The train amounted in all to forty-seven carriages and four; many of them tenanted by five and even six individuals, whose coquettishly arranged yashmacs afforded at times something more than a glimpse of their fair faces; a fact of which the negro guard appeared so well aware, that on some suggestion from one of them to a Pasha, who rode immediately in front of the Imperial carriage, on the second apparition of our party by the wayside, (which, _soit dit en passant_, must have been sufficiently attractive to the veiled beauties, being principally composed of _attachés_ to the different embassies), His Excellency addressed himself to me in very tolerable French, and told me that, although I was individually at liberty to accompany the procession to the Palace-gates if I wished to do so, he must request that the gentlemen would not attempt to advance further. But the prohibition was more readily uttered than obeyed; and we only just waited for a first glimpse of the fifty negroes who formed the rear-guard, ere we were off again, as fast as our generous horses would carry us. And well should we have been repaid when we pulled up mid-way of the steep descent leading to the Palace, had it only been by the spectacle of the wily old Seraskier, who rode beside the window of the State Coach, in a state of admirably got-up agitation; first shouting to the troop of attendants who hung on to the wheels, like a man in the last agony; and then modulating his voice to the extremest gentleness of which it was susceptible, to implore of the Imperial Bride not to imagine that there existed the slightest danger; half the fuss that he was making meanwhile, being more than sufficient to satisfy her that she was on the eve of being hurled over the precipice. On her arrival in the Court of the Palace, Saïd Pasha, on his knees beside the carriage, received her in his arms, and carried her into the Great Saloon of the Harem; the ladies of the Court, who had the _entrée_, followed in succession; the golden gates were closed: and the excluded had nothing more to do than to shake the dust from their garments—and truly it was about an inch thick—to swallow a glass of iced lemonade in the saddle, and to gallop back, under a burning sun, to their respective homes.