Now it was a servant, guilty of absence without leave, who was bound to a stake in the presence of his sister, and destroyed by a cannon placed six paces off, but only loaded with powder, in order to prolong the agony; now, a Christian accused of having tried to blow up Janina by introducing mice with tinder fastened to their tails into the powder magazine, who was shut up in the cage of Ali's favourite tiger and devoured by it.
The pacha despised the human race as much as he hated it.

A European having reproached him with the cruelty shown to his subjects, Ali replied:-- "You do not understand the race with which I have to deal.

Were I to hang a criminal on yonder tree, the sight would not deter even his own brother from stealing in the crowd at its foot.

If I had an old man burnt alive, his son would steal the ashes and sell them.

The rabble can be governed by fear only, and I am the one man who does it successfully." His conduct perfectly corresponded to his ideas.