Surely your sun is rising at last. For my own part, as I tell my incredulous friends, old as I am, I have not abandoned the hope of one day giving my arm to the wife of a pasha passing through Turin and repeating a few pages of _I Promessi Sposi_ to her as we walk together on the banks of the Po. YANGHEN VAHR. I was amusing myself with such fancies as these one morning at about five o’clock as I lay half asleep in bed at the Hôtel de Byzance. In a sort of dreamy vision I saw the hill of Superga in the distance, and began to explain to my travelling _hanum_ that “that arm of the Lake of Como which extends southward between two continuous chains--” Just here there rose up before me the form of my friend Yunk, candle in hand, clad all in glistening white. “What on earth,” said he, “can be going on?” I listened, and, sure enough, there was a confused murmur of voices from the street, hurrying footsteps on the stair, the subdued roar and tumult of mid-day. Running to the window, I peered out, and saw crowds of people all hurrying in the direction of the Golden Horn. I then repaired to the hall, where I succeeded in laying hands on a Greek waiter just as he was shooting by me three steps at a time. “What is it?” I said; “what has happened?” Shaking me off, he merely cried, “Yanghen Vahr! Heavens! did you not hear them calling?” And then, as he disappeared, he shouted, “Look at the top of the Galata Tower!” We ran back to the window, and, craning our necks toward Galata, saw the upper part of the great tower illuminated by a brilliant red light, while a dense black cloud, issuing from some neighboring houses amid a vortex of flames and sparks, spread itself rapidly across the starlit sky. Instantly our thoughts flew to those terrible Constantinople fires of which we had heard so much, especially that fearful one of four years before, and for a moment we were filled with alarm and dismay, but only for a moment--I confess it with shame--for, following immediately upon that first natural impulse, came the selfish eager curiosity of the painter and writer, and a smile--yes, actually that is the disgraceful truth, a smile--broke over our faces which might have served as a model for one of Doré’s demons of the infernal regions. Had any one opened our breasts at that moment, they would have been found to contain nothing but an inkstand and a pallet.