During a visit that I made to a Turkish family, with whom I had become acquainted, the conversation turned on the difficulty of obtaining a Firman to see the mosques; when it was stated that Baron Rothschild was the only private individual to whom the favour had ever been accorded: (probably upon the same principle that the Pope instituted the order of St. Gregory, and bestowed the first decoration upon the Hebraic Crœsus) and that travellers were thus dependent on the uncertain chance of encountering, during their residence in Turkey, some distinguished person to whom the marble doors were permitted to fall back. In vain I questioned and cross-questioned; I failed to obtain a ray of hope beyond the very feeble one held out by this infrequent casualty; and I could not refrain from expressing the bitterness of my disappointment, with an emphasis which convinced my Musselmaun hearers that I was sincere. Hours passed away, and other subjects had succeeded to this most interesting one, when, as the evening closed in, I remarked that —— Bey, the eldest son of the house, was carrying on a very energetic _sotto voce_ conversation with his venerable father; and I was not a little astonished when he ultimately informed me, in his imperfect French, that there was one method of visiting the mosques, if I had nerve to attempt it, which would probably prove successful; and that, in the event of my resolving to run the risk, he was himself so convinced of its practicability, that he would accompany me, with the consent of his father, attended by the old Kïara, or House-steward; upon the understanding (and on this the grey-bearded Effendi had resolutely insisted) that in the event of detection it was to be _sauve qui peut_; an arrangement that would enable his son at once to elude pursuit, if he exercised the least ingenuity or caution. What European traveller, possessed of the least spirit of adventure, would refuse to encounter danger in order to stand beneath the dome of St. Sophia? And, above all, what wandering Giaour could resist the temptation of entering a mosque during High Prayer? These were the questions that I asked myself as the young Bey vowed himself so gallantly to the venture, (to him, in any case, not without its dangers) in order to avert from me the disappointment which I dreaded.