her heart ; and coloured prints, badly executed, but set in frames of gilt silver, shadowing forth the glories of the patron saints of every member of the family, from Yussuf, or Saint .Joseph, to Saint Veronica with her miraculously impressed handkerchief/'*) At the end of the room opposite to the window was a crucifix, with the figure in wood, nearly as large as life. In comphance with the prejudice, or it might be called, the good taste, of the Turks, who were not unfrequently visitors at the SerafFs', it had been thought expedient to cover the agonizing, bloody figure, and it was only on rare occa- sions, that it was revealed in all its deformity. THE ARMENIANS. 9 On one side of the room was an armoire or closet, that contained the coverlets, by which, with a very simple process, the sofa by day, was converted into beds by night: the folding doors were cut with pigeon-holes of very quaint figures, through which the, to us unsightly, appurtenances of beds were visible. The upper end of the room nearly all opened into one wide window, according to the general plan of those summer-houses on the Bosphorus; it looked on the quay and the channel, and the opposite hills and shores of Asia. The casement, however, was fur- nished like the houses of the Turks with close lattices, so appropriately termed jalousies! and thus, as if to shew their want of taste in every thing, the exquisite prospect was almost excluded. Agop of the Tinghir-Oglus sat with his b3 10 THE ARMENIANS. back towards the window, on the low sofa's edge, supported by well-stuffed pillows, or rather cushions, those luxuries of a Turkish divan ! Before him was the skemne, or low table, which his dinner had been served on, but which now was covered by those infinitely small scraps of paper on which the Orientals ^^^ contrive to keep their longest accounts : mixed with the papers were several silk bags of money, each with a crooked, mystic looking seal attached to its pursy mouth, and under his hand was a silver snufF-box of portentous dimensions, on the Hd of which some eastern artist had expended his ingenuity in engraving a bunch of flowers, that might have been mistaken for the head of a cauliflower, and two billing doves, that might just as well have typified two fighting cocks. Agop looked pale and languid, and (an THE ARMENIANS. 11 infallible index to indisposition in Turkey) his chibook-mouthpiece lay unhanded on the divan—the lulah unlit in its little, bright saucer of brass on the floor. ^^^ In his best hours Agop's personal ap- pearance was not the most favourable : but now, indisposed, and more negligently dressed than was his wont, and with a Persian lamb-skin cap, the curly black wool worn externally, fitting close to his shaven skull, his thick black beard unmowed, his long mustachoes uncurled, he was almost repul- sive. He rose upright sur son seant (and not on his legs) on the sofa, as the Princess and Constantine advanced to the end of the room, and returned their graceful salutations with the usual formula, which are fixed and unvarying with Armenians as with Turks, and laying, while he spoke, his hand across his ! 12 THE ARMENIANS.
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