On arriving in Constantinople for the first time, one is much surprised, after all he has heard of the thraldom of the Turkish women, to see them, everywhere and at all hours of the day, coming and going with apparently the same freedom as the women of any other city in Europe. It seems as though all these imprisoned swallows must that very day have been given their liberty, and a new era of freedom and independence dawned for the fair sex among the Mussulmans. At first the impression is very odd: one is in doubt whether all these females enveloped in white veils and long, variously-colored mantles are nuns or masqueraders or lunatics; and, as you never by any chance see one of them accompanied by a man, they seem not to belong to any one, being all, apparently, young girls or widows or inmates of some huge asylum for the “unhappily married.” It is some time before you can realize that all these Turkish men and women, who meet and jostle one another in the streets without ever walking along together or interchanging so much as a nod or look, can have anything in common, and you constantly find yourself stopping to watch them and reflect upon this singular custom. And these strange figures, you say to yourself--these actually are those “subduers of hearts,” “fountains of peace,” “little rose-leaves,” “early grapes,” “morning rays,” “life-givers”, “sunrises”, and “shining moons” about whom thousands of poets have written and sung? These are the “hanums” and mysterious slaves, reading of whom in Victor Hugo’s ballads at the age of twenty, in a shady garden, we imagined to be like beings of another world? These the unfortunate beauties, hidden behind gratings, watched over by eunuchs, separated from the world, who, passing like shadows across the face of the earth, emit one cry of pleasure and one of sorrow? Let us see how much truth lies at the bottom of all this poetry. * * * * *