this event, though it produced so great a sensation in Constantinople.
The vizier's superb palace was utterly consumed, and the melted lead
poured down from the roof of the mosque of St. Sophia. Various were the
opinions formed by my neighbours respecting the cause of the
conflagration. Some supposed it to be a punishment for the sultan's
having neglected one Friday to appear it the mosque of St. Sophia; others
considered it as a warning sent by Mahomet to dissuade the Porte from
persisting in a war in which we were just engaged. The generality,
however, of the coffee-house politicians contented themselves with
observing that it was the will of Mahomet that the palace should be
consumed. Satisfied by this supposition, they took no precaution to
prevent similar accidents in their own houses. Never were fires so
common in the city as at this period; scarcely a night passed without our
being wakened by the cry of fire.

"These frequent fires were rendered still more dreadful by villains, who
were continually on the watch to increase the confusion by which they
profited, and to pillage the houses of the sufferers. It was discovered
that these incendiaries frequently skulked, towards evening, in the
neighbourhood of the bezestein, where the richest merchants store their
goods. Some of these wretches were detected in throwing _coundaks_, or
matches, into the windows; and if these combustibles remained a
sufficient time, they could not fail to set the house on fire.

"Notwithstanding all these circumstances, many even of those who had
property to preserve continued to repeat, 'It is the will of Mahomet,'
and consequently to neglect all means of preservation. I, on the
contrary, recollecting the lesson I had learned from the sensible
foreigner, neither suffered my spirits to sink with superstitious fears
of ill-luck, nor did I trust presumptuously to my good fortune. I took