Besides the maids of honor or ladies in waiting, at the palace, are often bestowed in marriage upon pashas and other dignitaries, who thus consider themselves in some sense allied to royalty. One of their number was a slave to Validé Sultan. She was married to Mehmed Bey, the brother of the sultan's brother-in-law, with the idea of ameliorating her condition; but being very ill-treated by her husband, she had a petition written and presented it to her royal patroness, whereupon the validé summoned the husband, and reprimanded him in such a manner that he became exasperated, and having intoxicated himself with racky, or Turkish brandy, rushed into the harem, and plunged his dagger into the breast of the unfortunate wife.
Sultan Mahmoud lost his favorite wife, and was so much grieved by her death, that he ordered her apartments to be locked up, and that no one should enter them; he only, spent some time there every day in solitary meditation upon his lost favorite.
There was a slave girl fourteen or fifteen years old, whose duty was to clean the bath belonging to these apartments. She was so curious to know why these rooms were always locked up, that she one day found herself on an exploring expedition by means of the private staircase. Finding the door open, she ventured to enter the apartment, when, lo! and behold! there was the awful Mahmoud himself.
He said, "how dare you venture here; do you not know my express commands?"
The terrified girl fell at his majesty's feet, and craved pardon.
She was so bewitching in this posture, that the sultan not only pardoned her, but invited her to meet him every day in the same place, till at last, he ordered that the apartments should be appropriated to her, and she became the Fifth Kadun, and the mother of the present sultan!
It is the idea of aspiring to such honors and stations, near even royalty itself, which induces the Circassian parents so readily to sell their daughters to Mussulmans, when nothing could induce them to barter their offspring to Christians.
No wonder that each simple peasant of the Caucasus fancies slavery in the metropolis, to be a translation from poverty to an earthly elysium, when tales, and true tales too, not the enchantments of Aladdin's wonderful lamp, are so common in Oriental life!