into the stillness of the night a brood of restless longings, dreams, and visions, which, scaling the Seraglio walls, find their way to every corner of the globe, seeking out homes of childhood, mothers lost in infancy, resuscitating half-forgotten scenes of horror. Prayers and supplications mingle with plots of vengeance in the moonlit walks and the overmastering impulses of secret ambition. The great palace sleeps, but it is a restless, disturbed sleep, interrupted by sudden fearful visions of alarm and terror; mutterings in a hundred different languages mingle with the voices of the night. Close together, divided by but a few walls, sleep the dissolute page, the imâm who has preached the word of God, the executioner who has strangled the innocent, the imprisoned prince awaiting death, and the enamored sultana on the eve of her nuptials. Unhappy wretches, stripped of everything they possessed in the world, find themselves side by side with the possessors of fabulous riches. Beauty which is almost divine, absurd deformity, every form of vice and misfortune, every prostitution of soul and body, are to be found shut in between the same walls. Against the starlit sky are outlined the bizarre shapes of Moorish tower and roof, and shadows of garlands and leafy festoons play over the walls; the fountains shimmer in the moonlight like cascades of diamonds and sapphires; and all the perfumes of the gardens, gathered into one powerful odor, are swept by the breeze through every open lattice, every crack and crevice, leaving in their wake soft, intoxicating dreams and memories.