Constant Communication Had Been Going On Between The Receding Crowd And The Pasha, And So When We Reached The Gates Of The Citadel We Saw That Preparations Were Made For Giving Us An Awe-Striking Reception.

Parting at once from the sailors and our servants, the General and I were conducted into the audience hall; and there at least I suppose the Pasha hoped that he would confound us by his greatness.

The hall was nothing more than a large whitewashed room. Oriental potentates have a pride in that sort of simplicity, when they can contrast it with the exhibition of power, and this the Pasha was able to do, for the lower end of the hall was filled with his officers. These men, of whom I thought there were about fifty or sixty, were all handsomely, though plainly, dressed in the military frockcoats of Europe; they stood in mass and so as to present a hollow semicircular front towards the upper end of the hall at which the Pasha sat; they opened a narrow lane for us when we entered, and as soon as we had passed they again closed up their ranks. An attempt was made to induce us to remain at a respectful distance from his mightiness. To have yielded in this point would have have been fatal to our success, perhaps to our lives; but the General and I had already determined upon the place which we should take, and we rudely pushed on towards the upper end of the hall.

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