Our Italian Candide Took The Name Of Mahomet, And Became
Pipe-Bearer To A Turkish General Officer In The Garrison.
This young
man trusted the deserter to such an extent that the doors of the Harim
were open to him[FN#1], and Giovanni Finati repaid his kindness by
seducing Fatimah, a Georgian girl, his master’s favourite wife.
The
garrison then removed to Scutari. Being of course hated by his fellow
servants, the renegade at last fell into disgrace, and exchanging the
pipe-stick for the hatchet, he became a hewer of wood. This degradation
did not diminish poor Fatimah’s affection: she continued to visit him,
and to leave little presents and tokens for him in his room. But
presently the girl proved likely to become a mother,—their intercourse
was more than suspected,—Giovanni Finati had a dread of
circumcision,[FN#2]
[p.392] so he came to the felon resolution of flying alone from
Scutari. He happened to meet his “original friend the captain-merchant,”
and in March, 1809, obtained from him a passage to Egypt, the Al-Dorado
to which all poverty-struck Albanian adventurers were then flocking. At
Alexandr[i]a the new Mahomet, after twice deserting from a Christian
service, at the risk of life and honour, voluntarily enlisted as an
Albanian private soldier in a Moslem land; the naďvete with which he
admires and comments upon his conduct is a curious moral phenomenon.
Thence he proceeded to Cairo, and became a “Balik bash” (corporal), in
charge of six Albanian privates, of Mohammed Ali’s body-guard.
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