What analogy the good Papas had found between the mosque and the mad-house I know not; but the punishment was certainly a most original and frightful one. The boy told us his own tale, and then added, with a broad grin, that he would take them in at last. Two other prisoners, accused of theft, were about to suffer their sentence in a day or two: exile in both cases, accompanied by branding on the breast in the most aggravated of the two; and, meanwhile, close confinement. They were a couple of shrewd-looking, desperate ruffians, and laughed in his face as the keeper spoke of them. We were then shown the bastinado, and the rings and chains for insubordinate prisoners; and, after having made a donation which was received with a surprise perfectly untrammelled with gratitude, I returned to the residence of our hospitable friends, with the rattling of fetters in my ears, and a thousand gloomy fancies floating over my brain. At half past ten o’clock we repaired once more to the Church, in order to assist at the midnight mass; where a Greek lady very politely gave up her seat to me, that I might have an uninterrupted view of the ceremonies. The service had already commenced when we entered, and the whole interior of the edifice was one blaze of light. The thirty chandeliers suspended from the ceiling threw a many-coloured gleam on the crowd beneath them, from their pendants of tinted glass; and the huge candles in front of the Sanctuary, and the tapers burning before the saints, added to the brightness of the glare; which, penetrating through the lattices of the gallery, enabled me to contemplate as extraordinary a scene as I had ever witnessed in a place of worship. The fair tenants of the front seats presented much the same appearance as a parterre of flowers; there were turbans of every tint, dresses of every dye, bonnets of every form: and such a constant flutter, fidget, and fuss; such bowing, smiling, and whispering, that I began to fancy there must be some mistake, and that we were, in fact, gathered together to witness some mere worldly exhibition. But the monotonous chanting of the priests, which had been momentarily suspended, was suddenly renewed; and I turned away from a score of polite greetings, offered by persons of whom I had not the slightest recollection, but to whom I had doubtlessly been presented during the carnival, in order to observe the proceedings beneath me.