Athens had seen no such lively times as marked the period of the residence there of the Princess. Her balls were brilliant festivities. In return for them she was permitted to witness the piously ecstatic dancing of the Dervises (for the city of Minerva was under the Crescent then), who have plagiarised a maxim of St. Augustine, only altering it to suit their purpose, as ecstatic persons will do with sacred texts, and proclaiming _orat qui saltat_. The Princess had some nerve, and was by no means a fastidious woman, but she saw here more than she had reckoned upon, and was glad to escape from the exhibition of uncleanness and ferocity. Athens, however, afforded more interesting spectacles than this; she exhausted them all, according to the guide-books and the cicerones; and she gratefully expressed her pleasure by liberating three hundred captives, whom she found languishing in the debtors’ prison. The fame of the deed travelled as swiftly as if it had been a deed disgraceful to the actor, and at Corinth she was subsequently entertained, during two whole days, with a profusion and a gaiety that would have gladdened the heart of Laïs, who was herself so often and so splendidly ‘at home’ in this ancient city. From Hellas to the Troad was a natural sequence She went thither, as before, storm-tost--stood on the plain where infidels assert that Troy had never stood, and, leaning on the arm of the noble and bearded Bergami, twice crossed the Scamander. With the first day of June she was in Constantinople, making her entry with Mdlle. Dumont and another lady, in the springless cart or carriage of the country, drawn by a pair of lusty bulls. She resided in the house belonging to the British embassy. It was the last time in the course of her travels that she found rest and protection beneath our flag. The plague, however, being then in the city, she quitted it for a residence some fifteen miles distant, from which she made excursions into the Black Sea, till, growing weary of the amusement, she once more embarked and spent a week at sea, on a frail boat, tossed by storms and watched by corsairs; and at length reaching Scio, sought repose, and indulged in contemplation, or may be supposed to have done so, in the school of Homer. By the end of the month she was amid the ruins of Ephesus. Beneath the ruined vestibule of an ancient church she pitched her tent. The heat was great even at night, the errant lady was sleepless, and the Baron di Francino, ever assiduous, watched near his mistress till dawn, and performed all faithful service required of him.