From the windows of the apartment, we had an excellent view, when the evening had closed in, of the illuminated mosques of the city, and the lines of light that hung like threads of fire from minaret to minaret. The casements quivered beneath the shock of the rattling cannon; and all the sounds which came to us from without spoke of festivity and rejoicing; and, meanwhile, we were a happy party within. Fatma Hanoum smoked her pipe, and overlooked the distribution of the _bokshaliks_ that her daughter was preparing for the morrow—every member of the household, on the occasion of the Baïram, being entitled to a present, more or less valuable according to their deserts, the length and difficulty of their services, or the degree of favour in which they are held. We, meanwhile, amused ourselves with watching the slaves, who, having left the bath, had seated themselves in groups at the lower end of the apartment, combing, tressing, and banding their dark, glossy hair; the younger ones forming it into one long, thick plait, hanging down the centre of the back, and twisting above it the painted handkerchief, so popular in the harem that it is worn equally by the Sultana and the slave; the others binding their tresses tightly about their heads, and replacing the locks which they hid from view with a profusion of false hair, braided in twenty or thirty little plaits, and reaching round the whole width of the shoulders. All were busily engaged in preparing for the festival of the morrow, though many of them were aware that they should not leave the harem; it was sufficient that it _was_ a festival, an excitement, a topic of conversation, something, in short, to engross their thoughts; and no belle ever prepared for a birthday with more alacrity than did the females of the harem of Mustafa Effendi, black and white, for the Baïram. In the course of the evening, the Bayuk Hanoum was summoned to her husband, and then the timid wife of her son joined us at the tandour, and related to us the little history of her life, which, although by no means remarkable in Turkey, is so characteristic, and will, moreover, appear so extraordinary to European readers, that I shall give it, as nearly as my memory will serve me, in her own words.