As you approach Therapia, you come upon a long stretch of wall, pierced in one regular line with small square windows, and looking exactly like an ill-kept manufactory; while the fine stone terrace that runs along its whole façade, and the thickly-planted shrubberies which clothe the hill behind it, have something so lordly and imposing in their aspect, that your attention is irresistibly attracted, and your curiosity awakened. Should your caïquejhes be Greeks, they will scarcely answer your inquiry without muttering an imprecation through their clenched teeth. It is the sorry remain of the palace of Prince Calimachi, seized by the Sultan in a fit of despotic jealousy, and converted into a stable for the Imperial stud, but so entirely disproportioned to its new office as to be perfectly useless—the extent being immense, and the number of the Sultan’s horses extremely limited; it has consequently been abandoned to premature decay, and a noble object is thus blotted from the landscape, and degraded into a deformity.
The son of the Prince was Dragoman to the Porte when the seizure was made; but being a Greek, his court interest availed him nothing; his ideas were too magnificent, and he paid the forfeit of his luxury.
But the misfortunes of Prince Calimachi did not end here. Exiled to Broussa, he endeavoured in the bosom of his family to lose the memory of his departed splendour; when he was one day invited to the palace of the Pasha to encounter him at chess, of which game both were passionately fond. Calimachi accepted the defiance with alacrity, for he knew not how dearly he was to pay the gratification. While he was deliberating on a move, the Pasha waved his hand, and in an instant the fatal cord was about the throat of his victim. The bereaved wife was next summoned; and though the dark ring of extravasated blood betrayed the deed which had been done, she was told that the Prince had expired from an attack of paralysis; nor did she dare to gainsay the falsehood; and thus she bore away the body of her murdered husband in the silence of despair.
The Sultan has a kiosk on the one hand, and a summer palace on the other, of this melancholy memorial of despotic power; but I was in no mood to admire either with such an object before me.