CHAPTER XII

THE STAR FROM THE WEST—THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE

NICE, _Feb._ 1907.

We have just returned from Cap Martin, where we have had the pleasure and honour of being introduced to the Empress Eugénie, the person of all persons I hoped to meet in Europe. Never will she know how much I have appreciated seeing her to-day, and all the charming past she called back to my memory.

Imagine actually seeing in the flesh, the heroine of your grandmothers’ stories; the Empress whose beauty fascinated the East, the Empress whose clothes the women copied, whose language they learnt, the woman who had, though perhaps she may not know it, the greatest influence on the lives of Turkish women. It seemed to me as I looked at the ex-Empress, that I was back in Constantinople again, but the Constantinople that my grandmother had known, the Constantinople where the Sultan Abdul-Aziz reigned and the life of the Turkish women was one of independence compared to ours.

The Empress remembered with great pleasure every detail of her visit to the East. She spoke of the persons she had known, and asked for news of them. Alas! so many were dead, and others scattered to the four corners of the Empire!

She remembered the town, the Palaces, and the marble Beylerbei which had been built specially for her. So kindly, too, did she speak of the Sultan Aziz, saying how welcome he had made her, and how his people loved him.

Was it possible without appearing unpatriotic to make her understand that the lovely Palace in which she had stayed, the Palace which had echoed with the sounds of Eastern music and dancing and singing, was now being put to a very different usage? During Hamid’s reign Palaces are not required for festivity, but captivity. Many unfortunate souls have only known Beylerbei as the stepping stone to Eternity!

I should have liked to remind the Empress, had I dared, of the impression her beauty had made on the women.

She is an old lady now, but she did not seem so to me. I was looking at the Empress my countrywomen had admired, the Empress for whom they had sacrificed their wonderful Eastern garments; I saw the curls they had copied, the little high-heeled shoes she wore, and even the jewels she had liked best.

“Are the women still as much veiled as when I was in Constantinople?” asked the Empress; and when I told her that a thick black veil had taken the place of the white Yachmack, she could hardly believe it. “What a pity!” she said, “it was so pretty.”

The home in which I saw the Empress, reminded me of one of our Turkish Islands. The sea was as blue and the sky as clear, and the sun, which forced her to change her place several times, was almost as intense. With an odour of pine wood was mixed a fragrant perfume of violets, and the more I looked at it, the more Oriental did the landscape become.

Having spoken so much about the past and the people and the country we have left for ever, it seemed to me that all of us had given way to the inevitable Oriental sadness, yet we fought against it, for there were other visitors there.

I shall always regret not having had the opportunity of seeing the Empress alone; it seemed to me that so much of what I might have told her had been left unsaid, and I know she would have been so glad to listen.—Your affectionate

ZEYNEB.