Most of the ladies are in the modern Turkish costume, with a kind of silk mantilla of the same material as the dress falling from the head to the waist. The effect is very Spanish and graceful—more so than when the ladies wear a white scarf over their hair and a long garment as shapeless as a waterproof. In these degenerate days veils are more often absent than not. I must warn you, however, that the Sweet Waters of Europe are not the Sweet Waters of Asia. I remember noticing one day on the river a gaudy little skiff rowed by two young and gaily costumed boatmen. In the stern sat an extremely fat Turkish lady, steering. She was dressed decorously in black, and the black veil thrown back from her face allowed every one to remark that she was neither in her first youth nor particularly handsome. Yet boatmen snickered as she passed, and rowdies called after her in slang which it seemed to me should not be used to a lady. I said as much to my _kaïkji_, who told me that the lady was a famous _demi-mondaine_, named Madam Falcon, and that for the rest I must never expect such good manners at Kiat Haneh as at Gyök Sou. I must confess that I looked at Madam Falcon with some interest the next time we passed; for the Turkish half-world is of all half-worlds the most invisible, and so far as I knew I had never seen a member of it before. Madam Falcon paid no attention to the curiosity she aroused. Sitting there impassively in her black dress, with her smooth yellow skin, she made one think of a graven image, of some Indian Bouddha in old ivory. So venerable a person she seemed, so benevolent, so decorous and dead to the world, that she only made her half-world more remote and invisible than ever. But she was a sign—in spite of the smart brougham driving slowly along the shore with a Palace eunuch sitting on the box—that the great days of Kiat Haneh are gone. Nevertheless it has, during its brief time of early green, a colour of its own. And the serpentine river, winding between tufts of trees and under Japanesey wooden bridges, is always a pleasant piece of line and light in a spring sun. But beware of the coffee-house men on the shore! For their season is short, and if they catch you they will skin you alive. V THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY _Galata, que mes yeux désiraient dès longtemps..._ —ANDRÉ CHÉNIER. _In Pera sono tre malanni:_ _Peste, fuoco, dragomanni._ —LOCAL PROVERB.