charcoal burned freely and warmed the apartment. When the room was
washed out I thought myself fortunate, so dreary and deserted had the
other khan appeared to me.

I now took a walk through the bazaars, but found the place altogether
miserable, being somewhat less village-like than Roustchouk. Lying so
nicely on the bank of the Danube, which here makes such beautiful
curves, and marked on the map with capital letters, it ought (such was
my notion) to be a place having at least one well-built and
well-stocked bazaar, a handsome seraglio, and some good-looking
mosques. 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. M.
Petronievitch and myself were supplied with pipes which were more
profusely mounted with diamonds, than any I had ever before smoked;
for Hussein Pasha is beyond all comparison the wealthiest man in the