Nothing of the sort. The Konak or palace of the Pasha is an
old barrack. The seraglio of the famous Passavan Oglou is in ruins,
and the only decent looking house in the place is the new office of
the Steam Navigation Company, which is on the Danube.
Being Ramadan, I could not see the pasha during the day; but in the
evening, M. Petronievitch, the exiled leader of the Servian National
party, introduced me to Hussein Pasha, the once terrible destroyer of
the Janissaries. This celebrated character appeared to be verging on
eighty, and, afflicted with gout, was sitting in the corner of the
divan at his ease, in the old Turkish ample costume. The white beard,
the dress of the pasha, the rich but faded carpet which covered the
floor, the roof of elaborate but dingy wooden arabesque, were all in
perfect keeping, and the dubious light of two thick wax candles rising
two or three feet from the floor, but seemed to bring out the picture,
which carried me back, a generation at least, to the pashas of the old
school. Hussein smoked a narghile of dark red Bohemian cut crystal.
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