We left together, and disembarked here after a three days' voyage. The Turks had left bloody traces of their passage everywhere; they were in garrison in the castle of Khios. As I was a Frenchman, thanks to the firm attitude of our navy and our consuls in the Orient, I would be in perfect security in case of my deciding to dwell in Khios. I inspected the palace, it suited me, and the business was settled. The next day my interpreter brought to me a renegade Jew, who proposed that I should purchase a dozen beautiful Grecian slave girls, the spoils of the last Turkish raid in the islands of Samos and Lesbos. Of these twelve girls, the eldest of whom was only twenty, there were three who were too refined and delicate to be put to work, and were therefore suitable for companionship. The nine others, tall, robust, and very beautiful, could work either in the garden or in the house. He only demanded two thousand piastres apiece, about five hundred francs of our money. In order to induce me to buy them, the renegade told me, confidentially, that a Tunisian officer, purveyor of the Bey's harem, had made him an offer; but that he liked to see his slaves well treated and so preferred selling them to me, knowing what harsh treatment the poor creatures would receive on board the Barbary _chebek_ that was to take them to Tunis. I expressed a desire to see the slaves. The marvellous type of Grecian beauty has been so well preserved in this favoured clime, that, out of these twelve girls of every sort and condition, there was not one who was not really pretty, and three of them were perfectly beautiful women. The bargain concluded, I sent the twelve women to the Carina Palace with two negro dwarfs, who were so deformed as to be positively picturesque, that the renegade presented me with by way of a contrast. They were all under the surveillance of an old Cypriote, that the Jew recommended as a housekeeper. This sudden resolution to go to the Isle of Khios, and there to live at leisure, forgetting all things and every one, had been suggested to me a year ago, by the torturing remembrance of the great sorrow that overwhelmed me. After my quarrel with Falmouth, whom I had so basely provoked, fully aware that I was unworthy of all generous affection, since I was constantly seeking the meanest motives, I believed that a perfectly sensual life would admit of neither these fears nor doubts. What had made me so unhappy until now? Was it not from a dread of being deceived by my feelings? The dread of being mistaken should I allow myself to love? What, then, should I risk in devoting the remainder of my life to material love? Nature is so rich, so fecund, so inexhaustible, that I can never weary of admiring her marvels, from henceforth I would doubt of nothing.