The body of the rod had
fulfilled its destiny in attracting the lightning, while the telegraph
wire, not being able to carry the load brought to it, had discharged
it into the magazine. And, when I saw it, the wire was still inviting
another disaster. I found in Eshref Pasha a most interesting and
amiable personage, out of his place completely in the management of a
turbulent and really hostile Christian population, with whom his very
best qualities were a disqualification. Eshref was a poet, a dreamer,
and, I was told, the second man of letters in the empire. He
laughingly asked me if I had been at Podgoritza, and I as
good-humoredly replied that I had not come to complain of my treatment
there, but to pay my compliments to a fellow man of letters. His
broad, good-natured face lighted up with pleasure, and, dropping
politics and fighting, we talked poetry and letters. Secretaries and
messengers were coming and going with papers to be signed, or orders
to be given, and we could talk only by interludes. I remarked that he
must have little time for letters in all this complication of cares,
and he replied that "poetry was his refuge in the night when he was
unable to sleep; he had no other time." I tried to get a sample of
his verse, and he recited me one, of which I could judge only by
the sound, which was very musical; but to my urging for a copy for
publication in England he objected that translators were not good for
the reputation of a poet, which we all know.
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