I had been presented to every individual in the room whose acquaintance I could desire to make. Nor must I pass over without remark the progress of education among these amiable women; two-thirds of the younger ones speak French, many of them even fluently—several were conversant with English, and still more with Italian; while a knowledge of the ancient Greek is the basis of their education, and is consequently almost general. A taste for music is also rapidly obtaining; and time and greater facilities are alone wanting to lend the polish of high-breeding and high education to the Greek ladies: the material is there—they already possess intellect, quickness of perception, and a strong desire for instruction; and, even eminently superior as they already are to the Turkish and Armenian females, they are so conscious of their deficiencies both of education and opportunity, that, were these once secured to them, they would probably be inferior to no women in the world as regards mental acquirements.
I pass by the heavy-looking, but, nevertheless, handsome, son of the Prince of Samos, the minister of Moldavia—a group of Mickialis, Manolakis, Lorenzis, Arcolopolos, &c., &c., &c., all dark-eyed and mustachioed—to particularize an individual who must ever be an object of great interest to all who are conversant with Eastern politics—I allude to Nicholas Aristarchi—Great Logotheti, or head of the clergy, and representative of the Greek nation in the Synod—the Aristarchi, who is accused by his enemies of having brought about the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi—of having caused Achmet Pasha to counsel the Sultan to cede some of his finest provinces to the Russians, in virtue of the convention of St. Petersburg; and, to crown all, of being in the receipt of a considerable pension, granted to him, in consideration of his services, by the Emperor Nicholas.
Be all this as it may—and be it remembered that each of these assertions is totally discredited by a numerous party, who have taken a very different view of the political career of Logotheti, and who find a complete refutation of these charges against him, in the perilous situation of the Sultan when Mahomet Ali marched upon Qutayah—Mahmoud was without fleet or army—threatened by his people—abandoned by his friends—deserted by his allies—and reduced to the bare question of self-preservation. In this strait, uncounselled, unadvised, even unsuspected of such an intention, he personally invited the Russian fleet to protect him against his own subjects, nor did he abandon his purpose at the remonstrance of his own ministers, and those of the foreign powers.
During the succeeding four years, the Ottoman Government have persisted in the same views, as if in conviction of their efficacy; and it is scarcely probable that a solitary individual, and that individual, moreover, a Greek raïah, could possess sufficient power to regulate the movements of a despotic government; while it is certain that Aristarchi is still in the confidence of the Turkish ministry, and is more or less interwoven in the intricate web of her political existence.
Many of those who have been the most violent against him have forgotten, or perhaps have never known, that he is the son of that Aristarchi who was sacrificed because he was too true to the cause which he had espoused. Aristarchi was the last Greek Dragoman to the Porte, and the confidant of Halet Effendi; and, on the insurrection of his countrymen, he continued faithful to the interests of the Sultan, and steadily pursued the straight and manly line of policy which had induced him to support the views of England against those of Russia; but he was abandoned in his need by the power that he had, in his days of influence, exerted his best energies to serve. England changed her policy, and Aristarchi, abandoned to the tender mercies of the arch-traitor, Halet Effendi, was exiled to Boloo, under a promise of recall; but he ultimately lost his life, which no powerful hand was outstretched to save, simply because Aristarchi was the only individual whose personal and acquired rank rendered him eligible to fill the exalted station of Prince of Wallachia; and that he was unhappily the confidant of the treacherous intrigues of his patron, which that patron well knew that he possessed the power to disclose. Thus, forgotten on one hand, and betrayed on the other, he fell a sacrifice to the misgivings of Halet Effendi, who supplied his place with one less versed in the intricacies of his own subtle policy.
Logotheti saw his father cut to pieces before his eyes—murdered by the emissaries of those whom he had served with honour and fidelity—he beheld his mother put forth, with her seven helpless daughters, from the home that had so long been her’s—he stood between his 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