Seated cross-legged in the midst of all these objects of magnificence and horror are the merchants who, of all those to be found in the Great Bazâr, present the most striking and distinctive examples of the true Mussulman. They are, for the most part, old, of forbidding aspect, lean as anchorites, haughty as sultans, belonging apparently to another age and wearing the dress of a bygone era: it would seem as though they had arisen from the dead for the purpose of recalling their degenerate descendants to the forgotten austerities of their ancient race.
Another spot well worth seeing is the old-clothes bazâr. Rembrandt would simply have taken up his abode here, and Goya have expended his last _peseta_. Any one who has never been in an Oriental second-hand shop can form no idea of the variety and richness of the rags, pomp of color, and irony of contrast to be found in them--a sight at once fantastic, melancholy, and repellent. They are a sort of rag-sewer, in which the refuse of harem, barrack, court, and theatre await together the moment when some artist’s caprice or beggar’s necessity shall once more call them forth into the light of day. From long poles fastened to the walls depend antique Turkish uniforms, swallow-tailed coats, fine gentlemen’s cloaks, dervishes’ tunics, Bedouins’ mantles, all greasy, torn, and faded, looking as though they had been taken by force from their former owners, and strongly resembling the booty found on footpads and assassins which may be seen on exhibition in the Court of Assizes. In among all these rags and tatters one catches the glitter of an occasional bit of gold embroidery; old silk scarfs and turbans, all unwrapped, dangle to and fro; a rich shawl with ragged edges; a velvet corsage looking as though some rude hand had torn off its trimming of pearls and fur; slippers and veils which may once have belonged to some beautiful sinner, whose body, sewn up in a bag, now sleeps quietly enough beneath the rippling waters of the Bosphorus;--these and countless other feminine garments and adornments, of all manner of charming shapes and colors, hang imprisoned between rough Circassian caftans, long black Jewish capes, rusty cartridge-boxes, heavy cloaks and coarse tunics beneath whose folds who knows how often the bandit’s musket or dagger of the assassin may have been hidden? On toward evening, when the subdued light from the roof above becomes still more uncertain, all these garments, as they sway back and forth in the wind, assume the look and air of human bodies strung up there by some murderer’s hand, and just then, as your eye catches the sinister glance of one of those old Jews seated watchfully in the rear of his gloomy den of a shop, you cannot avoid fancying that the skinny claw with which he scratches his forehead can be no other than the one which tightened the rope--a soothing idea which causes you to glance involuntarily over your shoulder to see if the entrance to the bazâr is still open.