Returning thence by the way I had come, I entered the city through the gate of the Seven Towers, in order to skirt along the entire outer edge of Stambul on the shore of the Sea of Marmora. To tell the truth, I was pretty well tired out by this time, but on these long excursions which have some settled object a kind of dogged obstinacy usually comes to the rescue and revives one’s flagging energies. I can see myself now, walking, walking, walking along that lonely high-road, beneath the burning sun, in a sort of waking dream crowded with familiar Turin friends, characters in novels, views of distant countries, and vague reflections upon human life and the immortality of the soul, and, crowning them all, the round dinner-table of the Hôtel de Byzance, brilliant with crystal and lights, afar off on the heights of a city many times the size of Stambul, and already half buried in the shades of evening. Crossing a large Mussulman quarter, apparently uninhabited, and which breathed something still of the sadness and desolation of the Castle of Seven Towers, I came to the vast Psamatia quarter, inhabited by Greeks and Armenians, also quite deserted and forlorn. A long, winding, wretched-looking street, from which the black battlemented walls could be seen below on the right standing out against the water’s vivid blue, brought me to the Psamatia Gate, emerging from which I again found myself in a Mussulman quarter, among grated windows, closed doors, little mosques, walled gardens, moss-grown cisterns, and abandoned fountains. I crossed the open space formerly the Cattle Forum: below me, on the right, was the same unbroken line of wall and tower, tower and wall, around me the same solitude and apparent desertion; occasionally a dog would stop and eye me suspiciously, or a youngster seated on the ground stare at me round-eyed, revolving some piece of impertinence in his mind, or the sudden opening and shutting of a window close by reveal for an instant a hand or the edge of a woman’s sleeve. Making a circuit around the large Vlanga gardens, which surrounded the ancient Theodosian Gate, I came upon a vast tract of desolate-looking ground showing traces of a recent fire. Then the city seemed to fade and die away in spots and melt into country. Dervish convents, Greek churches, and queer little open squares broke up the line of the streets; occasionally an old Turk would be seated beneath the shade of a great plane tree, dozing with the mouthpiece of the narghileh clasped between his fingers. Proceeding on my way, I came to a Turkish café, and stopped to get a glass of the water which I could see displayed in the window, but, after calling and knocking for some time in vain, I gave it up and went on.