When I told my guide that from the deck of the _Pierre Loti_ the town showed scarcely a sign of fire, he promptly led me—for eight hours—through the most horrible _débris_! Instructed to treat me with great respect, he marched steadily ahead with all the gravity of a funeral mute. He had been told, moreover, to reconstruct, as it were, the whole city for my information, and he was obviously determined to overlook no detail. He pointed out exactly how the fire had been planned, and why it had broken out too soon. Passing the Stores, he laid a finger upon the very spots marked by grenades that Greeks and Armenians had thrown. There was a grim disgust and disdain in his last comment: “And all this _funniness_ is supposed to have been done _by us_!”—a strange use of the word funniness. On another occasion, resting a moment among the ruins of what had once been an altar, watching the poor Turkish natives as they raked the _débris_ for firewood, we were suddenly surrounded by a most dismal procession of limping cats and dogs, thin as boards, crying with hunger and pain, homeless, maimed, and with none to claim them or cherish their shrunken limbs. I suggested that we should buy a little ether and send them to their long sleep. My companion was shocked beyond words. “Poor beasts,” he exclaimed, “have not they as much right to be on God’s earth as we? Who are we that we should dare to cut short their existence?” Naturally I did what I could to express all the sympathy his words aroused; determining, nevertheless, in my own mind, that I would beg the Englishman or the Italian to accomplish this errand of mercy. At the same time, the incident only further excited my deep interest in the strange mentality of a people who claim the full rights of existence even for maimed cats and dogs, and are yet held guilty by the whole world of massacring millions of Christians for mere sport. Later that day I was for the moment extremely puzzled by the strange behaviour of all the inhabitants within sight, which certainly seemed most _un_-Turkish. “I have known your people for fifteen years,” I said (only intending a mild joke), “and this is the first time I have ever seen a Turk hurry! What is the matter?” “They are going to blast the ruins,” was my companion’s calm reply. To my thinking it was, indeed, time to be off; and I hopped away like the others, in and out among the charred ruins, at one moment catching my heel, at another tearing my skirt and coat. When, panting and breathless, we at last reached comparative safety, I laughingly asked my guide why he had given me no warning. “You could have no idea whether I could run like this at the last moment.” “His Excellency told me that you were to be treated with the utmost respect,” was the solemn reply!