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Book, page 261 / 468 to please my employers, by all fair and honourable means. This industry and civility succeeded beyond my expectations: in a few years, I was rich for a man in my way of business. "I will not proceed to trouble you with the journal of a petty merchant's life; I pass on to the incident which made a considerable change in my affairs. "A terrible fire broke out near the walls of the grand seignior's seraglio: [Footnote: _Vide_ Baron de Tott's Memoirs.] as you are strangers, gentlemen, you may not have heard of this event, though it produced so great a sensation in Constantinople. The vizier's superb palace was utterly consumed; and the melted lead poured down from the roof of the mosque of St. Sophia. Various were the opinions formed by my neighbours, respecting the cause of the conflagration. Some supposed it to be a punishment for the sultan's having neglected, one Friday, to appear at the mosque of St. Sophia; others considered it as a warning sent by Mahomet, to dissuade the Porte from persisting in a war in which we were just engaged. The generality, however, of the coffee-house politicians contented themselves with observing that it was the will of Mahomet that the palace should be consumed. Satisfied by this supposition, they took no precaution to prevent similar accidents in their own houses. Never were fires so common in the city as at this period; scarcely a night passed without our being wakened by the cry of fire. "These frequent fires were rendered still more dreadful by villains, who were continually on the watch to increase the confusion by which they profited, and to pillage the houses of the sufferers. It was discovered that these incendiaries frequently skulked, towards evening, in the neighbourhood of the bezestein, where the richest merchants store their goods; some of these wretches were detected in throwing _coundaks_, [Footnote: "A _coundak_ is a sort of combustible that consists only of a piece of tinder wrapped in brimstone matches, in the midst of a small bundle of pine shavings. This is the method usually employed by incendiaries--they lay this match by stealth behind a door, which they find open, or on a window; and after setting it on fire, they make their escape. This is sufficient often to produce the most terrible ravages in a town where the houses, built with wood and painted with oil of spike, afford the easiest opportunity to the miscreant who is disposed to
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