he was accompanied by a brother of the late Djémal Pasha. I was glad of the opportunity to tell him that, "whatever the political mistakes of their former leader, I felt that the Turks had lost a great man."
The proprietor of this little restaurant is also a professor. He determined that, while cooks, and indeed all servants, were almost impossible to obtain, the deputies should suffer no inconvenience. Now they all either drop in at the professor's, or ask him to send them a snack to one of the rooms of the Assembly. The ready courtesy with which he offered to contrive a meal à l'anglaise, for my special benefit, clearly showed he is always willing to do his best.
H. Soubhi Bey's tastes are very simple, and he detests show or bluff. "We discard superstitions, alike in life and religion," he said; "only the solid foundations of truth can resist the storm. Our National Pact, like our faith, is solid, positive, and true."
On one occasion I met Haidar Bey, député for Vannes, the colonel's adviser on rugs and carpets, whom he calls "the old brigand." He told me, however, "the fellow was not dangerous;" and I surprised him by declaring that I had fallen in love, at the age of eight, with Hadji Stavros, Edmund About's "King of the Mountains," and, in consequence, was perfectly at home with brigands.
Haidar Bey does not carry the chaplet, which so many Orientals are always counting, in order to check the temptation to smoke, but I noticed he was clenching a piece of wax. "He's training his muscles," laughed the colonel. "Brigands, you know, have to keep themselves very fit!"
He seemed to me, as a matter of fact, to have suffered more, physically, from the allied occupation than anyone else I met, except Essad Pasha, the celebrated oculist, obviously destined for constant pain to the end of his days.
