The Amount Is Little
Less Than Three Hundred Thousand.
The Emperor's body-guard, which
consists of eighteen thousand horsemen, is chiefly composed of
negroes, who enjoy every privilege that despotic power can confer, and
are ready upon all occasions to enforce the royal mandate.
The great schools for the Moorish gentry are the chanceries of the
Bashaws, where the young men learn the arts of dissimulation and
duplicity in the greatest perfection, and become, very, early such
great adepts in these valuable acquirements, that in my opinion they
are fully able to cope with Monsieur Talleyrand, and the best
politicians at the court of St. Cloud. They are very dexterous also
in the art of temporizing with an enemy, and deluding him by a
thousand little expedients. It is therefore fortunate for Europe, that
the Moors are so indolent a set of people; for the immense power this
empire might have; were it peopled by an industrious and ambitious
race of men, would render it the most formidable in the world.
I shall now return to my own affairs, from the period at which they
were left off in a former letter. The Emperor had requested me to
report to him, personally, every morning, the state of his favourite
Sultana; I therefore waited upon him regularly at five o'clock, and
was extremely happy that I was enabled to make the report more welcome
each day. After this visit to His Imperial Majesty, I daily paid my
devoirs to the blind prince, the only remaining brother of the Emperor
now in Barbary, and who took no part in the disputes of former times;
and I then called upon the great officers of state.
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