"I was not allowed to see his wife until after his mother and princesses had retired, which was not till quite late in the evening. The prince went a little time before me to prepare the way, and then sent his chamberlain to conduct me to the house of his wife, where he received me and led me to the bedside of his suffering companion. She was surrounded by a multitude of old women affecting wondrous wisdom in the treatment of their patient. The fiery ordeal had indeed commenced, and the poor woman was doomed to lie before a hot fire a full month. I found the mother lying on a narrow wooden bench without a cushion, elevated above the floor eight or ten inches, with her bare back exposed to a hot fire about eighteen inches distant. The fire, I presume to say, was sufficiently hot to have roasted a spare-rib at half the distance. Having lain a little time in this position, she was rolled over and had her abdomen exposed to the flame. "With all the reasoning and eloquence I could employ, both through the prince and speaking directly to them, I could not persuade the ignorant women that it would be prudent to suspend their course of treatment, even for a night, so that the sufferer might have a little quiet rest on a comfortable bed. They said that the plan of treatment which I proposed was entirely new to them, and that I was also a stranger, and therefore it would not do at all to expose so honorable a personage to the dangers of an _experiment_. "The prince then informed me that this amount of fire was to be continued three days, after which its intensity would have to be doubled, and continued for 30 days, as it was the mother's first child. The custom, he said, is to abridge the term to 25, 20, 18, 15, and 11 days, according to the number of children the woman has had. "Having had a look at the infant princess lying in a neatly-curtained bed, I retired from the place with scarcely any expectation that my visit would effect any immediate good.