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

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North’s pains to please had not been wasted. The Turks whom he entertained at 30 per cent were so delighted with this wonderful Giaour that they pressed him to become really and wholly one of them by abjuring his false religion. North always parried these awkward blandishments with his usual adroitness. He never argued on religion, or indeed on any other subject, with the Turks. Nobody likes to be contradicted, and the Turks were not accustomed to bear dissent from a Giaour. Our Treasurer would not lose profitable customers for any consideration. He had not gone to Constantinople to quarrel but to climb; and he had long since learnt that at Constantinople, as elsewhere, climbing could only be performed in the same posture as crawling. So without attempting to argue, he laughed away the suggestion of apostasy by saying, “My father wore a hat and left that hat to me. I wear it because my father left it, and”—clapping his hands on his head—“I will wear it as long as I live!” He knew the Turks well enough to know that he lost nothing in their eyes by his attachment to the paternal hat. For though keen on proselytising—always by temptation and persuasion, hardly ever by constraint—they had little respect for the proselyte.