flames and rise again ere European civilization shall have planted its triumphant ensign upon the imperial palace of Dolmabâghcheh? * * * * * In the old days, when a fire broke out in Constantinople, if the Sultan happened to be at that moment in the harem, news of the disaster was sent to him in the person of an odalisque dressed in scarlet from head to foot, with orders to present herself before him wherever he might be, were it even in the embraces of the favorite. She had only to appear upon the threshold: the flaming color of her attire would do the rest and be the mute announcement of her errand. Will any one believe that among all the striking and terrible pictures which my mind conjures up at the thought of a Constantinople fire the figure of that odalisque moves my artistic sense the most, and makes me long to be a painter that I might depict the scene as it rises before me? At all events, I shall go on begging every artist I meet to do it for me, until I come across one whose fancy will be struck with the idea, and who will earn my undying gratitude. The picture will represent an apartment in the imperial harem flooded with soft light. Seated upon a broad divan by the side of a fair young pearl-bedecked Circassian, Selim I., the mighty Sultan, suddenly disengages himself from the arms of his companion, and fixes his great black eyes upon the scarlet-clad odalisque standing in the doorway, mute, erect, immovable as a statue, one hand holding back the curtain beyond which is seen the open terrace, and in the blue distance the great smoking city, while her pallid, terror-stricken face would seem to say, “King of kings, Allah summons you to go to the relief of your unhappy people.” THE WALLS. I determined to make the circuit of the ancient walls of Stambul entirely alone, and this plan I recommend to all Italians visiting Constantinople, as the sight of those majestic and beautiful ruins cannot make a profound and lasting impression upon the mind unless one is altogether intent upon receiving it and can freely follow his own train of thought. It is a question of tramping about fifteen Italian miles through deserted streets and exposed to the full blaze of the sun. “Very possibly,” said I to my friend, “when I have gone halfway I shall be seized with such a desperate attack of loneliness that I will invoke you like one of the saints, but, all the same, I want to go by myself.” And so, having first lightened my purse for fear some suburban pick-pocket might do it for me, and thrown something to the “eager dogs within,” so that I might say to myself later on, “Be still, then, accursed wolf!” I set forth in the direction of the Validêh Sultan bridge at eight in the morning, beneath a sky washed clean and bright by a shower which had fallen during the night.