there constantly passed the pale spectre of Emineh, leading onwards a
vast procession of mournful phantoms, and the guilty pacha buried his
face in his hands and shrieked aloud for help. Sometimes, ashamed of his
weakness, he endeavoured to defy both the reproaches of his conscience
and the opinion of the multitude, and sought to encounter criticism with
bravado. If, by chance, he overheard some blind singer chanting in the
streets the satirical verses which, faithful to the poetical and mocking
genius of their ancestors, the Greeks frequently composed about him, he
would order the singer to be brought, would bid him repeat his verses,
and, applauding him, would relate some fresh anecdote of cruelty,
saying, "Go, add that to thy tale; let thy hearers know what I can do;
let them understand that I stop at nothing in order to overcome my foes!
If I reproach myself with anything, it is only with the deeds I have
sometimes failed to carry out."

Sometimes it was the terrors of the life after death which assailed him.
The thought of eternity brought terrible visions in its train, and Ali
shuddered at the prospect of Al-Sirat, that awful bridge, narrow as a
spider's thread and hanging over the furnaces of Hell which a Mussulman
must cross in order to arrive at the gate of Paradise. He ceased to
joke about Eblis, the Prince of Evil, and sank by degrees into profound
superstition. He was surrounded by magicians and soothsayers; he
consulted omens, and demanded talismans and charms from the dervishes,
which he had either sewn into his garments, or suspended in the most
secret parts of his palace, in order to avert evil influences. A
Koran was hung about his neck as a defence against the evil eye, and
frequently he removed it and knelt before it, as did Louis XI before the
leaden figures of saints which adorned his hat. He ordered a complete
chemical laboratory from Venice, and engaged alchemists to distill the
water of immortality, by the help of which he hoped to ascend to