The day after the travellers’ arrival at Tepellene was fixed by the Vizier for their first audience; and about noon, the time appointed, an officer of the palace with a white wand announced to them that his highness was ready to receive them, and accordingly they proceeded from their own apartment, accompanied by the secretary of the Vizier, and attended by their own dragoman.  The usher of the white rod led the way, and conducted them through a suite of meanly-furnished apartments to the presence chamber.  Ali when they entered was standing, a courtesy of marked distinction from a Turk.  As they advanced towards him, he seated himself, and requested them to sit near him.  The room was spacious and handsomely fitted up, surrounded by that species of continued sofa which the upholsterers call a divan, covered with richly-embroidered velvet; in the middle of the floor was a large marble basin, in which a fountain was playing.

   In marble-paved pavilion, where a spring
   Of living water from the centre rose,
   Whose bubbling did a genial freshness fling,
   And soft voluptuous couches breathed repose,
   Ali reclined; a man of war and woes. 
   Yet in his lineaments ye cannot trace,
   While Gentleness her milder radiance throws
   Along that aged, venerable face,
The deeds that lurk beneath and stain him with disgrace.

   It is not that yon hoary, lengthening beard,
   Ill suits the passions that belong to youth;
   Love conquers age—­so Hafiz hath averr’d: 
   So sings the Teian, and he sings in sooth—­
   But crimes that scorn the tender voice of Ruth,
   Beseeming all men ill, but most the man
   In years, have mark’d him with a tiger’s tooth;
   Blood follows blood, and through their mortal span,
In bloodier acts conclude those who with blood began.

When this was written Ali Pasha was still living; but the prediction which it implies was soon after verified, and he closed his stern and energetic life with a catastrophe worthy of its guilt and bravery.  He voluntarily perished by firing a powder-magazine, when surrounded, beyond all chance of escape, by the troops of the Sultan his master, whose authority he had long contemned.

Mr Hobhouse describes him at this audience as a short fat man, about five feet five inches in height; with a very pleasing face, fair and round; and blue fair eyes, not settled into a Turkish gravity.  His beard was long and hoary, and such a one as any other Turk would have been proud of; nevertheless, he, who was more occupied in attending to his guests than himself, neither gazed at it, smelt it, nor stroked it, according to the custom of his countrymen, when they seek to fill up the pauses in conversation.  He was not dressed with the usual magnificence of dignitaries of his degree, except that his high turban, composed of many small rolls, was of golden muslin, and his yataghan studded with diamonds.