two young brothers, orphaned and beggared by the same stroke—he saw the possessions which should have been his own pass into the hands of strangers—and he knew and felt that on his individual exertions depended the comforts, the fortunes, the very existence, of those helpless and homeless beings.
I shall pursue the subject no farther for obvious reasons, suffice it that Nicholas Aristarchi, Great Logotheti and Chargé d’Affaires for Wallachia, was to me an object of surpassing interest: I had heard so much of him—I had imagined so much—and I had been so deeply affected by his domestic history—that I was anxious to see a man who had suffered so fearfully, who had struggled so manfully, and who had grappled with fortune until he saw it at his feet; and whose individual influence had sufficed to depose two Patriarchs, and to seat two others on the throne of the Greek church.
Nor did I, when I first met him, know the tendency of his politics; I was desirous only to make the acquaintance of a man who had become an object of great interest to me from the description and narration of an individual whom he had essentially served, and who had succeeded in awakening in my mind a wish to see and converse with him. My business was with the man; with the politician I had nothing to do. I thought only of the Aristarchi, who had saved and supported a ruined mother and a beggared family; I cared not for the Dragoman, who had assisted at treaties, and passed his youth among the intrigues of cabinets. His domestic history was a little romance; my feelings of sympathy had been excited by the manner in which it was related to me; and I rejoiced in the opportunity of becoming known to him.
Logotheti was one of the first persons presented to me; and I instantly felt that, had I encountered him in a crowd, I could not have passed him by without remark. He is about five and thirty, of the middle size, and there is mind in every line of his expressive countenance—his brow is high and ample, with the rich brown hair receding from it, as if fully to reveal its intellectual character; his bright and restless eyes appear almost to flash fire during his moments of excitement, but in those of repose their characteristic is extreme softness; his nose is a perfect aquiline, and his moustache partially conceals a set of the whitest teeth I ever saw. As he stood conversing with me, I remarked that he constantly amused himself by toying with his beard, which he wears pointed, and of which he is evidently vain. His voice is extremely agreeable, his delivery emphatic, and he speaks French fluently.
After a few moments of conversation, he introduced me to his wife, his mother, and his sisters, all of whom greeted me with the greatest kindness; and in a few more, my hand was in his, and we were threading the mazes of a cotillon. I was much amused by the officiousness of his attendants; his pipe-bearer, whose tube (not staff) of office was of the most costly description, approached him every five minutes with the tempting luxury, of which he was, however, much too well-bred to avail himself while conversing with me; although the Greek ladies are accustomed to this social accessory, and many of the elder ones even indulge in it themselves—another handed to him from time to time a clean cambric handkerchief—while a third haunted him like his shadow, and the moment that we paused, either in the dance, or in our walk across the room, placed a couple of chairs for us to seat ourselves. Of this latter arrangement, he availed himself without scruple, and compelled me to do the same; while, as the evolutions of the figure constantly caused me to rise, he invariably stood leaning over the back of my empty chair, until I was again seated, ere he would resume his own.
As he persisted in dancing with me nearly the whole of the evening, and talking to me during the remainder, I soon became much interested in his conversation, and it was with sincere pleasure that I heard him promise that he would get up an extempore ball for us the following night. The news soon spread through the room, and great were the exertions made to secure invitations, the more particularly as the morrow was the last day of the Carnival; and, at half past four in the morning, after having received an invitation to breakfast with Madame Logotheti, we made our parting bow to our very handsome hostess and her hospitable husband, and hastened to secure a little rest, to enable us to contend with the fatigues of the forthcoming evening.
A Greek breakfast differs little from a Greek dinner: there are the same sparkling wines, the same goodly tureen of soup, the same meats, and confectionary, and friandises; but, in addition to these, there is the snowy kaimack, or clotted cream, and the bubbling urn.
I know not whether others have made the same remark, but I have frequently observed that the breakfast after a ball, where the party is an agreeable one, is a most delightful repast. The excitement of the previous night has not entirely subsided—the “sayings and doings” of “ladies bright and cavaliers” afford a gay and unfailing topic—and all goes “merry as a marriage bell.” Certain it is, that in this instance my theory is borne out by the result; for, on the termination of the meal, the family insisted on our remaining with them during our stay at the Fanar. Servants were accordingly despatched for our bandboxes and dressing-cases, and we established ourselves comfortably round the tandour until dinner-time.
As the house which Logotheti occupied during the winter months was merely hired,1 and, although extremely handsome and spacious, was greatly inferior in magnificence to his residence on the Bosphorus, he did not consider it expedient to give the ball himself, lest he should offend many whom he had neither time nor space to invite; but requested one of his friends, Hage Aneste, or Aneste the Pilgrim, a Primate of the Greek church and a near neighbour, to open his house in the evening, and the arrangement was completed at once.
If I had been pleased with Logotheti in the heat and hurry of a ball room, I was infinitely more delighted with him in the bosom of his family. His gentle and courtly manners, and his unaffected and fluent conversation, rendered him a charming companion; and the hours flew so swiftly in his society, and that of his amiable family, that dinner was announced before the morning had appeared to be half spent.
At half past nine, we were in the ball-room, which I entered on the arm of Logotheti, and I was considerably startled during our progress up stairs by the manner of his reception. Our host and hostess met us on the first landing-place, where they bent down and kissed the hem of his garment, despite his efforts to prevent this truly Oriental salutation. Their example was followed by all those who made way for us; and, as he led me through the noble saloon in which we were to dance, and seated me in the centre of the sofa, at the upper end of a drawing-room that opened into it, every one rose, and continued standing until he had taken possession of a chair.
Coffee having been handed round, Logotheti conducted me back into the saloon, where we opened the ball with a Polonaise; after which, quadrilles, waltzes, cotillons, and mazurkas, followed each other in rapid succession; and, after having been introduced to more persons than I could possibly recognise should I ever meet them again, and dancing until near six o’clock in the morning, I walked another Polonaise with our agreeable host, and quitted the ball-room with more regret than I ever experienced on a similar occasion.
We remained the morrow at the Fanar, and I carried away with me no memories save those of kindness and courtesy. Seldom, very seldom indeed, have I passed three days of such unalloyed gratification as those for which I am indebted to Logotheti and his friends.
No circumstance impressed me more strongly during this very agreeable visit, than the rapid strides which the Constantinopolitan Greeks are making towards civilization. The Turks have a thousand old and cherished superstitions that tend to clog the chariot wheels of social progression, and which it will require time to rend away; the Armenians, who consider their Moslem masters as the ne plus ultra of human perfection, are yet further removed from improvement than the Turks; while the Greeks, lively and quick-minded, seize, as it were by intuition, minute shades of character as well as striking points of manners. Locomotive, physically as well as mentally, they indulge their erratic tastes and propensities by travel; they compare, estimate, and adopt; they pride themselves in their progress; they stand forth, scorning all half measures, as declared converts to European customs; and they fashion their minds as well as their persons, after their admitted models.
