Читать книгу Under the Turk in Constantinople: A record of Sir John Finch's Embassy, 1674-1681 онлайн

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“As to the House in itself, it affords no great aspect to the eye without, but truly it is very convenient within, and I think it gives great content to my Lord, as I am sure it does to me. We both taking a great delight to set in our chairs and see the birds in the court lodge upon the cypress tree with as much alacrity and security as the malefactors fly into a church in Italy or a publick Minister’s house, upon the foresight of which my Lord from his first coming gave order to all his servants not only [not] to shoot a gun at them, but not to throw a stone: insomuch that at this time we have little wrens which begin to learn to fly first from bough to bough, then from tree to tree, then from tree to the top of the house and so back again, and all under safe protection.”ssss1

It is a vividly realised picture, sympathetically painted. We see, across the dead years, that long since vanished courtyard at Pera, with its tall bird-haunted cypress tree—and on the open gallery above, behind its wood railing, two clean-shaven, middle-aged English bachelors in full-bottomed wigs, seated side by side, watching the young wrens try their wings; while around them lay the splendour and the havoc of the East: a world in which semi-tones existed not—in which the dominant note was exaggeration—where life was a singular, often a sinister, mixture of brilliant light and deep gloom, and reality partook alternately of the enchantments of a dream and the horrors of a nightmare.