"I owe everything to my mother," he said one day to the French Consul; "for my father, when he died, left me nothing but a den of wild beasts and a few fields.

My imagination, inflamed by the counsels of her who has given me life twice over, since she has made me both a man and a vizier, revealed to me the secret of my destiny.

Thenceforward I saw nothing in Tepelen but the natal air from which I was to spring on the prey which I devoured mentally.

I dreamt of nothing else but power, treasures, palaces, in short what time has realised and still promises; for the point I have now reached is not the limit of my hopes." Kamco did not confine herself to words; she employed every means to increase the fortune of her beloved son and to make him a power.

Her first care was to poison the children of Veli's favourite slave, who had died before him.