During the evacuation of Egypt in 1805, the English soldiers forgot some women--as if by chance--whom the Turks seized. Their new lovers washed them and rewashed them, in the hope of removing that horrible brick colour which spoiled their cheeks. The result was worse.... The more they rubbed, the more flamboyant the colours became: tomatoes ready to fry. When they saw that there was nothing to be done, they sent them about their business. "We know and we admire white and black women," said they, "but red women up to the present we have not heard them spoken of." One day, when she was passing through the _souks_, all the people rose at her approach, as at the passing of the Sultan. Her heart swollen with victorious joy, she advanced slowly, she advanced regretfully, into that fairyland, which was soon going to disappear for always. Shining silks, brocades wrought with salmon-pink roses, veils of Baghdad, cloths of Hama, damask with silver flowers, slippers of red leather, Arab saddles decorated with mother-of-pearl and tawny studs, carpets in warm and palpitating tones.... And, eagerly, she saw pass by, standing out on this strange scene like living chains which bound her to the dream, the tall Bedouins draped in their brown abayes, fierce of aspect and supple as panthers of the jungle, the Jews with their dirty curls and their bent figures, hiding a clandestine booty from the tax-gatherer, the Turks, embroidered and re-embroidered with gold over all the seams, and the Christians, neutral and sad, and the Druses in half-mourning, and the Maronites.... From time to time an Aga broke through the crowd, with protruding chest, full-blown and fat body in his furred pelisse, like a pot of lard surrounded by dust, followed by fifteen slaves carrying his narghileh and his smoking apparatus. Long lines of veiled women under the guardianship of a duenna or of an old eunuch, flight of swans led by a duck.