Everyone hastened up to her. The poor thing could not escape from the clamorous enthusiasm of the sturdy muscular fish-wives and bathing women who, in their turn also, raised her upon their shoulders and carried her about, finally resolving to carry her all the way home for the honour of the thing. So for Halil Patrona's palace they set off with Guel-Bejaze on their shoulders, she all the time vainly imploring them to put her down that she might hide away among the crowd and disappear, for she feared, she trembled at, the honour they did her. From street to street they carried her, whirling along with them in a torrent of drunken enthusiasm everyone they chanced to fall in with on the way; and before them went the cry that the woman whom the others were carrying on their shoulders was the wife of Halil Patrona, the feted leader of the people, and ever denser and more violent grew the crowd. Any smaller groups they might happen to meet were swept along with them. Now and then they encountered the harems of the greatest dignitaries, such as pashas and beglerbegs. It was all one, the august and exalted ladies had also to follow in the suite of the wife of Halil Patrona, the most powerful man in the realm, whose wife was the gentlest lady under Heaven. Suddenly, just as they were about to turn into the great square in front of the fortress of the Seven Towers, another imposing crowd encountered them coming from the opposite direction. It was the escort of the Sultana. The half a thousand odalisks and the four hundred eunuchs occupied the whole width of the road, but face to face with them were advancing ten thousand intoxicated viragoes led by the frantic bayaderes. "Make way for the Sultana!" cried the running eunuchs to the approaching crowd, "make way for the Sultana and her suite!" The execution of this command bordered on the impossible. The whole space of the square was filled with women--a perfect sea of heads--and visible above them all was a quivering, tremulous white figure which they had raised on high. "Make way for the Sultana!" screamed the Kadun-Kiet-Khuda, who led the procession; a warty old woman she was, who had had charge of the harem for years and grown grey in it. At this one of the boldest of the bayaderes thrust herself forward. "Make way thyself, thou bearded old witch," she cried; "make way, I say, before the wife of Halil Patrona. Why, thou art not worthy to kiss the dust off her feet. Stand aside if thou wilt not come along with us." And with these words she banged her tambourine right under the nose of the Kadun-Kiet-Khuda. And then the bad idea occurred to some of the eunuchs to lift their broadswords against the boisterous viragoes, possibly with a view of cutting a path through them for the Sultana.