Whether that was the end I have no means of knowing, for I was asked to leave. That is always the case, I notice, when I want to stay after the rest of the sightseers have got tired and gone away. It rather annoys me that I should be classed with unbelievers, and made to sit with them on a bench behind the railing instead of squatting on a sheepskin mat like the other people of Scutari. Yet if it were not so it would never have befallen me to come into contact with so eminent a personality of my day as Mme. Bernhardt—or at least with her parasol. The actress has often been to Constantinople, and she must have seen the howling dervishes many times. Who knows what so great an expert in expression may have caught from the ritual frenzy of the _Roufaï_? It so happened that one of those times was also the occasion of my first visit. I went early, in order to secure a good place. Mme. Bernhardt did not. She has no doubt learned by long and flattering experience that however late she arrives she is sure of a good place. Nor can I suppose she always manages it in the way she did then. She arrived late, I say, and by the time she arrived there was no room left in the front row of benches. I regret to confess that I did not at once hop out of my seat and put her into it. The performance had already begun, tourists were all the time coming in, and while I caught some buzz about the Divine Sarah, I was just then paying more attention to the men of God in front of me. Presently, however, I felt a fearful poke in my back. I knew that poke. It was the eternal feminine. It was beauty. It was genius. It was the Divine Sarah, desiring impressions and not to be debarred from them by a small tourist _quelconque_—and divinely unconscious that she might be imparting them, yet not unaware that many a man would jump into the Seine or the Bosphorus at a poke from her. What would you? I was young, the parasol was hard, and the Divine Sarah was the Divine Sarah. I accordingly slipped out of my place, I hope not without a gracious smile. And what I saw of the dervishes that day was through the foliage of a very complicated hat. I must say that I resented it a little. But I consoled myself by murmuring behind Sarah’s back—and the poet’s— “_To poke is human, to forgive divine._” VII THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS _Giardini chiusi, appena intraveduti,_ _o contemplati a lungo pe’ cancelli_ _che mai nessuna mano al viandante_ _smarrito aprì come in un sogno! Muti_ _giardini, cimiteri senza avelli,_ _ove erra forse qualche spirto amante_ _dietro l’ombre de’ suoi beni perduti!_ —GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO: “Poema Paradisiaco.”