Page:Englishwomaninan00elli.pdf/147

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their headlong course, so that one is constantly jolted out of one's seat as the carriages swing from angle to angle, up and down the steep slopes. To start from the Ottoman Bank on a wet day requires a double dose of fatalism.

"The carriages swing from angle to angle."

Ismet Pasha was much amused when I told him that I always said my prayers before starting out for a drive, and uttered some "holy ejaculation" every five minutes of the way. Even a handsome car like M. Kemal Pasha's can be seen dancing about like Shakespeare's elf—"over hill, over dale, through bush, through briar!" A chauffeur who can pilot you through Angora could negotiate any country under the sun.

It was as well, perhaps, that my host, Feszi Bey, had arranged for me to be driven to his house under the cover of darkness, when pitfalls were not so obvious. He is Minister of Public Works, and was at the moment attending the debate on the dethronement of the Sultan. As none of his family speak French, Osman Noury Bey, of the Ottoman Bank, had been instructed