The giant door was broad and bright and high,
   Of gilded bronze, and carved in curious guise;
   Warriors thereon were battling furiously;
   Here stalks the victor, there the vanquish’d lies;
   There captives led in triumph droop the eye,
   And in perspective many a squadron flies.
   It seems the work of times before the line
   Of Rome transplanted fell with Constantine.

This massy portal stood at the wide close
   Of a huge hall, and on its either side
   Two little dwarfs, the least you could suppose,
   Were sate, like ugly imps, as if allied
   In mockery to the enormous gate which rose
   O’er them in almost pyramidic pride.

CHAPTER XXIV

Table of Contents

Dispute with the Ambassador—Reflections on Byron’s Pride of Rank—Abandons his Oriental Travels—Re-embarks in the “Salsette”—The Dagger Scene—Zea—Returns to Athens—Tour in the Morea—Dangerous Illness—Return to Athens—The Adventure on which “The Giaour” is founded

Although Lord Byron remained two months in Constantinople, and visited every object of interest and curiosity within and around it, he yet brought away with him fewer poetical impressions than from any other part of the Ottoman dominions; at least he has made less use in his works of what he saw and learned there, than of the materials he collected in other places.

From whatever cause it arose, the self-abstraction which I had noticed at Smyrna, was remarked about him while he was in the capital, and the same jealousy of his rank was so nervously awake, that it led him to attempt an obtrusion on the ambassadorial etiquettes—which he probably regretted.

It has grown into a custom, at Constantinople, when the foreign ministers are admitted to audiences of ceremony with the Sultan, to allow the subjects and travellers of their respective nations to accompany them, both to swell the pomp of the spectacle, and to gratify their curiosity.  Mr Adair, our ambassador, for whom the Salsette had been sent, had his audience of leave appointed soon after Lord Byron’s arrival, and his Lordship was particularly anxious to occupy a station of distinction in the procession.  The pretension was ridiculous in itself, and showed less acquaintance with courtly ceremonies than might have been expected in a person of his rank and intelligence.  Mr Adair assured him that he could obtain no particular place; that in the arrangements for the ceremonial, only the persons connected with the embassy could be considered, and that the Turks neither acknowledged the precedence, nor could be requested to consider the distinctions of our nobility.  Byron, however, still persisted, and the minister was obliged to refer him on the subject to the Austrian Internuncio, a high authority in questions of etiquette, whose opinion was decidedly against the pretension.