traditionary belief in what is called the evil eye, answering to the
evil spirit that is accredited to exist by more civilized nations.
Any human being bereft of reason, or seriously deformed in any way,
is held by them to be a protection against the blight of the evil
eye, which, being once cast upon a person, renders him doomed
forever. Holding, therefore, that dwarfs, idiots or mad-men are
partially inspired, every considerable such establishment supports
one or more, whose privilege it is to follow, untrammeled, their own
pleasure. The idiot boy, in the Sultan's palace, was one of this
class, whom no one thwarted, and who was regarded with a half
superstitious reverence by all.

While this scene had been transpiring between the idiot boy and the
slave, the Sultan had been talking with Mustapha concerning the
latter. It seemed by his story that she had been very ill since she
was brought from her native valley, and that she was hardly yet
recovered from the debility that had followed her sickness. She
would not write nor read one word of either the Turkish or
Circassian tongue, and therefore could only express herself by signs;
for which reason, neither those who sold her nor the purchaser
knew aught of her history beyond the fact that she was a Circassian,
and also that she seemed to be less happy than those of her
countrywomen generally who come to Constantinople. This might be
owing to the affliction under which she labored as to being dumb,
but it was evident that Sultan Mahomet thought otherwise as he gazed
silently at her.

"She came not of her own free will from her native vales, Mustapha,"
said his master.