The latest gossip of Teheran was retailed, and a few vague remarks were made as to the politics of Europe. I was asked to feel the Imād’s pulse, and did not fail to try both wrists, as I found if I did not do so I was supposed not to know my business. This was hardly charlatanry, but merely a deference to the prejudices of the place. After the usual tea and pipes had been gone through we retired. The man was still nailed to the post, surrounded by a gaping crowd of villagers. He amused himself by cursing Pierson as “reis-i-seem” (“master of the wire”) as we passed him. The Imād, however, unpinned him at sunset, as he had promised. The next morning the “Serrum-u-dowlet” called to return Pierson’s visit to his father, and asked us to dine with him that evening, entreating us to come in time for tea in the afternoon. The whole forenoon was occupied in receiving visits from the personages of Kermanshah. At five we repaired to the house of the “Serrum-u-dowlet.” We found him sitting with his brother in a large talár, or archway, one side of which was open to the air. The whole room was decorated in the strangest taste; there were the usual mirrors and florid mural paintings; these in this case were life-size full-length portraits of posture dancers and dancing girls, and were in ancient costumes, having been painted fifty years ago. The takhjahs in the walls were filled with chromo-lithographs in very dubious taste; several odd chandeliers hung at various heights as ornaments, some twenty pair of old carriage-lamps were stuck into staples in the walls, and as many small cages stood about, each containing a bulbul, or nightingale. What with the noise these birds made, and the splashing of a fountain which played furiously in a basin of yellow Yezd marble in the centre, it was difficult to catch what was said. Pipes were brought, and a long desultory conversation ensued, in the course of which our host’s guns, dogs, and miscellaneous property were exhibited and duly admired. The noise was deafening, and directly we had walked round the garden a band of musicians, some twenty strong, made night hideous with their strains and singing. Wine was now produced, and freely partaken of by both brothers, and trays of sweetmeats were handed round and afterwards placed on the ground around us. Spirits, in the form of arrack, the strong coarse spirit of the country, were pressed on us, but we declined. Our host and his brother, however, drank it like water. On a whispered order being given to the servants four Susmani girls and a buffoon now appeared. These commenced a kind of posture dance, the buffoon singing and making remarks, which produced a good deal of laughter from the host and his brother, but were unintelligible to me, and simply disgusting, as Pierson told me, who _could_ understand.