My companion commenced operations by displaying a number of conjuring tricks intended to impress all present with the loftiest opinion of his powers, and stopped every now and then to make his dragoman explain that it would prove in vain to endeavor to deceive a being endowed with such gifts. To these expositions the women apparently paid but little attention; but the conjuring feats delighted them; and again and again they laughed until, literally, the head of each dropped on her neighbor's shoulder. After a time the husband, who alone had never appeared the least entertained, interposed, and asked the conjuror whether he had yet discovered the guilty party. With the utmost coolness, my friend replied, "Certainly not: how could he while His Highness's wives continued vailed?" This new demand created new confusion and a long debate: I thought, however, that the women seemed rather to advocate our cause. The husband, the Mollah, and the mother again consulted; and in another moment the vails had dropped, and the beauty of many an Eastern nation stood before us revealed. Four of those unvailed Orientals were, as we were informed, wives, and six were slaves. The former were beautiful indeed, though beautiful in different degrees and in various styles of beauty: of the latter two only. They were, all of them, tall, slender, and dark-eyed, "shadowing high beauty in their airy brows," and uniting a mystical with a luxurious expression, like that of Sibyls who had been feasting with Cleopatra. There was something to me strange as well as lovely in their aspect--as strange as their condition, which seems a state half-way between marriage and widowhood. They see no man except their husband; and a visit from him (except in the case of the favorite) is a rare and marvelous occurrence, like an eclipse of the sun. Their bearing toward each other was that of sisters: in their movements I remarked an extraordinary sympathy, which was the more striking on account of their rapid transitions from the extreme of alarm to child-like wonder, and again to boundless mirth.