I went on steadily with my business, and made it my whole study 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.

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 it 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.