He had been born in Naples and became one of the 3,000 boys who, every year, were emasculated. Some died as a result, but others went on to become beautiful singers or even to govern states. He had survived to become a musician in the Chapel of My Lady the Princess of Palestrina — his young audience's mother! And the two then knew that in early childhood they had been reared together.
The two exchanged reports of their experiences. The honest eunuch, as Voltaire called him, told her that he had been sent to the king of Morocco to conclude a treaty involving munitions, arms, and ships "to help exterminate the trade of the other Christian countries." His mission had been concluded; he now planned to take her back to Italy. Again he groaned over the fact that he was a eunuch.
The "honest" eunuch took her instead to Algiers and sold her to the Dey (governor, ruler or pasha). There a terrible plague, described by the old woman as being worse than an earthquake, broke out. She became one of its victims. She, the daughter of a pope, a girl who, at the age of fifteen had endured poverty, slavery, and repeated rape; who had seen her mother cut into quarters — she was now dying of the plague in Algiers. But she did live, although the eunuch, the Dey, and nearly all the ladies of the seraglio perished. She was sold to a merchant who brought her to Tunis, and then sold successively at Tripoli, Alexandria, Smyrna, and Constantinople. Finally, she was bought by the Aga of the Janizaries (a high officer of the Turkish Sultan's guards), whose immediate commission was to defend the city of Azov against the Russians. The gallant Aga took his entire seraglio with him.
