In this manner I was enabled to move in Turkish society as Reshid Effendi without in any way binding myself. The more I became familiar with their social customs, and steeped in the Oriental ways of living and thinking, the larger grew my circle of acquaintances, and the more unreservedly all doors were opened to me, not merely of lower officials but of the higher and even the very highest dignitaries. Turkey knows no aristocracy of birth; the man of obscure origin can suddenly become Marshal and Grand-Vizier; and since most of them, as self-made men, have no genealogical scruples, so also in the foreigner they do not so much consider his antecedents as his personal capabilities; and as my fame as professor of the Turkish language spread, I found the doors of the highest society open to me, and in a year's time, I was, with the exception of Murad Effendi (Werner), who lived in the house of Kibrisli Pasha, the only European who, without formally going over to Islam, had become an Effendi and a _protégé_ of the Porte circle. Easy as this transformation had been, because of the tolerance of the better classes of Stambul, so much the greater had been the sacrifices which the lower classes demanded from me. Servants play an important part in Turkish households; they are looked upon as members of the family, and in the patriarchal organisation of the house they have a considerable influence upon the Effendi and Pasha, and especially upon the children. These servants, transported from the interior of European and Asiatic Turkey to the banks of the Bosporus, are generally in the very lowest stage of education; they are extremely fanatical and suspicious as regards Europeans, and the higher I rose in the favour of the master of the house the higher rose their jealousy and animosity. They could not understand that, notwithstanding my literary and religious knowledge, I did not become a pious Moslem, and why the Pasha, Bey, or Effendi should show me, the disguised Giaour, so much attention. In spite of all that both religion and national custom prescribe as to the kind treatment of guests, for the Koran says, "Ekremu ed dhaifun ve lau kana kafirun," _i.e._, "Honour the guest, even if he be an unbeliever," I had much unkindness to bear, and had to put up with many a humiliation. What amused me most was the conduct of the older house-servants; they even played the Mentor towards the governor, his wife, and his children, and often instructed me in rules of etiquette and general views of life. In the eyes of these people infidel Europe was a barbarian wilderness, rejecting the civilising influences of Islam, and it was an act of condescension on the part of the old-stock Turk, brought up within the small Stambul circle, to put me right, and to instruct me in the correct way of sitting, walking, eating, talking, and general comportment. Others, again, were malevolent and fanatical, made me the butt of their ill-chosen jokes, worried me, and once it even happened that a scoundrel, who had risen to be the tyrant of the house, threw his boot at my head because I had not polished it enough to his liking. I had to take all this into the bargain; it was a new school--the school of Oriental life--which I had to pass through, and the fee had to be paid.